Daniel Defoe: the whole frame of nature, time and providence

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Daniel Defoe: The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence

10.1057/9780230599529 - Daniel Defoe, Katherine Clark



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Daniel Defoe Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-19

The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence Katherine Clark


© Katherine Clark 2007

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identiﬁed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 13: 978–0–333–97136–9 hardback ISBN 10: 0–333–97136–1 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Katherine, 1959– Daniel Defoe: the whole frame of nature, time and providence / Katherine Clark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–333–97136–9 ISBN-10: 0–333–97136–1 1. Defoe, Daniel, 1661?–1731–Political and social views. 2. Defoe, Daniel, 1661?–1731–Religion. I. Title. PR3408.P6C63 2007 823.dc22 10 16

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne



All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Acknowledgements

viii

List of Abbreviations

x

Introduction

1

1 Establishing a Voice: Defoe’s First Steps from Failed Tradesman to Successful Author i. Introduction ii. War, merchants, and the projecting age: the argument of Defoe’s Essay upon Projects iii. William III: patron of polite learning iv. William III: patron of military science v. ‘This pen and ink war’: Defoe and the standing army controversy 2 ‘The Mushroom and the Oak’: Dissent and the Church of England, 1697–1705 i. Introduction ii. Occasional conformity: the principled stance of an orthodox Dissenter iii. Occasional conformists and the instability of language iv. Denominational competition: Defoe’s novel rationale for religious pluralism 3 Jure Divino: Defoe, Locke and Milton, and Political Theory i. ‘Arguing by my own Light, not other Mens’: how a Lockeian identity was attributed to Defoe ii. ‘Tyrant SIN’: the real philosophical foundation of Jure Divino iii. Idolatry and conquest: the origins and history of ius divinum and kingship iv. ‘The whole frame of Nature, Time, and Providence’: Defoe on God’s intentions for mankind v. Conclusion 4 Defoe and the Union of 1707: Constructing a British Identity i. Introduction ii. Pre-union polemics and the development of Defoe’s historical thought v


14 14 16 21 25 28 34 34 36 42 46 51 51 56 62 70 77 78 78 79


Contents

vi Contents

5 Correspondence, Credit, and Commerce: Defoe and the Instability of Meaning, 1709–1713 i. Introduction ii. ‘What all people are busy about, but not one in forty understands’: the decline of meaning and the rise of credit iii. Trading rudeness for refinement: the scenario of Defoe’s A General History of Trade iv. Conclusion 6 Robinson Crusoe: Orthodox Penitent i. Introduction: Robinson Crusoe and Defoe’s orthodox agenda ii. Contextualizing Crusoe: Hoadly, Toland, and Defoe’s Turkish Spy iii. Trinitarianism and the Crusoe trilogy iv. Conversions: orthodoxy and redemption for Crusoe, Friday, Will, and Mary v. Iconoclasm: Crusoe’s campaign against idolatry vi. Christianity and the civilizing process vii. Crusoe’s condemnation of heterodoxy viii. Conclusion: ‘a religious Application’

84 88 92 95 95 97 103 111 113 113 115 122 125 128 130 133 136

7 The Perils of Consumption and the Decline of Family Government 138 i. Introduction ii. The Calico and South Sea crises: Defoe’s journalistic response iii. Commerce and the decline of family government: Defoe’s historical analysis iv. Trading the shop apron for a wig and sword v. Conclusion 8 Defoe’s Historical Vision: Commerce and Gentility in the 1720s i. Introduction: social polemic and the development of historical analysis ii. The historical dynamic of conquest and commerce: Defoe’s Tour and General History of Discoveries and Improvements iii. The benefits of princely prudence: the pivotal role of King Henry VII iv. Historical analysis in Defoe’s Compleat English Gentleman v. Conclusion


138 141 148 155 158 160 160 164 171 178 183


iii. Plurality, exchange, and the premises of union iv. Fundamental law, majority rule, and the Kirk v. Defoe’s discourses and the new national identity

Contents vii

i. Introduction ii. Satan and magic in the ancient world: from the creation to Christ iii. Satan and magic in the modern world: from Christ to the Beau Monde iv. Remedies for ‘this enlighten’d Age’ v. Conclusion

185 185 187 196 205 208

Conclusion

209

Notes

211

Select Bibliography

245

Index

264



9 The Devil and Daniel Defoe: History in a Heterodox Age

This book was almost entitled Daniel Defoe: ‘Writing History by Inches’, a phrase Defoe himself used to describe what he thought he was doing as author of the Review, but in the end I decided against it. It did not adequately convey the sacred framework in which Defoe conceptualized both the past and his present. It also seemed all too ironical a comment on this book’s gestation for I have been thinking about Defoe for a long time now, a process which first began while an undergraduate at Duke University. I am especially grateful for the tutelage and encouragement I received from two of my professors there, Charles S. Maier, now at Harvard, and the late John W. Cell. As a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, I was privileged to be supervised by Professor John Pocock whose powers as an historian are matched only by his patience and humanity as a mentor. His influence first led me to the theme of the development of Defoe’s historical vision, and his advice and friendship sustained me as this book took shape. Other Johns Hopkins faculty to whom I am indebted include Professors Toby Dietz, Jack P. Greene, and Ronald Paulson. A thoughtful cohort of Hopkins graduate students added to an environment full of intellectual stimulation and cherished camaraderie, including Tommaso Astarita, Edith Bershadsky, Trevor Burnard, Lige Gould, Philip Hicks, William Kuhn, Kurt Nagel, Rina Palumbo, Michael Schaffer, and especially Rene Marion, whose capacity for friendship and historical insight are treasured by all who know her. I also wish to thank Nicholas Phillipson and John Robertson for inviting me to participate in seminars they directed under the auspices of the Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Institute in Washington, DC. Participation in these seminars helped me to think more clearly about this project. An earlier version of Chapter 4 appeared in a volume of essays, edited by John Robertson, entitled A Union for Empire: the Union of 1707 in the History of British Political Thought (Cambridge, 1995). I am grateful to Dr Robertson for inviting me to contribute to this volume and to Cambridge University Press for permission to reprint a revised version of my essay here. Defoe studies have led me to many libraries and to new friends and colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic. I wish to thank the librarians of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Folger Library, the Huntington Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library and the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. My appreciation and understanding of viii



Acknowledgements

English culture and of early modern history and historiography have been enhanced by conversations with Victor Bailey, Pamela Edwards, Jeremy Gregory, Sarah King, Larry Klein, Steve Pincus, Richard Sharp, Leslie Tuttle, and Martina Zwieflhofer. Various aspects of this project have been presented to audiences at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, the Midwest and Pacific Coast Conferences on British Studies, and to seminars at Harvard University and the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. I am grateful to fellow participants for their helpful comments and questions. I also wish to thank Jonathan Clark, Alison Games, and Howard Erskine-Hill for their advice, encouragement, and comments on earlier drafts of this book. I am indebted to a host of Defoe scholars whose work has been the foundation on which I have built. Sometimes I have agreed, at other times disagreed, with aspects of their analyses but my debt to their achievements is gratefully acknowledged here: I have in mind especially Paula Backscheider, Peter Earle, P. N. Furbank, J. Paul Hunter, Maximillian Novak, W. R. Owens, John Richetti, G. A. Starr, and Manuel Schonhorn. My work on Defoe has been generously supported by a number of institutions, and I acknowledge with gratitude the award of fellowships by the Johns Hopkins University, the Folger Library, the Institute for Humane Studies, the New Faculty Research Fund of the University of Kansas, the Huntington Library, and the British Academy. I also wish to thank Sandee Kennedy, Jane Pearce, Pam Lerow, and Paula Courtney for all they do to help faculty in tasks large and small. Friends and family deserve special thanks for their forbearance and encouragement. They have often heard me say, ‘yes, I’d love to … when I finish the book’. From an early age, my parents fostered my curiosity about the past and supported my education throughout. Finally, I wish to thank my husband, who has been the most understanding and encouraging of all.



Acknowledgements ix

Backscheider, Defoe

Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (Baltimore, 1989)

Bolam, English Presbyterians

C. G. Bolam, Jeremy Goring, H. L. Short and Roger Thomas, The English Presbyterians: From Elizabethan Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism (1968)

Defoe, A True Collection

Daniel Defoe, A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man. The Second Edition Corrected and Enlarg’d by himself (1705)

Defoe, A Second Volume

Daniel Defoe, A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-Born Englishman. Some Whereof never before printed (1705)

Downie, Harley

J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979)

ECS

Eighteenth Century Studies

ELH

English Literary History

Healey, Letters

George Harris Healey (ed.), The Letters of Daniel Defoe (Oxford, 1955)

HJ

The Historical Journal

Hoppit, Land of Liberty?

Julian Hoppit, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689-1727 (Oxford, 2000)

HLQ

Huntington Library Quarterly

Hunter, Reluctant Pilgrim

J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim: Defoe’s Emblematic Method and Quest for Form in Robinson Crusoe (Baltimore, 1966) x



List of Abbreviations

Jacob, Newtonians

Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720 (Ithaca, 1976)

JBS

Journal of British Studies

Novak, Defoe

Maximillian E. Novak, Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions (Oxford, 2001)

Pocock, Machiavellian Moment

J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975)

Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History

J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985)

Schonhorn, Defoe’s Politics

Manuel Schonhorn, Defoe’s Politics: Parliament, Power, Kingship and Robinson Crusoe (Cambridge, 1991)

Note: Defoe’s writings are cited here in short-title form. The full titles can be obtained from www.copac.ac.uk or P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998). The place of publication, unless otherwise noted, is London.



List of Abbreviations xi



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As one of the most innovative writers in the expanding world of print culture in eighteenth-century London, Daniel Defoe was both an active participant in and chronicler of profound structural changes which, during his lifetime, transformed and united the kingdoms of England and Scotland into the nation-state of Great Britain. An increasingly enlightened and commercialized Britain witnessed the birth of a burgeoning state bureaucracy dependent upon a national debt to wage its wars, the growth of media-centred politics, a consumer society transforming both manners and morals, and de facto religious diversity demanding principled pluralism. Defoe’s name has become so synonymous with what was later characterized as the forces of ‘modernity’ that scholars have dubbed him ‘Citizen of the Modern World’ and labelled the period in which he lived and wrote as ‘The Age of Defoe’.1 Indeed Defoe was more than a prolific and wideranging writer: he has about him a phenomenal quality. As a commentator on almost every aspect of early eighteenth-century life and thought, he himself was part of the story of the transformation of his age. He can best be compared with writers like Thomas Paine, William Cobbett, Walter Bagehot, and George Orwell, yet in some ways his stature exceeded theirs. It has been said of Robinson Crusoe that only the Bible has been translated into more languages. This book is not an attempt to rescue an author from neglect. The launch of a new 44-volume collection of Defoe’s writings, several biographies, the publication of a number of monographs and countless articles all attest the brisk business of Defoe studies in recent years. However, with some notable exceptions, many scholars have continued to be influenced by older work which read Defoe for clues to ‘the rise of the novel’ or ‘the rise of the middle class’ and its bourgeois world-view. A second group of scholars has used Defoe to substantiate postmodern discussions of colonialism and related issues of primitive capitalism.2 A more securely historical interpretation identifies Defoe as a spokesman for the world-view of court Whigs, defined against that of the civic humanists.3 This last interpretation 1



Introduction

has been influential for the present author, and is acknowledged here, but this book seeks to offer a range of different insights and to define Defoe by his own most important intellectual commitments. Although a number of studies have located Defoe’s fiction in the context of various Puritan genres,4 this is the first to emphasize one key aspect of Defoe’s religion, his Trinitarianism, the eschatology that this entailed,5 the centrality of Defoe’s Christology for understanding his works, both fictional and non-fictional, and his emerging historical vision. Perhaps the most critical aspect of Defoe’s identity was that he was a Dissenter, but he adhered to ‘Old Dissent’, a very different phenomenon from the later Dissenting traditions of men like Richard Price (1723–91) or Joseph Priestley (1733–1804): Defoe and his Presbyterian co-religionists endorsed the idea of a national church, wished to be comprehended within it, and accepted exclusion and toleration as only second best. Also unlike Price and Priestley, he was committed to the doctrine of the Trinity. For Defoe, a framework of sin, repentance, and Atonement informed his understanding of time, and therefore of history. He conceptualized the universe in terms of an orthodox soteriology: man’s time on earth was time to repent. That time on earth was understood within another related providential framework. Defoe believed that commerce was the key to the divinely ordained moral and material advance of human society within the secular realm. Contrary to conventional wisdom which postulated God’s creation of a perfect orb and its subsequent fragmentation after the Flood, Defoe instead believed that God had created the world in its broken state in order to promote navigation and trade. Different parts of the world were endowed with different natural resources so that each had enough to survive but not enough to satisfy its wants. The material world contained a providential logic of cooperation and improvement as people were led to exchange and communicate with each other. Defoe extended this theory to argue that just as God had created a geographically divided world to encourage trade for the mutual benefit of everyone, so he had admitted ecclesiastical divisions in order to promote the Christian virtues of forbearance and charity. Via his education in a Nonconformist academy, Defoe imbibed the principles of Baconian ‘new science’ and the idea that the physical world was also the realm in which man could exercise and develop his natural desire for knowledge.6 These principles encouraged him to advocate the application of reason for discovery and improvement in the physical world while privileging faith and revelation over reason in understanding the spiritual world. Despite the possibilities for improvement contained within these intellectual frameworks, Defoe’s vision of commerce and the application of human reason was not an entirely sanguine one. Over the course of his career, he found himself having to reconcile his belief in the sanctity of exchange with the realities of new luxuries and ideas which confronted



2 Daniel Defoe

market man and woman. Defoe often voiced his concern that in a world of increasing consumption and speculation, the tokens of exchange – namely words and money – were subject to corruption and needed to be protected lest they lose their true representative meaning. He also discovered other drawbacks to commerce, exchange, and the use of reason. Commerce and credit depended upon probity and honesty, but he worried about how these and other virtues could continue to thrive in a world in which people were losing their fear of divine judgement and belief in the promise of everlasting life, a promise dependent upon their own repentance and Christ’s Atonement. The growth of Socinian, Arian, Deistic, and atheistic opinion thus posed a threat to Christian orthodoxy and to its associated social and economic benefits. How could society expect to thrive, Defoe repeatedly wondered, when it was influenced, even led, by those who ‘can argue themselves out of all the Restraints of Virtue and Religion?’7 Defoe came to see that despite its divine sanction, commerce was enticing people into emulative consumption, eroding household government, and distracting people from the true business of life – the preparation of one’s soul for salvation. By the end of his career, Reason, whose powers he once celebrated, had become heterodoxy’s new ‘magic’, bewitching society with the grossest of idolatries: the human mind worshipping itself. These concerns lead inescapably to the theme of Enlightenment. Part and parcel of this theme, as defined by historians of ideas, is the development of a modern historical consciousness. Recognition of a transition from an age of conquest to an age of commerce, John Pocock has argued, constituted one of the major building blocks of an ‘enlightened historiography’ which sought to define a new epoch in British and European history which was both ‘post-feudal’ and ‘post-ecclesiastical’. As Pocock has defined it, enlightened historiography, however steeped in Christian theology, nevertheless sought to develop a ‘culture of the mind’ which might ‘function independently’ from it.8 For Defoe, however, both the explanation for and the solution to the challenges of a post-feudal, commercial modernity lay squarely within orthodox Christian theology and not outside it. Defoe was one of the first thinkers to articulate the view that his age was one in which commerce was supplanting conquest as an historical force. Although he identified technological change and the policies of Henry VII as primary catalysts for this transformation in the early modern period, he also understood commerce to be part of God’s providential plan and conquest as part of the Devil’s strategy to corrupt mankind. Defoe’s ideas were not systematically developed but emerged during four decades of journalistic contributions to the political, religious, economic, and social debates of his day. In his quotidian engagement with a growing population of readers of news, commentary, and fiction, Defoe frequently turned to historical argument. He used the past for polemical purposes, to defend his own ideas about particular issues and to attack those of his



Introduction 3

opponents. Most of his works do not conform to our usual understanding of what constitutes a work of history, though some of his texts do contain the word ‘history’ in their titles. When he set out to write history systematically, as he did in his History of the Union of Great Britain (1709), his insights were less compelling. Defoe’s historical sophistication, as we shall see, lay less in the way he reconstructed the past than in the way he used various historical arguments to make sense of the dramatic intellectual and cultural changes taking place in his own present. This study argues that the historical insights embedded in Defoe’s journalism rose above the level of polemic and that he should be considered one of the most important historical thinkers in Britain between James Harrington (1611–77) and David Hume (1711–76). Defoe’s role as an historical thinker has been overshadowed by his current reputation as both a novelist and journalist. As Pocock has long argued, historical thought is not the same thing as historical writing and the historical consciousness of an age can be found in many other kinds of texts.9 This interpretation therefore fits Defoe into a scenario of intellectual development different from another important one described by Philip Hicks – the attempt by various contemporaries of Defoe to write a narrative of great men and great actions to rival the works of Thucydides, Livy, or Tacitus.10 It relates Defoe instead to a tradition of structural historical analysis pioneered by authors like Sir John Davies (1569–1626) and James Harrington that was later to be labelled ‘philosophical history’ in the hands of such authors as Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and John Millar (1735–1801).11 This book is, however, not about the development of genres, whether history or the novel.12 It is about the centrality of Defoe’s Trinitarianism for understanding his views on a great variety of issues including his understanding of the past and its relationship to the present. It seeks to correct the image of Defoe as a spokesman for modernity, many aspects of which he found disturbing and dangerous, though in writing about them he may have ironically contributed to their viability. This is the first study by an historian in many years to examine the whole of the Defoe canon. Its evidential base is, deliberately, the full range of Defoe’s writings although even a much longer monograph could not mention, let alone adequately address, every one of Defoe’s works. The method employed is the exegesis of texts in their chronological succession; each chapter focuses on Defoe’s writings on an event or cluster of events, and the ways in which they shaped his thoughts. This method is associated with the ‘Cambridge school’ in the history of ideas. Part of the aim of this book is to provide a methodological bridge between discourse analysis, normally applied only to a few selected texts, and the social history of popular culture expressed more appropriately in the vast range of less famous contemporary writings. Scholarly writing on the history of political thought in particular has moved from a focus on ‘great thinkers’ and ‘key texts’ to the



4 Daniel Defoe

retrieval of contexts and the discerning within them of languages or discourses. Thanks to these methodological developments, it is argued here, Defoe has emerged from being a figure held to be emblematic of what were (often wrongly) taken to be the characteristics of his age to stand partly outside them and often to be a critic of them. No apology is offered for an approach that is characteristic of an historian rather than of other disciplines. Instead, it is hoped that this study may be able to contribute to the work of scholars in other fields, for example by showing the inappropriateness of seeing John Locke under every bed and of tracing concerns with credit primarily to the development of capitalism. Nor does this study prioritize the same texts or methods privileged by literary scholars. Here Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and The Fortunate Mistress (Roxana) feature as three works among many, and not as peaks of achievement to which all other of Defoe’s writings must be related. The texts discussed here are the ones that best show how, in dealing with change, Defoe came to conceptualize historical development in new ways. This book is also written in the wake of the contribution to Defoe studies made by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens in slimming down the distended canon of anonymous writings previously attributed to Defoe over the years on inadequate grounds.13 It is possible to disagree with some of their deattributions but this study deliberately draws from the canon as narrowly defined by these two scholars. Before their work, the inflated nature of the canon provided some scholars with reasons to see Defoe as essentially unprincipled; as a man so proud of his journalistic gifts that he was willing to write on both sides in many controversies;14 as a proof, therefore, of the priority of new commercialism over old principle. It is certainly true that Defoe was an active journalist at a time of rapid expansion of the newspaper and periodical press.15 It is also the case that in navigating through rather choppy political waters, especially in the wake of the Treaty of Utrecht, he had to trim his sails. This was the exception rather than the rule and, as we appreciate more clearly exactly what Defoe wrote, it becomes possible to recover the nature of the principled commitments from which he never retreated. This study contributes to that endeavour. These remarks on academic method should not suggest that Defoe addressed an academic audience. In the 1680s, Defoe, a London Dissenter in his twenties, seemed set on a career as a merchant; only gradually was he drawn into a parallel, then separate career as a polemical writer as the widening conflicts initiated by the Glorious Revolution caught up area after area of English life. Defoe had already been made acutely conscious of the threats James II posed to his world.16 James’s use of his royal prerogative as a means of granting religious toleration not only failed to assuage Defoe, it alarmed him. He was aware that the king’s chosen methods of political manipulation, including the resumption of corporate charters, posed a threat to the City of London in which Defoe the merchant hoped to make



Introduction 5

his career. To such a man, the Revolution of 1688 could only appear not merely as a defence of England’s limited constitution, but as a Protestant miracle. William III naturally stepped into the role of a Biblical warrior king, one that perfectly fitted Defoe’s conceptions about kingship itself and England’s place in the world. Far from being a champion of democratic principles, Defoe embraced the Old Testament ideal of the warrior king, peopling his pantheon with figures like David and Gustavus Adolphus.17 Indeed the whole Defoe oeuvre is in some way a commentary on what was thenceforth known as ‘the Revolution’; and, as historians are beginning to appreciate, that event was often seen in the widest eschatological, and even sometimes apocalyptic, terms.18 Chapter 1 looks at Defoe’s contribution to the proliferation of economic literature in the 1690s and re-examines his role in the standing army debate of 1697–8. It argues that his concern for the state of England’s military forces first focused on the navy rather than the army. In his Essay upon Projects (1697), he argued that shipping losses in the war against France had driven many merchants into unwise speculative ventures and contributed to the great projecting fever of the age. Emphasizing the difference between proper projecting, or real inventions, and mere financial speculation, he blamed the growth of the latter on the previous Stuart regime. He looked to William III not only as the providential deliverer of 1688 but as a social reformer, able to cure England’s ills by his role as royal patron of such projects as an academy of learning and a military academy. Partly this scheme expressed Defoe’s concern at the innovations in language that were threatening the foundations of a faith grounded on unchanging meanings, but the problems these academies would address were also problems associated with the failings of the English elite. Defoe argued that the gentry had not adapted to the demands of professional soldiering or to the cultural imperatives associated with ‘politeness’ and the ‘reformation of manners’, but might still do so.19 Only at the very end of his career, in The Compleat English Gentleman, would he accept that the gentry had conclusively failed to accept new responsibilities in a post-feudal age. The early sensitivity to technological and social change reflected in the Essay upon Projects was more fully expressed in Defoe’s contributions to the standing army debate. After the death of Prince Rupert in 1682, Defoe saw proper projecting as a orphan, in need of a father figure; this William could be, but only if the nation were properly defended. Opponents of the standing army, men like John Trenchard, had another defining demerit in Defoe’s eyes: from this early stage he identified them as Socinians.20 This perception initiated a determining element in Defoe’s thought, for until the end of his life his commitments on a host of social and economic questions, and his perception of the motivations of his opponents, were drawn from theological analysis. Even now, he displayed a capacity for linking social and economic changes to those in moral behaviour. Defoe had not



6 Daniel Defoe

yet worked out these themes into an historical system, but his theological preoccupations were already dominant; so too was the tension between his desire to preserve the eschatological framework of Old Dissent and to defend it by using more modern kinds of historical argument that meshed with his Baconian belief that exploration, discovery, exchange, and improvement were part of God’s providential design for mankind. The ‘redemptionist tone’ that has been found in Baconianism had a clear resonance for Defoe, the orthodox Dissenter, the believer in the compatibility of providentialism and the new science. Yet this new world, unfolding for Defoe, was suddenly challenged before it had time to gel by William III’s death in 1702. A Tory backlash seemed to call all in question again. By understanding that original sin, repentance, and the Atonement provided for Defoe the very structure of human history, one can better see why occasional conformity, the subject of Chapter 2, was such a vital issue to him. Defoe now extended his providential perspective on trade and improvement to the religious sphere. As his hopes for ‘comprehension’ (the widening of the Church of England’s terms of membership to include orthodox Dissenters) receded, he turned instead to a commercial metaphor: denominations should peacefully coexist and compete only in piety. For several reasons, he urged, occasional conformity (the practice whereby Dissenters occasionally took Anglican communion in order to qualify themselves for office) served Dissent badly. Although his condemning this practice angered many of his co-religionists, Defoe sought to preserve the moral high ground for orthodox Dissent. His campaign revealed his principled commitments: his premises were Trinitarian and even Erastian in acknowledging the validity of an established Church, but resolutely against some of its practices. He deplored the way in which the practice of occasional conformity was not only inexpedient but literally sinful. It also added to the undermining of meaning and reliability that he saw around him. Communion, taken for political reasons, could only imply a misuse of language, the necessary medium for human exchange. It was a commitment, again, that allied him with the ‘new science’ and its concern for accuracy of expression. Defoe’s concern with epistemological stability was thus made even more manifest: occasional conformity threatened not just the numbers of his denomination, but meaning itself. His term for this was ‘non-signification’, and it echoed concerns first expressed in his Essay upon Projects of 1697. Stirred to passion, he published his most bitter satire, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, landed in prison, and was rescued from it by a politician, Robert Harley, in whose service he now emerged as a polemical writer par excellence. Yet he was a polemical writer with principled commitments that had considerable consistency throughout his career. Chapter 3 reassesses Jure Divino, Defoe’s most important statement of his political philosophy. This



Introduction 7

takes the unexpected form not of a treatise but of an epic poem, and the interpretation offered here helps to explain why. It would have been odd for Defoe to express his position in verse had it been based on Locke’s Two Treatises, as recent scholarship has taken it to be; but as a sacred drama of divine right monarchy, the result of sin and the Devil, an epic poem makes much more sense. It shows Defoe’s conception of secular history to have been set within the divine history of the world, and therefore shows his conception of political rights and duties to be profoundly related to his exegesis of God’s designs for man in the present and hereafter. Jure Divino therefore owes more to John Milton than to John Locke, and the contrasts between Defoe and Locke, which were greater than the similarities, are explored in this chapter. The early twentieth-century view of Locke as a secular contractarian can hardly be reconciled with the world-view of Defoe the Dissenter. Yet the most recent scholarship on Locke21 also proves a fundamental incompatibility between these two authors since Locke’s Socinianism placed him at the opposite end of a spectrum to Defoe’s Trinitarianism. To set out his vision in Jure Divino, Defoe was drawn not to a Lockeian state of nature but to a long historical retrospect that included literal historical consideration of the Devil’s role in instituting idolatry and tyranny together.22 He saw the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience as human inventions, encouraged by the Devil and contradicting the divine design. This design embraced man’s whole life on earth, seen by Defoe as man’s opportunity not only to prosper but to repent. Divine right monarchy, by threatening life, was not just a mortal peril: it threatened the ability of men to develop their spiritual life to achieve salvation and their duty to take responsibility for their own government. Such lofty sentiments did not release Defoe from his daily duties as a political writer and agent; on the contrary, his service to Harley took him to Scotland and the debate over union with England that raged there in 1706–7. Defoe realized that the Union would have to be not merely a trade treaty, not merely an arrangement of legislatures, but an Erastian accommodation on the grandest scale between two national churches. Defoe was enthusiastic about making this ecclesiastical accommodation work. Chapter 4 thus highlights his goal of building a pan-Protestant alliance, an ideal present throughout his writings. His rationale for the preservation of a separate Scottish Church similarly expressed his previously developed belief in the merits of competition between denominations. However, his most original insights appeared not in his folio History of the Union (1709), but in a series of pamphlets. As a journalist, Defoe addressed a newly central ‘public sphere’, but it was not the rational public sphere as identified by Jürgen Habermas, rather a sphere identified by competing claims of ultimate values.23 As we shall see, books entitled Histories are not the obvious or best sites for the development of historical thinking, certainly for Defoe and perhaps for his age; in this book the growth and refinement of his his-



8 Daniel Defoe

torical vision are traced in a wide range of works, often produced in the heat of controversy. Commerce and conquest provided another dialectic for Defoe and illuminated the problems that the Union sought to overcome. For Defoe, an age of conquest was giving way to an age of commerce, which was itself an expression of the divine order. Where (as Defoe would argue in A General History of Discoveries and Improvements) the growth of the wool trade under Henry VII had pointed England to an escape from feudalism, Scotland still built its national identity around a martial tradition and a baronial culture which had to be renounced if progress was to be achieved. This was, then, an application to Scotland of Defoe’s repudiation of the civic humanist ideal in the English debate over standing armies. Unique among the Union debaters, Defoe sought to construct a shared British identity which was both commercial and Protestant. Defoe’s vision of a free, Protestant, commercial world order, depending centrally on Protestantism, was an intellectual formation that has recently been acknowledged to characterize a unified British empire as it emerged in the wake of the Union,24 but for Defoe this common purpose could only be expressed if both national churches were Trinitarian. On his return from Scotland, Defoe did not enter an eirenic realm of religious cooperation, but one more bitterly polarized than ever by the reaction for and against the firebrand Anglican clergyman, Henry Sacheverell. His provocative sermon on 5 November 1709 and subsequent impeachment by the Whig ministry at the bar of the House of Lords leads us to Chapter 5, which reaches forward to Defoe’s defence of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and his General History of Trade (1713). Sacheverell’s inflammatory language in his sermon, explicitly an attack on religious toleration but implicitly a condemnation of the Revolution itself, and his explaining away that language at his trial, raised again for Defoe the problem of preserving the stability of meaning that lay behind words. Chapter 5 explores how credit too became an issue in these years as Whigs threatened that public credit depended upon their being in power and Tories sought to end a war which they argued was benefiting the ‘monied interest’ at their expense. Defoe sought to defend the non-partisan nature of credit, its necessity for prosecuting war against France and for keeping the wheels of commerce running smoothly. He expressed his concern, as he had done in the 1690s, that speculation in stocks and bonds was diverting investment away from the manufacture of and trade in real goods. The polemical purpose behind Defoe’s General History of Trade was the support of a treaty of commerce with France associated with the Treaty of Utrecht. The chapter explores the continuing development of Defoe’s historical thinking as he presented trade as the primary vehicle for driving societies from rudeness to refinement, language we associate with philosophical history and enlightened theories of progress. The text explores the



Introduction 9

greater and lesser impact that Rome and Phoenicia had on the British Isles but in 1713 Defoe had not yet reached the point in his analysis, which was to come in the 1720s, in which Rome represented the evils of conquest while Carthage fulfilled the divine mandate of commercial expansion and exchange. Chapter 6 focuses on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), emphasizing the fierce theological debates which furnished its most important contexts and the Trinitarian doctrine this most famous of Defoe’s works was designed to defend. Apart from the furores triggered by Arthur Bury’s The Naked Gospel (1690), John Toland’s Christianity not Mysterious (1696) and Matthew Tindal’s writings in the 1700s, challenges to Trinitarianism from Socinians, Arians or Deists had been intermittent; yet from the 1710s, assaults on revealed religion, the divinity of Christ, miracles, and the titles of churches assumed a significant and growing importance.25 The chapter considers Defoe’s debate with Toland in 1717, a chief spokesman for natural religion. The major controversy of the moment, however, was that triggered by, and named after Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, who later that year preached before the new king a sermon that seemed to abdicate for Anglicanism any claim to divine authority. Toland and Hoadly were widely seen as offering rationales for a programme of Whig reform that would abandon the Athanasian Creed and the doctrine of the Trinity as criteria of acceptability. In this, the established Church had the most to lose, but the offensive cut at the very Trinitarianism that Defoe saw as essential common ground with Dissent. Religion, for Defoe, was not to be reduced to the level of ‘opinion’. One response was his Continuation of Letters written by a Turkish Spy (1718), which included a sustained series of attacks on the idolatries of Roman Catholicism and the idolatries Defoe associated with the freethinkers’ worship of reason. The Church of England survived the challenges of heterodoxy but Defoe’s own religious community was permanently damaged. The controversy over religious subscriptions to objective statements of belief came to a head in his denomination at the Salters’ Hall conference in 1719, and resulted in schism among the ranks of Presbyterians. Scholars have often attended to the role of religion in Robinson Crusoe, but have usually chosen to focus on Providence and various Puritan literary genres which helped to shape Defoe’s story. This chapter accepts these approaches but supplements them. It points instead to the novel’s Christological centre, the triumph of revealed over natural religion and the worship of false gods, and the triumph of Providence in leading Crusoe to Christian redemption. These themes are even more unavoidable when the first volume of Robinson Crusoe is read with the second and third volumes of the trilogy, although these volumes were once influentially dismissed by scholars as afterthoughts by Defoe and as his attempts to capitalize on the success of the first volume.26 The analysis offered here goes beyond the



10 Daniel Defoe

recent tendency to see religion in internal or psychological terms, important especially for literary scholars in their treatment of the rise of the novel, and recaptures Defoe’s own understanding of the issue of redemption as an objectively theological one, dependent especially on the doctrine of the Trinity, under explicit and fraught challenge from this decade forward. Providence is a central theme in Robinson Crusoe, but it makes the most sense as a series of divine warnings pointing man in the direction of repentance. These preoccupations explain the prominence given in volumes 2 and 3 to the theme of idolatry and Crusoe’s attempts to denigrate and destroy idols, which stand in these cases for natural religion and the superstitions to which Defoe believed they led. Defoe wrote the Crusoe trilogy in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, the historical framework of revelation and redemption, and to apply this moral not to a remote tropical island but to his own. Defoe’s fears for the disintegration of meaning in public discourse and display were confirmed yet again by the calico controversy and the South Sea Bubble, subjects of Chapter 7. This chapter also explores Defoe’s analysis of two more historical changes that took place in his own lifetime, the monetization of family relationships and the breakdown of family government. Moll Flanders and Roxana, one saved, the other damned, exemplify in fiction two possible responses to the challenges of the world Defoe now perceived around him. His Complete English Tradesman also embodies these concerns, including the way in which impersonal social forces were promoting vice through the spread of the consumption of luxuries, the erosion of family government, and the declining notion of one’s providential ‘calling’ or station. As Defoe sought ways of understanding these trends, he developed increasingly sophisticated ideas in a mode which we might recognize as social and economic history. Here again, Defoe was not quite the herald of ‘the modern’ that he was once pictured as being. He saw historical change but wanted to invoke his religious belief against it, a tension evident throughout this book. As in the 1690s, when he saw the gentry failing under William III, so in the 1720s Defoe expressed the same critique, but now set against a much more historically developed sense of the changes that the gentry were failing to respond to, a theme developed further in Chapter 8. This chapter addresses commerce and gentility, especially in relation to obvious and growing social mobility. These observations and concerns about emulative consumption were not unique to Defoe; but he was special in the evolutionary historical analysis he developed in response to them. Defoe’s Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6) began as a Baconian history, but revealed his preoccupation with structural change in the present and the historic origins of that change. His Plan of the English Commerce (1728) set out a scenario for the development of English economic history different from that of the civic humanists; they pointed to the decline of



Introduction 11

military tenures, Defoe to the state-sponsored rise of manufactures. Before, the gentry had had a military purpose; in the new order, the gentry had not discovered a new role, as he complained in The Compleat English Gentleman. From his reliance on the human agency of William III as an instigator of social reform in the 1690s, Defoe had slowly turned to a sense of broad, historically explained social trends that were transforming the world in which the ‘born gentleman’ and the ‘bred gentleman’ acted. From such present-day concerns, we again see Defoe anticipating the kind of ‘philosophical history’ that was to be a leading component of Enlightenment thought. However, to reconcile land and trade involved, for Defoe, not just showing their interaction since the reign of Henry VII, but convincing the gentry that trade was part of Britain’s providential destiny. The mere veneration of gentility was, to Defoe, a sort of idolatry. The novels for which Defoe is so justly famous, especially Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and Roxana, were published between 1719 and 1724. He continued to be a prolific writer until his death in 1731 but non-specialists have tended to ignore his later works because it is assumed he wrote nothing of equal stature to the fictions which continue to be read to this day. The writings Defoe produced in the last years of his life, however, are both voluminous and crucial to understanding the preoccupations which had driven him throughout his career. Not surprisingly, they shed light on many of the themes in the novels themselves; but they also demonstrate Defoe’s sophistication as an historical thinker. Chapter 9 examines Defoe’s reactions to the continued growth of heterodoxy in the 1720s and how he conceptualized the past in order to understand and combat this development. It focuses on four 400-page books, hitherto categorized as Defoe’s writings on ‘the occult’ but rightly understood, in the interpretive framework posed here, as sacred history, accounts of the Devil’s dealings with mankind down the ages. Here Defoe had to balance between dispelling superstitious images of Satan and conveying the Devil’s role as a force in human history. Where God encouraged commerce and exchange in the world, the Devil encouraged conquest and idolatry. Defoe laboured to hold on to providential interpretations of human history, but the scenarios of long-term socio-economic development that he produced in order to do so paradoxically helped to promote the very things against which he fought. This tension between modes of explanation is one of the key themes in Defoe’s intellectual biography and one reason for his fascination. Defoe’s accounts of the history of his own day were located within a much larger framework which linked the lives of his contemporaries with biblical history and with the whole frame of God’s providential intentions for mankind. Defoe accepted an idea of progress because he believed in the Baconian project of the discovery of nature’s secrets (God’s secrets buried in nature) and the improvement of the world. God intended man to engage with the world in this progressive enterprise.



12 Daniel Defoe

However, this appreciation of exchange, trade, communication, sociability, and improvement was, for Defoe, located not in the freethinking realm of opinion but within the older Dissenting understanding of God’s design for man. Defoe’s aims throughout his career, then, were to defend revelation and redemption and the eschatological order which encouraged exchange and enrichment in this world and the promise of life everlasting in the next. This eschatological order was the abiding architecture of his mental world.



Introduction 13

Establishing a Voice: Defoe’s First Steps from Failed Tradesman to Successful Author

i. Introduction From its inception, the Revolution of 1688–9 attracted public debate. Within a generation of the civil war, English men and women once again found themselves needing to explain, defend, or denounce a series of dramatic events by which one head of their body politic had come to be replaced by another. Historians ever since have continued to debate the political and constitutional meanings of the ‘Glorious Revolution’,1 but recent scholarship suggests a greater degree of agreement about its economic and financial consequences.2 The Revolution had committed the English people to a series of expensive and protracted wars against France, in part because the king they had just ousted, James II, had put himself under Louis XIV’s protection, and in part because the king they had just crowned, William III, was determined that his new kingdoms should assist him militarily in his role as the guardian of Protestant Europe against the ambitions of Catholic France. The increasing demands of modern warfare stimulated various industries, provoked high levels of taxation, and necessitated financial experimentation and speculation by both individuals and the state. For Defoe, a London Dissenter, the Revolution of 1688–9 was not just a secular political adjustment, but a providential delivery. He and most of his co-religionists had been sceptical of James II’s offer of religious toleration by royal prerogative,3 concerned about the king’s pro-Catholic policies, and alarmed by the crown’s increasing interest and interference in their political liberties. In his twenties, Defoe had thought the threat of popery and tyranny real enough to risk participating in the Duke of Monmouth’s abortive rebellion in 1685. Not surprisingly, the expectations he attached to Monmouth were soon transferred to a more plausible incarnation of a biblical warrior king, William III.4 Defoe believed the accession to the throne of William and Mary in 1689 would open a host of religious, political, and economic possibilities for England and for himself. As war dragged 14



1

on and opposition to the new regime grew, many of these possibilities remained frustratingly unfulfilled but Defoe’s worship of William as England’s and Europe’s Protestant deliverer never diminished. Others did not share Defoe’s optimism. Fuelled by the belief that a wartime economy was multiplying the channels of crown patronage and influence, thereby threatening the balanced constitution, a ‘Country interest’ quickly began to coalesce. Its anxieties about corruption intensified with the founding of the Bank of England in 1694. Although the government experimented with many financial schemes to fund the war including lotteries, the issuing of bonds guaranteed by future government tax revenues has rightly been seen as an iconic moment.5 It provided the means by which military expenditure could be exponentially increased but it also meant that the Bank’s investors had entered into a new kind of financial partnership with the state. For the security of the nation to have to depend upon an edifice of public credit was seen by many of Defoe’s contemporaries as new, disturbing, and revolutionary. In practical terms, to many of the gentry it appeared that the increase in land taxes was financing in perpetuity a national debt and an army of dangerous proportions, headed by a regime of dubious legitimacy, for the benefit of a new and vile monied interest. However self-interested this anxiety may seem, the arguments attacking the nexus of court, army, and creditor, and the vehemence with which they were made, cannot be fully explained without understanding the cultural tradition of civic humanism which helped inform them, a tradition classically formulated by John Pocock. Idealizing the Roman republican citizen and accepting the feudal freeholder as his native counterpart, this tradition asserted that liberty was best exemplified and preserved by those men whose propertied independence and virtu enabled them to defend the commonwealth, with arms when necessary. The crisis of authority between Charles I and Parliament had compelled the previous generation to do just that. Now the landed gentry, the natural heirs to this tradition, feared that William’s standing army, financed by new and more dependent forms of wealth, might permanently tip the constitutional balance in the king’s favour, making their political role obsolete. By 1697, war had exhausted William’s troops and the country’s willingness to pay for them. While Parliament had been able to push the king to an early peace, William, convinced of the continued threat posed by Louis XIV, did not wish to disband his entire force. A sophisticated political debate, known as the ‘standing army controversy’, ensued, carried on within parliamentary doors and without in the newly emancipated and volatile world of the press.6 In a dextrous campaign, the opposition party, aided by a club of writers with republican sympathies, argued that standing armies were a threat to liberty and that the English nation was best defended by county militias mustered by the landed gentry. In late autumn



Establishing a Voice: Defoe’s First Steps 15

of 1697 Defoe published the first of three pamphlets attacking the opposition and defending William’s need to maintain a professional fighting force. In this context, Defoe has appeared as a modern court Whig, who, in contradistinction to the civic humanists, argued that historical changes had made standing armies imperative and political liberty a reality. This role, however, does not fully explain Defoe’s own preoccupations. Nor was country adherence to the ideal of ancient and gothic liberty defended by a citizen-militia the chief stimulus to his developing historical sensibilities. It was, in fact, the inadequacy of England’s naval rather than its land forces which first sparked Defoe’s historical and sociological speculations in the 1690s and these appeared in his first full-length book, An Essay upon Projects, published in January 1697, almost a full year before the standing army controversy. His previous publications consisted of only two pamphlets, one concerning the position of his fellow Dissenters under James II, the other about misconduct in a London mayoral election, but like the Essay upon Projects these were published anonymously.7 In 1697 Defoe had not yet established himself as a writer: if he had any public reputation at all, it was that of a failed businessman. War had made the 1690s a decade of unprecedented financial innovation but also one of greater risk and instability in trade. In the first years of King William’s war, the English fleet was ill-prepared to meet the challenges posed by French forces at sea. A major naval defeat in 1690 had given Louis XIV’s fleet control of the Channel and French privateers and warships harassed English merchants around the globe. The year before, Defoe had joined other merchants in petitioning their new king to send frigates ‘for the Security of these Coasts and subduing the French at Canada by sea’.8 His fears were realized some weeks later when a French man-of-war captured a ship in which he had a financial interest. The delay of other ships and other cargoes took their toll, forcing Defoe into court, into debt, and into increasingly desperate ventures in an attempt to keep his sinking credit afloat. Eventually, the once-promising young tradesman, liveryman, and freeman of the City broke to the tune of £17,000 and entered debtor’s prison in October 1692. The risks of wartime shipping were not wholly to blame. Inexperience and careless, even shady, transactions were at the heart of his failure. It is unknown to what extent he acknowledged this in private; in public, Defoe hoped for relief under a proposed ‘Merchant Insurers’ bill, citing losses incurred during the war with France.9

ii. War, merchants, and the projecting age: the argument of Defoe’s Essay upon Projects Some time during his desperate days in 1692, Defoe began writing what five years later would become his first book-length publication, An Essay upon Projects, though much of the text was completed between 1694 and



16 Daniel Defoe

1696.10 Crises in public, corporate, and private credit, a massive recoinage programme, and the establishment of the Bank and the Board of Trade had generated not only a projecting fever but a deluge of tracts on these and other economic issues. The Essay began with an analysis and history of the wrong kind of projecting followed by a number of Defoe’s own ideas for projects of the right sort, ones designed to benefit the nation and the lives of its citizens. His schemes for improving England’s financial, social, and educational infrastructures were directed towards preserving the fabric of society in an age of war and economic dislocation. Premised upon a reassertion of older forms of communitarian and statist paternal support, these proposals also revealed strikingly modern assumptions about the degree to which society and the state were constructable or projectable. Defoe’s publisher, Thomas Cockerill, was one of a community of publishers located in The Poultry, a street near the stock market, which was distinguished by ‘a remarkable density of Presbyterian and Nonconformist connections’.11 Committed to publishing Nonconformist works, the Poultry stationers became commercial innovators as well (in part because of their need to adopt various cost- and risk-sharing practices) and may have been particularly responsive to the growing demand for economic literature in the 1690s.12 Defoe was a Presbyterian of orthodox and mainstream Calvinist views. This position had economic consequences as inescapably as did the theological commitments of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century evangelicals.13 Presbyterianism was, however, also compatible with other intellectual influences, most prominently in Defoe’s case with the new science and natural law theory.14 The work of Ilse Vickers has convincingly established Defoe’s pedigree as a ‘third-generation Baconian’. Defoe imbibed Baconian principles as a student at Charles Morton’s Dissenting Academy, principles which continued to inform Defoe’s works throughout his life.15 Defoe’s debt to this intellectual tradition was revealed at length in later publications, but was disclosed for the first time in the Essay upon Projects. The Essay’s proposals reflected a Baconian insistence on numerical calculation, the importance of experimentation and testing, and a belief that advancements in learning and technology should contribute to public benefit and the general good of mankind. Honest projects were those that resulted in the invention of a tangible product from which the projector could and the nation should prosper. Defoe was keen to distinguish these sorts of endeavours from mere projecting, or speculation, which created no real product but ‘rais’d the fancies of Credulous People to such a height, that meerly on the shadow of Expectation, they … part with their Money for Shares in a New-Nothing.’16 The Essay also maintained the basic Baconian classification which divided the world of trade into products of nature, or the search for and procurement of raw materials, and products of manufacture, or the refinement of raw materials into finished goods.17 Direct investment in discoveries or




improvements was therefore a valid endeavour. Speculating in stocks and shares, the tokens of direct investment, did not fit easily into Bacon’s binary system and this may be one reason why thinkers like Defoe regarded stock-jobbing as a pernicious practice. Rather than erect a more modern framework to incorporate these new forms of exchange, however, Defoe clung to the old model, using Bacon’s classifications even more explicitly, for example, in his General History of Trade (1713) and General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6).18 Investment and credit, Defoe insisted throughout his career, were necessary, even to be encouraged; driving their price up or down for profit was not. Although some historians believe providentialism was a spent force by the time of the Restoration, it has recently been argued that the new science ‘sustained rather than undermined’ it by bolstering the concept of first and second causes, helping people to clarify their understanding of the relationship between the spiritual and material worlds.19 Defoe explained the connection in a pamphlet of 1701 warning the nation not to expect another miraculous delivery but to prepare for war: ’Tis true God governs the World; and in his government of the World he has ordered that we should govern ourselves by Reason. God has subjected even the ways of his Providence to Rational Methods, and Outward Means agree to it. The great Chain of Causes and Effects is not interrupted, even by God himself, if it be, it is on Extraordinary Occasions, which we call Miracles.20 The world may not have been entirely predictable, but it was projectable; with rational planning and faith in God, one could improve one’s chances for peace and prosperity within it, a rule applying to individuals and to society as a whole. The practical optimism which makes Defoe’s economic generalizations seem over-confident, and his fictional characters so attractive, stems from this core assumption about the omnipresence, but rationality, of Providence. The clearest development of this idea in the Essay upon Projects emerged in a chapter entitled ‘Of Friendly Societies’ in which Defoe acknowledged the ‘Controverted Point of Predestination’ but insisted that human beings lived in a world of ‘Second Causes’ and, accordingly, must rationally plan their lives.21 The opening lines of the Essay reveal not only Defoe’s early ability to make complex theory accessible to a broad spectrum of readers but also the way in which natural law informed his ideas about economic behaviour. ‘Necessity, which is allowed to be the Mother of Invention’, he remarked, ‘has so violently agitated the Wits of men at this time, that it seems not at all improper, by way of distinction, to call it The Projecting Age.’22 Defoe’s adage spoke to a contemporary debate which resulted in what historians have identified as a ‘neo-Machiavellian’ theory of political economy.23 It



18 Daniel Defoe

has been suggested that with the writings of men like William Temple and Charles Davenant trade became recognized as a discourse of raison d’état. Necessity was at the root of both Temple’s analysis of the Dutch miracle and Davenant’s prescription to restrict Irish trade in light of English interests.24 Yet, although Defoe was familiar with Temple’s work and would later know of Davenant’s, their works derived from a ‘sceptical humanist’ or Machiavellian tradition while his argument was emphatically a natural law one.25 Nature, Defoe asserted, had provided other creatures with the means and instinct for survival but God gave human beings only Reason, which did not always guarantee their self-preservation. In times of distress or danger, men and women might have few options: they might despair and choose suicide, or turn to crime, breaking civil laws in order ‘to satisfy that general Law of nature’. More positively, they could choose to struggle against adversity and survive by their wits.26 Natural law explained why war and distress stimulated human ingenuity but it did not delineate the conditions which normally channelled that ingenuity towards the honest invention of real products and away from speculation born of misplaced confidence, downright dishonesty, or both. Unhappily for his own age, Defoe concluded, speculative ventures were outnumbering authentic inventions.27 To explain why this might be so and offer a solution, Defoe turned to sociological and historical analysis. Dissociating himself from the growing opinion that William’s war had impoverished the nation at large, Defoe countered, ‘on the contrary, [it] was never Richer since it was inhabited’. He blamed not the war, which though ‘Dangerous … [was] most Just and Necessary’, but the early ‘Ill Conduct of Merchants themselves’ who, underestimating the risks, continued to trade before the Admiralty could coordinate adequate protection for them. The House of Commons, he added, had acknowledged the problem in its proposed bill for the relief of Merchant Insurers.28 In France, he explained, the burden of war fell ‘chiefly on the Poorer sort of People’ while its ‘Gentry and more capable sort’ found army commissions in times of distress. In England, the victims of war and the ‘more capable sort’ were one and the same, namely its tradesmen and merchants. Their livelihoods had been most disrupted by war and, Defoe proclaimed, it was ‘the Merchandizing Part of the World who indeed may more truly be said to live by their Wits than any people whatsoever’. Often underrated as commonplace and pedestrian, commerce in fact demanded both creativity and intelligence: a Merchant sitting at home in his Counting-house, at once converses with all parts of the known World. This, and Travel, makes a True-bred Merchant the most Intelligent Man in the World, and consequently the most capable, when urg’d by Necessity, to Contrive New Ways to live. And from hence, I humbly conceive, may very properly be deriv’d the Projects, so much the Subject of the present Discourse.




Reduced, sometimes ruined, by maritime disasters, English merchants, ‘prompted by Necessity, [had] rack[ed] their Wits for New Contrivances, New Inventions, New Trades, Stocks Projects, and any thing to retrieve the desperate Credit of their Fortunes.’29 The chief cause of the general projecting frenzy of the age was sociological: it was the instinctive response of that very segment of English society both hardest hit by wartime losses and distinguished by its routine reliance upon the faculties of calculation and imagination. Perhaps because he was reluctant to blame the proliferation of unrealistic or fraudulent practices on the desperation of merchants alone or upon what he considered a just and necessary war against the forces of popery and tyranny, Defoe looked to the past in order to discover the origins of the wrong sort of projecting, especially its most pernicious variant, stockjobbing. He traced these origins, predictably enough, to the previous Stuart era. Modern research has documented the way in which Elizabethan use of patents to stimulate new industries degenerated into royal favouritism and the protection of existing concerns under the Stuarts.30 The Essay’s reference to Charles I’s ‘Raising Money without a Parliament, Oppressing by Monopolies, and Privy Seals’ suggests Defoe had some understanding of this development but it was not the focus of his analysis.31 Instead, he ‘trace[d] the Original of the Projecting Humour that now reigns’ and ‘its Birth as a Monster’ to the year 1680 and the death of Prince Rupert.32 Rupert had been a successful general, admiral, inventor, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Despite his Stuart blood, he was also rumoured to have had strong Protestant and Whig sympathies. In short, Rupert was just the sort of man Defoe idolized and he credited him with providing England with the kind of leadership which, in this period, entrepreneurship and advances in the applied sciences required if they were to benefit the nation. The Essay’s selective retrospect on the 1670s and 1680s also highlighted technologies and projects which presented a challenge of one sort or another to James, Duke of York. Defoe’s conception of technological and commercial progress was clearly politicized.33 For all its optimistic proposals, the Essay suggested that there needed to be a renewal of leadership if real improvement and a spirit of genuine innovation were to be revitalized. As succeeding chapters will emphasize, Defoe’s religious and Baconian principles encouraged him to conceptualize the history of the world as a narrative of commerce and improvement. There was a redemptionist tone to much Baconian writing about trade and technology and it is not surprising in the 1690s to find Defoe looking to William III to deliver the nation not just from popery and tyranny but from its present economic and social difficulties as well. Williamites like Defoe believed their new king had been chosen by Providence to uphold Protestantism and defend English liberties. Throughout William’s reign, the court organized a multimedia campaign depicting the king as a godly



20 Daniel Defoe

champion who waged war abroad and sponsored moral reform at home.34 Defoe contributed to the creation of this Davidic image and it, in turn, shaped the role which Defoe projected for William in the Essay. This role was one which combined the attributes of the Christian warrior king and patron of the advancement of learning and the return of projecting proper. The Essay’s many proposals for social and economic reform included the creation of three different academies.35 Defoe’s idea for an academy devoted to women’s education has received the most scholarly attention but the two other academies speak more directly to his central preoccupations. The first was a society to encourage ‘Polite Learning’, inspired by the Academy of Paris but with an added emphasis on moral rectitude; the second was an academy for ‘Military Studies’, which he deemed ‘the most Noble and useful Proposal in this Book’.36 Both of these academies, as Defoe envisioned them, had William III as their chief benefactor.

iii. William III: patron of polite learning A number of important discourses converge in Defoe’s proposal for William to establish a society for the cultivation of language and learning in England. First, Defoe’s call for royal patronage suggests a Baconian confidence in the state sponsorship of learning, although, given the application of science and experimentation to the art of war, William’s role as Baconian patron is perhaps more conspicuous as head of the military academy. Second, the proposal may also be seen as part of a Nonconformist campaign for the ‘reformation of manners’ which had begun as an Anglican condemnation of ‘profaneness and immorality’ in the Restoration but became increasingly associated with Dissenting initiatives for reform in the 1690s.37 Nonconformity also informed Defoe’s refashioning of the Davidic king as patron of military and moral learning. Third, many aspects of the proposal demonstrate Defoe’s appropriation of the cultural paradigm known as ‘politeness’, another discourse associated with Restoration Tory culture which was transformed into a Whig idiom by the third Earl of Shaftesbury and by journalists and men of letters in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.38 Politeness was an ethos for gentlemen and its central preoccupation in this period became the refinement of discourse, especially in conversation. Defoe began his chapter ‘Of Academies’ by lamenting the small number of them in England, a situation he attributed not to a lack of public interest but to a lack of public leadership. The Royal Society had been founded in 1660 but its focus was the natural sciences and it lacked a state endowment. In contrast, he noted, France enjoyed an illustrious academy, supported by royal patronage, and dedicated to both the sciences, arts, and literature which had helped to establish French as the universal language in Christendom.39 On one level, his choice of the Academy of Paris as the




epitome of learning was part of a wider recognition of French cultural hegemony in this period. Like other English men and women, he could condemn French popery, wooden shoes, and the ambitions of universal monarchy in one breath and grudgingly admire the achievements of Louis XIV and Richelieu in the next. In fact, Defoe named Richelieu as another example of the kind of leader or ‘Genius’ he had in mind. Like Rupert, Richelieu had demonstrated that projects of national importance, in whatever field, required encouragement from the top. A national academy of learning patronized by the king, he asserted, would give William as great an ‘Opportunity to darken the Glory of the French King in Peace, as he has by his daring attempts in the War’.40 It was not unusual to consider the court as the promoter of politeness and learning but by the end of the seventeenth century this view had evolved into a kind of cultural royalism championed by Tories in order to impugn Whig enthusiasm and boorishness. Whigs countercharged that court culture was not only absolutist but artificial: inimical to both liberty and true sociability. Like Shaftesbury, Defoe identified flattery as the court’s chief affliction but whereas Shaftesbury sought to erect a ‘post-courtly’ culture,41 Defoe was content to rely on the court-oriented system as long as it was in safe hands. William had already proven himself ‘by the Steps of dangerous Virtue’ and was ‘above the Touch of Flattery’.42 Defoe’s suggestions regarding the academy’s aims, activities, and membership reveal some of his central cultural concerns. The purpose of the society, he explained, was to encourage Polite Learning, to polish and refine the English Tongue, and advance the so much neglected Faculty of Correct Language, to establish Purity and Propriety of Stile, and to purge it from all the Irregular Additions that Ignorance and Affectation have introduc’d; and all those Innovations in Speech, if I may call them such, which some Dogmatic Writers have the Confidence to foster upon their Native Language, as if their Authority were sufficient to make their own Fancy legitimate.43 Specifically, he advocated a programme of lectures and essays on all aspects of writing and speaking which would encourage ‘Propriety, Purity, and … Politeness’ and banish ‘Pride and Pedantry’. With sufficient authority and reputation, an English academy might ‘preside with a Sort of Judicature over the Learning of the Age’, censuring those writers who ranged beyond the bounds of good taste and good sense.44 Royal patronage would naturally endow the academy with great authority and reputation but its prestige and vitality would also depend upon the quality of its members. Defoe suggested that membership be ‘wholly compos’d of Gentlemen’, with twelve places reserved for the Nobility,



22 Daniel Defoe

twelve for ‘Private Gentlemen’, and a ‘Class of Twelve to be left open for meer Merit, let it be found in who or what sort it would’ as long as they had ‘done something eminent to deserve it’. Tellingly, he recommended the academy restrict or exclude from membership ‘meer Learned Men and Graduates in the last Degree of Study, whose English has been far from Polite, full of Stiffness and Affectation, hard Words, and long unusual Coupling of Syllables and Sentences … In short, There should be room in this Society for neither Clergyman, Physician, or Lawyer.’45 Defoe was quick to acknowledge these professions as ‘Honorable’ and their practitioners learned – a few of them even ‘Men of Stile and Language, Great masters of English’ – but their disciplines ‘prescribe Habits of Speech to them Peculiar to their Practice, and prejudicial to the Study I speak of’.46 An important goal of the campaign for politeness, especially for Shaftesbury, was to rescue philosophy and learning from the control of the Church whose authoritarian ideals inhibited equality and sociability.47 The scholars, graduates, and professionals Defoe disparaged were the products of those two great Anglican preserves, Oxford and Cambridge, and ‘tho’ much might be said here concerning Universities in general’, Defoe confined himself to remarking ‘the two great Seminaries we have, are without comparison the Greatest, [though] I won’t say the Best in the World’.48 Polite discourse excluded clerical pedantry and professional jargon but what about the perspiring prose of a tradesman-cum-pamphleteer trying to make ends meet? Defoe was not a gentleman but a ‘cit’ whose London landscape was one of warehouses in its mercantile core, not townhouses in its fashionable, more genteel West End. Like other discourses, politeness could be appropriated and it is not surprising to find Defoe, so to speak, crashing the philosophical party. More striking is the fact that Defoe, the champion of commercial specialization in the standing army debate a year later,49 was, in the passage quoted above, participating in the polite campaign against specialization. Defoe is too often accused of inconsistency or opportunism: the crucial difference here lies in the perception of what specialization threatened. Defoe denied the civic humanist charge that it undermined liberty but he worried that it could thwart communication and understanding. The Essay provided an early example of the occasional anxiety Defoe expressed throughout his career about developments he believed imperilled the meaning of words. He had too much sense to wish for the petrification of the English language but he did yearn for some kind of influential force which would curtail fads and conventions that he considered alarming. An English academy, he hoped, would possess the authority and discretion to suppress the frivolous innovations of ‘Dogmatic Writers’, ‘Young Authors’, and ‘Translators’. A society of sufficient stature could guarantee that ‘’twould be as Criminal to Coin Words, as Money’.50 The correlation between words and money was a theme Defoe would continue to develop. As tokens




24 Daniel Defoe

Custom is allow’d to be our best Authority for Words, and ’tis fit it should be so; but Reason must be the Judge of Sense in Language, and Custom can never prevail over it. Words, indeed, like Ceremonies in Religion, may be submitted to the Magistrate; but Sense, like the Essentials, is positive, unalterable, and cannot be submitted to any Jurisdiction … Words, and even usages in Stile may be alter’d by Custom … But there is a direct Signification of Words, or a Cadence in Expression, which we call speaking Sense; this, like Truth, is sullen and the same, ever was and ever will be so, in what manner and in what Language soever ‘tis express’d. Words, without it, are only Noise, which any Brute can make as well as we, and Birds much better; for Words without Sense make but dull Musick.51 Though jargon and innovation were serious threats to polite discourse, Defoe reserved his greatest derision for ‘that Inundation Custom has made upon our Language and Discourse by Familiar Swearing’. Dissenters claimed to find swearing and the debasement of oaths particularly offensive and an attack on profanity was an important component of the reformation of manners crusade in the 1690s.52 Defoe did not argue on the familiar grounds that swearing was sinful, quipping, ‘let the Parson … tell you that’. Instead, he based critique upon the tenets of politeness. Swearing, he asserted, ‘is of all Vices the most foolish and senseless; it makes a man’s Conversation unpleasant, his Discourse fruitless, and his Language Nonsense’.53 Because they were so customary, curses and imprecations ‘signif[ied] little to bind a man’s Intention’ and were therefore ‘fruitless’ in their failure to render his statements more convincing. Above all, profanities were ‘the Spoilers and Destroyers’ of discourse, turning it into ‘perfect Nonsense’. To further expose the senselessness of the custom, Defoe contrasted it to other vices which had obvious, if ignoble, objectives. Swearing gratified no lust, garnered no gain, satisfied no revenge. Because ‘neither Pleasure nor Profit’ could be attained, it was therefore ‘a Contrary upon the Course of Nature’. ‘Folly acted for the sake of Folly’, Defoe pointed out, was something Satan himself did not practise.54 Swearing, Defoe stated, was a ‘Masculine Vice’ but he also insinuated it was especially widespread within certain groups: ‘Go among the Gamesters’ and ‘Sportmen’, Defoe complained, and ‘nothing is more frequent than, God damn the Dice, or … God damn the Hounds’. Whether the squirearchy or university-trained elite, Defoe seemed to be taking general aim at largely Tory elements of society. His biases became even more apparent in a 1698



of exchange it was imperative they be protected from corruption lest they lose their representative meaning. To jeopardize the link between the signifier and its object or idea was to risk the very capacity which distinguished human beings from other creatures:

pamphlet, The Poor Man’s Plea, in which he blamed the ‘Lewdness, Prophaneness, and Immorality of the Gentry’ as ‘the main cause of the General Debauchery of the Kingdom’. Though Protestantism had initiated a reformation of manners in the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth, national virtue had been in a steady decline ever since. It was not politeness which had begun to flower under successive Stuart reigns, as Tory royalists claimed, but various species of vice. Luxury was introduced in the court of King James, licentiousness in Charles I’s, and lewdness and debauchery in Charles II’s. Habits of the court spread to the country families of the gentry and nobility who, in turn, set a poor example for the rest of the nation. The interregnum offered no respite as ‘Liberty of Soldiery’ encouraged profaneness throughout the kingdom. William and Mary had helped to reverse this trend by setting a virtuous and sober royal example but unless the nobility, gentry, and clergy followed suit, a reformation of manners could not be achieved. Whereas the ‘Vices of a Poor Man affect only himself’, Defoe argued, ‘the Rich Man’s Wickedness affects all the Neighbourhood … If my own Watch goes false, it deceives me and none else; but if the Town Clock goes false, it deceives the whole Parish.’ The gentry, clergy, and ‘very benches of justice’ were infected with drunkenness, swearing, and whoring; and the poor resented being punished by men as guilty as themselves.55 The radical tone of The Poor Man’s Plea suggests the pamphlet was intended for a different audience than the Essay upon Projects with its emphasis on politeness, but Defoe’s analysis was largely the same. Throughout the 1690s reformers pressed for parliamentary bills to combat vice and profaneness; but Defoe put little faith in law or legislation to reform manners despite his support of and participation in societies devoted to its cause. Parliamentary acts and proclamations against immorality were mere ‘Cobweb Laws, in which the small Flies are catch’d, and the great ones break through’.56 In the Essay’s condemnation of swearing, he insisted, ‘It must be Example, not Penalties, [which] must sink this Crime, and if the Gentlemen of England wou’d once drop it as a Mode … ’twould soon grow odious and out of fashion.’57 As an arbiter of taste and learning, an English academy sponsored by King William could set the proper example and discourage impolite discourse.

iv. William III: patron of military science As Defoe firmly believed and the court sought to advertise, it was William’s military as well as his moral leadership which qualified him to assume the mantle of Davidic kingship. Particularly at the beginning of the war, as campaigns in Ireland demonstrated, William’s own military credentials contrasted starkly with those of his new subjects. England’s long peace had come at the cost of not acquiring experienced officers and soldiers.




Defending William from criticism that he had favoured foreign officers and engineers, Defoe explained that when he ‘took Possession of this Kingdom, and … began to regulate his Army, he found but very few among the whole Martial Part of the Nation fit to make use of for General Officers’. Allocating sixteen regiments to English gentlemen, William sought to give them ‘all the Encouragement imaginable’ and seven years of war had given them much seasoning. Furthermore, unlike seamen, who were ever-prepared for naval service by virtue of commercial sailing, ‘Soldiers, Horsemen, Engineers, Gunners and the like, must be bred and taught; men are not born with Muskets on their Shoulders, nor Fortifications in their Heads.’ Though war was ‘the best Academy in the World, where men study by Necessity, and practice by force’, no nation could afford to enter one with inexperienced forces. Hoping to avert this problem in the future, Defoe proposed that William found and the public support an academy for military studies.58 Before offering details about the academy itself, however, Defoe explained that during England’s recent respite from war, technological changes had so revolutionized the nature of fighting that ‘the Maxims of War … differ as much from what they were formerly, as Long Perukes do from Piqued Beards’. Only a generation ago, he pointed out, armies in the field, whether or not they had the advantage, expected to do battle and make the best of it. Then even the weakest troop of men were eager to engage with the enemy but ‘Now ’tis frequent to have Armies of Fifty thousand men of a side stand at Bay within view of one another, and spend a whole Campaign in Dodging, or as ’tis genteely call’d, Observing one another, and then march off into Winter-Quarters.’ New technologies demanded new strategies so that the old maxim, ‘Whereever [sic] you meet your Enemy, fight him’ had been replaced by new ones: ‘Never Fight without a manifest Advantage. And always Encamp so as not to be forc’d to it.’ War had reached a stage in which opposing generals might postpone battle indefinitely. That armies had developed new defensive strategies of delay to protect themselves from the ever-increasing destructive capacity of modern weaponry did not surprise him; history made plain that ‘the Defensive Art always follows the Offensive’.59 In fact, in the Introduction to the Essay, Defoe had listed a whole range of ‘New Inventions which want Names … new sorts of Bombs and unheard-of Mortars’ as verification of the projecting spirit of the day.60 Improved artillery necessitated improved defensive measures but this most recent phase in the evolutionary pattern of war produced repercussions far beyond the battlefields: I grant that this way of making War spends less Blood than former Wars did; but then it spins Wars out to a greater Length … I think ’tis plain in the present War, that ’tis not he who has the longest Sword, so much as he who has the longest Purse, will hold the War out best. Europe is all engag’d



26 Daniel Defoe


Equating the ‘longest sword’ with the ‘longest purse’ would become standard issue in Defoe’s discursive arsenal. Here, in its first deployment, it provided Defoe with both an explanation for Louis XIV’s interest in a negotiated peace and with an historical basis for his promotion of a military academy. Despite numerous advantages over the Allies, Louis XIV had wished to avoid the financial burden of a long war and, from its start, intermittently engaged in informal peace negotiations. In the late summer of 1696, a few months before the publication of the Essay, Louis XIV’s lack of money meant that French representatives once again were pursuing a diplomatic solution. The power of the purse, in this new tactical age of dodge and defend, meant that the ‘French king … finds his Exchequer fail[ing], his Kingdom drain’d … [and] whatever his Armies may do, his Money won’t hold out so long as the Confederates; and therefore he uses all the means possible to procure a Peace’. England would need a long purse to fund the academy Defoe had in mind. Even he acknowledged that Parliament would need to provide the crown with a large yearly revenue to cover the costs of the institution which he estimated would be £90,000 per annum. Although Defoe’s plan for a military academy was broadly conceived, like the academy of polite learning, it betrayed a certain preoccupation on his part with perceived deficiencies of the English gentry in a modern age. The academy would consist of four separate colleges, each providing its own curriculum and open to different social and economic ranks. While making no mention of potential disciplinary problems among the young cadets of three of the colleges, he itemized specific articles of behaviour for the college reserved for gentlemen students. They must abide by all rules of residency and leave and ‘perform all the College-Exercises … without dispute’. Those who quarrel or use ‘Ill Language’ will be fined; those who fight or duel will be publicly ‘declar’d no Gentleman’, expelled from the college, and ‘pump’d as a Rake’ if they dare to appear within the walls of the college again.61 These rules suggest Defoe’s concern to build up a proficient corps of gentlemen officers without capitulating to their robust and impolite independence or to their traditional codes of honour. It was not only technological advance which changed ‘the old Temper of the English’ after the civil wars; as Norbert Elias suggests, the period following civil war often saw the court demanding a curtailment of ‘warlike habits and pleasures’ in society’s military elite. That elite, in turn, responded by using the practice of the duel as a symbol of its own autonomy against ‘increasing state control that tends more and more to subject all citizens to the same law’.62 In this context, Defoe’s perception that the civil war represented a profound divide took on a new dimension. His depiction of William as warrior king and patron of the military arts, his call to curb the truculence of the



in the War, and the Men will never be exhausted while either Party can find Money; but he who finds himself poorest, must give out first.

landowning classes, and, as we shall see, his defence of the court’s desire to maintain a standing army all suggest that Defoe welcomed the growing monopolization of physical force by the state. Tamed and schooled as professional officers by a military academy, polished by a national academy for polite learning, England’s elite would be better equipped to lead the nation in a rapidly changing world. Though his proposal for a military academy was formally completed, Defoe followed it with an addendum. Again his analysis began with the question of technological change and his solution to the problems it posed hinged, in large part, upon William’s leadership and a willingness on the part of the gentry, as principal players in the social order, to keep up with the forces of modernity: When our Military Weapon was the Long-Bow … the meanest CountreyMan was a good Archer; and that which qualifi’d them so much for Service in the War, was their Diversion in Times of Peace … Since our way of fighting is now alter’d; and this destructive Engine, the Musquet, is the proper Arms for the Soldier, I could wish the Diversion also of the English would change too, that our Pleasures and Profit might correspond. ’Tis a great Hindrance to this Nation, especially where StandingArmies are a Grievance, that if ever a War commence, men must have at least a Year before they are fit to face an Enemy … [and] to handle their Arms … To help this, at least in some measure, I would propose, That the Publick Exercises of our Youth shou’d by some Publick Encouragement … be drawn off from the foolish Boyish Sports of Cocking, and Cricketing, and from Tipling, to shooting with a Firelock. If a military academy, like the one Defoe had just proposed, provided instruction in marksmanship to the gentry ‘at the King’s Charge’, then, he argued, ‘the Gentry in return of that Favour shou’d introduce it among the CountreyPeople’. This could easily be accomplished ‘if every Countrey-Gentleman, according to his degree’ would sponsor regular shooting contests in which local citizens would compete for prizes. Such competitions would encourage ‘all the Young Men in England’ into becoming ‘Marks-men’.63 In defining his ‘Projecting Age’, it seems Defoe concluded that the age of invention demanded the invention of tradition. In the months that followed the publication of his Essay upon Projects, however, he would discover the tenacity of certain ideological traditions in the face of historical change.

v. ‘This pen and ink war’: Defoe and the standing army controversy By 1697 war weariness had made an early peace attractive to all combatants. Both William III and Louis XIV were reluctant to engage in another



28 Daniel Defoe

season of fighting. With English and Dutch public opinion urging a settlement and the increasing risk of minor allies forsaking the cause in pursuit of separate peace, as Savoy had done the year before, William III did not have much choice. Despite recent French successes along the Catalan frontier, even Louis XIV thought the cost of continued campaigning too high.64 Envoys discussed terms and reached an agreement by September but the ink on the Treaty of Ryswick was hardly dry before English politicians and polemicists drew their own ideological battle lines over what to do about William’s forces. The ensuing controversy resulted in a series of parliamentary votes drastically to reduce the size of the army and helped to make the last four years the most politically contentious ones of William’s reign. As suggested in the introduction to this chapter, it also revealed a cultural fissure in which modern notions of specialization and exchange challenged classical and humanist concepts of liberty and citizenship. Most scholars since Caroline Robbins have examined these competing paradigms by comparing Defoe’s contributions to the debate with that of Andrew Fletcher. In recent years, historians have singled out these two authors because, unlike contemporaries such as John Trenchard who utilized the past as a ‘mere catalogue of examples, good and bad’, their analysis of the merits and flaws of professional armies and citizen militias depended upon a sophisticated understanding of long-term historical processes and structural change.65 Though the importance of focusing on Fletcher and Defoe cannot be overstated, titles, publication dates, and publishers’ advertisements make it clear that each of Defoe’s three major essays defending the maintenance of a standing army was written in direct response to Trenchard pamphlets attacking such a plan and that both Defoe and Trenchard, if unsure as to exact identity, regarded the other as his chief opponent in print.66 Initially, Defoe had only a hazy impression of the opposition’s profile and, given that he stood on the verge of establishing his own notoriety as a controversialist, expressed a surprising degree of distaste for the direction in which political journalism was moving. By 1698, Defoe was still dismayed by the increasing influence of propaganda upon parliamentary debate but he had pieced together a shrewd sketch of his anti-army adversaries – men of republican and Socinian principles who, hiding behind a populist stalking horse named ‘Liberty’, sought to bring down a king and his government for denying them place and preferment.67 By redirecting the focus of investigation from a Defoe/Fletcher to a Defoe/Trenchard-centred debate, under-explored contexts, such as the role of religion, re-emerge and our understanding of prevailing contexts is refined. Trenchard is usually credited with initiating the debate by publishing anonymously An Argument Shewing that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government in October 1697.68 Though the possibility exists that this pamphlet was in part an answer to issues Defoe raised in his Essay upon




Projects, published earlier that year, the publication of An Argument was certainly responsible for instigating the uproar in London over this issue. Trenchard also served throughout the controversy as the ‘chef de propagande … coordinat[ing] the writing, printing and publishing of all the important contributions’ for the opposition side. In these efforts he was aided by Robert Harley, the parliamentary leader of the ‘country party’, a group of Whigs and Tories who opposed court corruption and standing armies as the primary threats to England’s balanced constitution. Despite rumours to the contrary, Defoe probably acted as a ‘lone wolf’ and not as a court-sponsored pamphleteer.69 Trenchard’s connections and Defoe’s lack of them reinforce present understanding of the divisions between Whigs in the decade following the Revolution as well as the inadequacy of attempts to characterize Defoe’s politics as an expression of what has been termed London ‘radical Whiggism’.70 Trenchard’s essay began with a four-page encomium to England’s exceptionalism. Nature had endowed England with ‘numerous Commodities for Trade and Commerce’ and the sea afforded not only an easy means to conduct it but also a barrier to the ‘perpetual War’ of the continent. A hardy sea-faring ‘manner of Life’, he added, even allowed the nation some immunity from ‘Luxury it self, which has been the Bane and Destruction of most Countries where it has been predominant’. Most importantly, though, the English stood apart ‘as Freemen and not Slaves in this unhappy Age, when an universal Deluge of Tyranny has overspread the face of the whole Earth’.71 The English enjoyed liberty because their government was ‘an Empire of Laws’ from which no man, not even the king, was exempt and because its constitution was a ‘limited mix’d Monarchy’ formed by a ‘due ballance between King, Lords and Commons’, the absence of which resulted in ‘an Actual Dissolution of the Constitution’. This political balance, Trenchard argued, depended upon the maintenance of a Harringtonian or ‘Gothic Ballance’ between property and power, ‘an Union of the natural and artificial Strength of the Kingdom’ in which the defence of the nation was never entrusted to an army of paid soldiers but remained in the hands of a militia consisting ‘of the same Persons as have the Property, or otherwise the Government is violent and against Nature, and cannot possibly continue’.72 This, in a nutshell, was Trenchard’s argument, a core of commonwealth beliefs shared by many of his contemporaries. Following this manifesto, Trenchard cited numerous examples of biblical, classical, and modern nations he claimed either preserved their liberty by maintaining a citizen-militia or lost it by employing professional soldiers. Defoe quickly responded with Some Reflections upon Trenchard’s Argument. While he accepted ‘without any trouble’ Trenchard’s opening remarks in praise of English trade, English liberty, and the beauty of the English constitution, Defoe pounced upon his initial statement of contention that



30 Daniel Defoe


‘Nothing is more frequent’, retorted Defoe, ‘than for the same Causes to produce different Effects; and what happened yesterday may never happen again while the World stands.’ He chided Trenchard repeatedly for his remark by employing a like causes–like effects formula with withering sarcasm.74 As was the case with his historical assumptions, Defoe found Trenchard’s use of historical facts fallacious as well. Apologizing for any chronological errors of his own because he lacked the ‘time to consult History’ while drafting his response, Defoe, nevertheless, attacked Trenchard for his omissions, mistakes, misinterpretations, and prejudicial use of historical evidence. In response to Trenchard’s argument that no ‘Nations whilst they kept their Liberty were ever known to maintain any Souldiers in constant Pay’, Defoe pointed out that he failed to give a single example of any modern nation which having established an army out of necessity lost its liberty as a consequence. As for his examples from antiquity, they ‘were first establish’d Commonwealths, not Monarchies’ but that ‘when they became Regal’ they acquired armies: ‘Nay, God himself, when the Israelites would have a King, told them this would be a Consequence … that a Military Power must be made use of with a Regal Power; and as it may follow no King, no Army, so it may as well follow, no Army no King.’75 The biblical image of a warrior king, so central to Defoe’s defence of the Revolution, was also an ideological cornerstone of his support of a standing army. His second pamphlet, An Argument, shewing, that a Standing Army, with Consent of Parliament, is not Inconsistent with a Free Government, &c., showcased the following quotation from the second book of Chronicles on its title-page: ‘And King Solomon had four thousand Stalls for Horses and Chariots, and twelve thousand Horsemen; whom he bestowed in the ChariotCities, and with the King at Jerusalem.’76 Defoe also recognized the rhetorical advantage of associating an image of England as Israel with the pro-army position and the spectre of England as commonwealth with the anti-army campaign. His opponent, on the other hand, had ‘like God Almighty, divided the World, and has set the Sheep on his right hand, and the Goats on his left … with all the Monarchal [sic] Governments in the World … cursed into the most abandon’d Slavery … and all the Commonwealths … blessed into freedom from Kings, standing Armies’.77 Because Parliament was likely to vote to reduce rather than to eliminate William’s forces altogether, Trenchard was at pains to demonstrate that even the smallest army was a threat to constitutional liberties and even to the established government itself. Caesar, he argued, had seized Rome with



no Nation ever preserved its Liberty, that maintained an Army otherwise constituted within the Seat of their Government: and let us flatter our selves as much as we please, what happened yesterday, will come to pass again; and the same Causes will produce like Effects in all Ages.73

five thousand troops and decided the ‘Fate of the World’ at Pharsalia with only twenty-two thousand; small bands of Pretorian guards and court janissaries had caused ‘most of the Revolutions of the Roman and Ottoman Empires since’; and Oliver Cromwell seized power with an army of seventeen thousand men.78 Throughout the debate, Defoe challenged Trenchard’s statistics, accusing the anti-army side of manipulating numbers to suit their argument while providing readers with his own figures on the size of various armies of the past.79 By December 1697, Parliament was considering an Act to reduce the army to ten thousand troops; William would be allowed a small force at best. In his second pamphlet, Defoe had to concede that ‘since no army and a great army are extreams equally dangerous’ the question was ‘what medium can be found … to make such an Army serviceable for the Defence of us and our Allies, and yet not dangerous to our Constitution’.80 Given the notice paid by modern scholars to the historical acumen displayed by Defoe in this debate, it may be instructive to see what he thought of Trenchard’s use of the past. Defoe’s most acute criticism of the anti-army campaign was its utter failure to recognize that even the strongest cultural edifices were vulnerable to erosion in the ebb and flow of history. Trenchard’s essays seemed to argue from history but his aim was to glean examples, especially from antiquity, in order to reinforce the idea of the danger of standing armies as a timeless truth. Defoe was therefore careful to challenge many of these examples point by point and to rebuke Trenchard for what he considered erroneous methodological assumptions. Defoe was not part of the club of ‘Old Whigs’ who met at the Grecian Coffee House frequented by Trenchard, Toland, Moyle, and Robert Harley. Defoe struggled to identify his opponents, at first simply identifying them as ‘Male-contents … Angry that they were not preferr’d, and envying all that were’.81 He identified the strategy of seeking preferment by becoming a critic whom the court would wish to silence as a phenomenon which appeared long before the formation of Whig and Tory party politics.82 Defoe, however, soon became more specific, charging the club with espousing republican principles. Ironically he also complained about the tactics adopted by his future patron Robert Harley who met at the Grecian to coordinate propaganda in order to turn the complaints of country gentlemen into an effective opposition.83 Their attacks ‘against the Army’, Defoe charged, ‘were tim’d to appear just at the opening of the Parliament, and so industriously handed about, that they have been seen in the remotest countries of England before they were publish’d in London’.84 Clearly, the opposition was adopting new tactics as well as perfecting old ones in its attempt to discredit William and disband his forces. Defoe was clearly indignant about the tactics adopted by the ‘Old Whigs’. He also hoped to discredit the club’s anti-army ideology by attacking the publishing activities of Toland:



32 Daniel Defoe

Much about the same time, from the same people, came out into the World, two Volumes of Ludlow’s Memoires; in all which the Conduct of the Parliament against the King is exceedingly magnified; the Government of a single Person opposed covertly, under the Person of O[liver]. C[romwell]. but in general, of any single Person whatever; and all the Common-Wealth-Principles advanced and defended.85 This was coupled with the publication of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, a work Defoe appreciated for its attack on Filmer but scorned in this context because ‘one of the Publishers had the impudence to say it was the best Book the Bible excepted, that ever came abroad in the World’.86 Defoe’s greatest scorn, however, was reserved for the club’s religious principles. ‘While they would disarm us to protect our Liberties’, Defoe sarcastically complained, by publishing Socinian tracts as well, they ‘strike a fatal Stroke at our Religion, which I confess, I ought not to expect they should value, because I know their Principles to be both Irreligious and Blasphemous’. All of them, Defoe charged, were ‘maintainers of the most infamous Heresie of Socinus, they bid defiance to the Son of God on one hand, and to the King and Government on the other’.87 It was not only Defoe’s historiographical sophistication and admiration for warrior kings which set Defoe apart from other Whigs, it was his Trinitarianism as well.




‘The Mushroom and the Oak’: Dissent and the Church of England, 1697–1705

i. Introduction Before the standing army debate had reached its climax in the autumn of 1698, Defoe became embroiled in what would be the first of several religious controversies of his age.1 One of the most important of these, and the focus of this chapter, was the debate over occasional conformity, the practice by which Protestant Dissenters from the established Church of England occasionally took Anglican communion in order to qualify legally for public office while normally worshipping in a Dissenting congregation. Scholarship has tended to focus on Defoe’s most infamous contribution to the debate, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), his use or misuse of irony in the pamphlet, and the unfortunate consequences its publication had for his personal life and public reputation, rather than on the entire debate and the light it sheds upon his political, historical, and religious understanding. As we have seen in Chapter 1, Defoe’s interest in the widely respected campaign for a reformation of manners and his contempt for Socinianism were established components of his previous writings. Now added to these was his passionate, if complex, stance against both the practice of occasional conformity and legislative attempts to criminalize it as Occasional Conformity Bills were introduced, and failed, in the parliamentary sessions of 1702–3, 1703–4, and 1704–5. His position not only complicated his standing among his fellow Dissenters but made him the chief target for resurgent High Churchmanship during the first years of Queen Anne’s reign. The consequences of these engagements turned Defoe into a full-time polemicist who would be drawn into successive religious disputes for the rest of his life. This role proved to be much more dangerous than he had expected as the Shortest Way landed him in prison and pillory in 1703. His release in November by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Robert Harley, who saw in Defoe a potentially valuable agent, began his career as a government writer. One of his first tasks in this new role was the establishment of a weekly serialized essay to promote and defend ministerial policies. Lax supervision 34



2

and Defoe’s own power as a writer, however, soon made the Review his own. It quickly expanded to a thrice-weekly publication lasting from 19 February 1704 to 11 June 1713 and became one of the most successful projects in early eighteenth-century journalism. Defoe assumed many personae in this expanding world of print culture. In an age of partisanship, for Mr. Review to maintain the position of a moderate man, independent of party, was difficult enough; for an avowed Presbyterian, it proved impossible. Conventional opinion associated Dissent with Whig principles. To High Churchmen these principles meant rebellion, republicanism, and regicide. Defoe, the champion of Trinitarian Dissent, would become branded as Defoe, the Lockeian rebel, and by later ages as Defoe, the Lockeian liberal. The intention in this chapter is to free him from these retrospective distortions. Perhaps his most important assignment as a ministerial employee involved the collection of intelligence and dissemination of propaganda to garner support, especially that of his fellow Presbyterians, for the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1706–7 (the subject of Chapter 4). Defoe returned to London from this Scottish mission full of optimism about the harmonious coexistence of denominations in the new Britain. His euphoria quickly evaporated when the Sacheverell affair of 1709–10 shattered the prospect of Christian charity in an Erastian polity.2 If Defoe was alarmed that the trial of Dr Sacheverell in 1710 posed a threat from High Churchmanship, the Bangorian controversy of 1717–19 soon supplied another if less dramatic challenge to Defoe’s middle ground from the opposite wing of extreme Low Church and perhaps heterodox Anglicanism. Although Defoe’s ecclesiological position overlapped somewhat with the Bishop of Bangor’s, he had always resented Benjamin Hoadly’s pressure on Dissenters to conform, and could blame the bishop’s controversial sermon of 17093 for robbing Dissenters of the prospect of increased toleration after the Hanoverian accession. Throughout these controversies, Defoe’s position was principled, staunchly Trinitarian, Erastian in its acceptance of an established Church, but vociferous in its defence of religious toleration as guaranteed by the 1689 Act of Toleration. For reasons important but different from those of the Church of England, Defoe held that toleration was not to be extended to anti-Trinitarians. Nevertheless, his search for the peaceful coexistence of denominations paralleled his view that the material variety found in the world was providentially designed to encourage exchange and improvement. At the same time, Defoe abhorred the use of religious oaths for secular purposes, a requirement which he believed encouraged instability in politics, identities, and the meaning of words – the necessary components for practical cooperation and exchange. Defoe’s religious commitments, like his Baconian outlook, welcomed a plurality in the coexistence of things as long as each thing was univocal in meaning.



Dissent and the Church of England, 1697–1705 35

36 Daniel Defoe

On two successive Sundays, 31 October and 7 November of 1697, the new Lord Mayor of London, Sir Humphrey Edwin, a Dissenter, ostentatiously took communion at St Paul’s Cathedral in the morning before attending his usual meeting-house service in the afternoon. This practice, known as occasional conformity, was open to different interpretations. Prior to 1688 it was often adopted by Dissenters hoping for an eventual comprehension within the established Church.4 After 1689, although some of the irenic motivation remained, the practice became more controversial since it was thought Nonconformists were merely seeking to qualify themselves for public office under the terms of the 1689 Act which granted religious toleration to Trinitarian Dissenters. Edwin’s public performance was not widely seen as controversial until Defoe published a pamphlet with a preface to the Lord Mayor entitled An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters. According to legend, Defoe nailed a copy of his text to the door of St Paul’s in emulation of Martin Luther’s apocryphal action of protest. Whether this legend is true or not, it captures the drama of Defoe’s intervention and made a principled controversy inescapable.5 In 1700 when another dissenter, Thomas Abney, also conformed in order to qualify himself for the office of Lord Mayor, Defoe republished his Enquiry, this time with a preface to John Howe, Abney’s pastor, engaging the prominent Dissenting divine, and by extension the Dissenting community, in a moral debate.6 Later tracts and Review articles defending his co-religionists against the Church of England consistently reiterated the arguments first pitched to his fellow Dissenters: that occasional conformity was sinful in nature and harmful to the cause of Nonconformity in general. The decision to separate from the established Church, Defoe believed, was a grave one: ‘Schism from a True Establish’d Church of Christ is a great Sin; and if I can conform, I ought to conform.’7 However, he explained, if in ‘consulting his Bible and his Conscience’ a man were to discover ‘some Things in the Establish’d Way of Worship which do not seem to correspond with the Rule he has found out in the Scripture’ then dissent was justified; it was even incumbent upon him, as every Christian had an ‘Obligation … to seek the best Guides for his Soul’.8 According to Defoe, Scripture revealed that the Church of England, as it was presently established, could not be the ‘best Guide’: 1. On account of the Episcopal Hierarchy, Prelatical Ordination, and Super-intendancy. 2. On account of their imposing things owned to be indifferent [to salvation] as terms of Communion.



ii. Occasional conformity: the principled stance of an orthodox Dissenter


As a Presbyterian, Defoe accepted some measure of Church government but ‘the Episcopal Hierarchy’, he argued, needed ‘to be Reduc’d to such a Pitch of Authority, as may be justified by the Scripture, and to no other; and we are ready to enter into an Examination with them, what that Particular of Power amounts to and how far it extends’.10 That examination had been undertaken at various times since the Reformation without success, though, in several tracts, Defoe expressed his own preference for ‘Arch-bishop Usher’s Model’ for a synodical scheme.11 In the imposition of things indifferent, Defoe listed a number of practices which he considered optional, including the use of a fixed liturgy, the surplice, the cross and rules regarding kneeling and bowing.12 In these and in his acceptance of ‘all the Fundamentals of Doctrine, and … 36 of … 39 Articles of Faith’, Defoe’s ecclesiology represented what had been the Presbyterian mainstream.13 I ‘heartily wish I could conform wholly to the Church’, Defoe conceded; but he did not ‘divide in Communion for Trifles’, which was the perfidy of occasional conformity.14 Nor could Defoe see an escape for the occasional conformist from this charge: he who Dissents from the Establish’d Church, except from a True Principle of Conscience, is guilty of a great Sin. … he who Conforms to the Establish’d Church against his Conscience, is guilty of a great Sin. … he who both Dissents and Conforms at the same time and in the same Point of Religion, must be guilty of one of these great Sins. … he who has committed either of these Sins, ought not to be receiv’d again on either side on any other Terms than as a Penitent.15 ‘If I occasionally conform’, he argued, ‘by Conforming I deny my Dissent being lawful, or by my Dissenting I damn my Conforming as sinful.’ Those who dissented or conformed for any other reason than ‘a real principle of Conscience’ were merely being ‘Politic’, concerned with ‘Publick Advancements, and Glittering Gawdy Honours of the Age’, a far cry from their ‘Zealous, Conscientious, and Constant’ peers who suffered ‘Reproaches and inconveniences … nay, Persecution and loss of Estates and Liberty for the Cause’. To those who defended their actions by pleading a desire to serve their country and protect their liberties, he retorted, ‘these are Patriots indeed, that will damn their Souls to save their Country’.16 Though agreeing with the principle that ‘the Compass and Extent of Humane Laws do not reach to bind … in Matters of Conscience’, no conscience was compromised ‘if no Preferments [were] sought, no Honours accepted’.17 Qualifying for public office meant taking the sacrament for civil purposes, an action Defoe described as ‘playing Bo-peep with God Almighty’.18



3. On account of their imposing things own’d to be otherwise indifferent, as made necessary by the Command of the Civil Magistrate.9

There were other reasons to be concerned. Occasional conformists not only jeopardized their own souls but the cause of Nonconformity itself. Contrary to Anglican fears, the overall number of Dissenters probably declined in the early eighteenth century. This was certainly true of Defoe’s own sect, the English Presbyterians, who since the Restoration had continued to divide over a number of ecclesiological issues.19 Defoe worried that occasional conformity made permanent conformity more likely or at the very least prepared ‘Posterity to Conform totally, to what their Fathers Conform’d to Occasionally’.20 Not only did the practice arouse Anglican ire, but the ‘Coveting [of] Offices’ which motivated it brought ‘Dishonour and Shame’ upon the community as a whole.21 Dissenters, he warned, could not continue to claim the moral high ground if occasional conformists escaped the internal censure which he had hoped important Dissenters like John Howe might provide. Howe was to disappoint him as were other Dissenting ministers like James Owen who tried to mollify objections to occasional conformity by de-emphasizing the differences between Dissenters and churchmen.22 This tactic was a dangerous one, Defoe maintained, because by lessening the ‘Reasons for a Schismatical Separation’, Owen lessened the basis for dissenting in the first place.23 They were ‘bound to justifie their Separation’ from the Church of England, or else ‘their whole Constitution falls to the Ground’. This justification rested solely upon conscience and ‘Purity of Worship’, and Dissenters could ill afford to have these claims sullied by less than virtuous men or by their less than vigilant ministers.24 Defoe was not unique in his condemnation of occasional conformity as a sin and a peril to the cause of Dissent but a crucial component of his protest has escaped scholarly analysis. The contradictions involved in this practice threatened Defoe’s sense of epistemological stability. From the outset of the controversy in 1697, these contradictions were vividly captured in the series of images and analogies he employed in order to articulate his anxiety: But there is a sort of Truth, which all Men owe to the Principles they profess, and generally speaking, all men pay it; a Turk is a Turk zealously and entirely; an Idolater is an Idolater, and will serve the Devil to a Tittle: None but Protestants halt between God and Baal; Christians of an Amphibious Nature, who have such preposterous Consciences, as can believe one way of Worship to be right, and yet serve God another way themselves? This is a strange thing in Israel! All the Histories of Religion in the World do not shew such a Case: ’Tis like a Ship with her Sails hal’d some back and some full: ’Tis like a Workman that Builds with one Hand, and pulls down with t’other: ’Tis like a Fisherman, who catches Fish with one Hand, and throws them into the Sea with another: ’Tis like every thing which signifies nothing.25



38 Daniel Defoe

Defoe’s objections went deeper because the practice of occasional conformity was not only morally compromising but destructive of meaning itself. The same preoccupation with the problem of non-signification is seen in An Essay upon Projects published in 1697, the same year as An Enquiry. In the Essay, it will be recalled, he described projects as ‘Abortions of the Brain’, which intimate the substantive but ‘come into the air, and dissolve’, projecting and stock-jobbing as selling ‘Shares in a New-Nothing’. His Baconian Academy of Learning was proposed, in part, to prevent the ‘Signification of Words’ from being turned into ‘Nonsense’.26 Defoe’s personal links with the Baconian tradition through his Dissenting Academy tutor, Charles Morton, his esteem for the new science, and his conscious efforts to achieve a ‘plain style’ in his own writings are well established.27 His discomfort with the nonsensical nature of occasional conformity, like his complaints about the ‘Age of Projecting’, reflected the ‘general mistrust of language in circles connected with the new philosophy’,28 a distrust shared by many seventeenth-century Puritans. In seeking to ameliorate the depravity of natural man and to understand the mysteries of the natural world, Puritan reformers and the new scientists aspired to a purity of expression. It therefore should not surprise us to find Defoe expressing his economic, political, cultural, and religious concerns in linguistic terms. This sensitivity to the relationship between word and meaning appears in Defoe’s participation in subsequent religious controversies as well. Rather than get ahead of the story at this point, however, we need to go back in time to the Restoration and the roots of occasional conformity. The failure to find a mutually agreeable formula for comprehension in the early 1660s made the breach between English Presbyterians and Anglicans a permanent one. It was also to cause a rift in the Presbyterian fold as well. As the restored Anglican hierarchy began imposing increasingly restrictive laws upon Nonconformists in an attempt to eliminate separatism altogether, Presbyterians, at first united in their hopes for reacceptance and reform within the established Church, fell into more or less pessimistic camps about the prospect of reconciliation in the future. When the Five Mile Act of 1665 demanded yet another oath of loyalty from Dissenting ministers, the older, more well-connected ones (who were probably more optimistic about eventual comprehension) complied while many of their younger, less established associates refused. The two groups became known as the ‘Dons’, for their supposedly supercilious nature, and the ‘Ducklings’, for their willingness to venture further on schism’s chilly waters.29 The ‘most prominent’ of the so-called Ducklings was Samuel Annesley, a man with a reputation for great piety and courage; he was also the Foe family’s beloved pastor and died in 1696, the year before Defoe’s An Enquiry was first published.30 Several leaders emerged from the Dons’ party, most notably Richard Baxter and John Howe, the ‘Mr How’ Defoe addressed in the preface to the republished An Enquiry and in A Letter to




Mr How in 1701. Whether optimism or a lack of it encouraged further differences of opinion is hard to say, but the Dons and Ducklings diverged on other matters as well. The Dons eventually came to be known as ‘Reconcilers’ or ‘Comprehensionists’: they were increasingly Arminian in doctrine, rationalist in their approach to questions of theology, and tolerant of diverse, even heterodox opinion within the fold. They more readily accepted occasional conformity as a sign of tolerance and as a means of rapprochement with the Church. Although never achieving the comprehension for which they so ardently hoped, the immediate future of Presbyterianism was theirs: in the Salters’ Hall controversy of 1719, their party held the majority though Presbyterianism in England eventually lost definition as a distinct sect with the growth of what has come to be known as ‘rational Dissent’.31 The Ducklings became known as ‘Tolerationists’. By comparison, they remained more Calvinist in doctrine; eschewed reason as inferior to faith in religious matters; and took a more militant stance against heterodoxy. To the strict Tolerationist, occasional conformity was backsliding. Before returning to Defoe’s views, there is one more important fact to consider: Dissenting academies often reflected these divisions. Independents (or Congregationalists) and, it seems, young Ducklings were inclined to attend Charles Morton’s Academy at Newington Green where the curriculum was heavily influenced by John Wilkins’ views on language.32 Something of the flavour of the socio-economic tension between the Dons and Ducklings can be detected in Defoe’s skirmish with Howe. Defoe’s first address to Howe in the Preface to An Enquiry of 1701 was a deferential supplication for the prominent divine to exercise his influence over those ‘who wear the Gay Cloathes, and the Gold Ring’ in order to curb the ‘Stumbling’ emulation of the ‘weak and irresolute [who] are led aside by the Eminency and Frequency’ of occasional conformity among their superiors. Howe’s response was non-committal and reproachful, referring to Defoe as a ‘poor prefacer’, of levelling principles, and the ‘stingy, narrow Spirit’ of the ‘Primitive English Puritans’.33 In his rebuttal, Defoe repeated his entreaty that Howe state his position and take action; his deference this time was laced with wounded sarcasm, but A Letter to Mr How rose above the level of petty bickering as Defoe’s arguments converged upon a central point of theological and epistemological dispute. Howe had argued, reasonably enough, that he personally demurred from the dubious task of judging the motivations and consciences of others; that circumstances surrounding the practice were varied; and that the differences between Dissenters and Anglicans were so small that occasional communion could do no harm. Being reasonable, however, was precisely what was wrong with Howe’s approach and his equivocation regarding the sinful nature of occasional conformity exasperated Defoe who declared that Howe’s tract



40 Daniel Defoe

requires not that I shou’d Reply to the Argument; for I see none, but that drawing back the Curtain which you have spread over the Subject, I shou’d set it in a True Light, that all men may judge by their own Consciences, and the Scripture-Rule, and take care they be not distinguish’d out of their Reason and Religion by the Cunning Artifice of Words.34 Human beings should possess both ‘Reason and Religion’ but the former was insufficient and inappropriate when applied to the latter. Presbyterians of Howe’s and Richard Baxter’s ilk accepted reason as an important component of religion, a position compatible with that of Anglicans like John Tillotson (1630–94) and other rationalists or latitudinarians whose theology had been shaped by the influence of the Cambridge Platonists.35 Defoe’s position was, on one level, a Calvinist one: although God gave human beings the capacity to reason, it was negligible in the face of his awesome power and useless in their salvation which was determined by grace alone. Arminian theology allowed the free will and rational nature of human beings a wider role in this process. If carried to its logical extreme, however, religious rationalism led to Socinianism and while Arminian Presbyterians sought to maintain Baxter’s ‘Middle Way’ along this rationalist continuum, it became increasingly hard to do so.36 Reason, which Defoe celebrated in conjunction with all worldly endeavours, had no bearing, he believed, on religious matters. This was not solely a theological preference but was reinforced by the Baconian agenda which had sought sharply to separate the natural and supernatural worlds. The natural world was accessible to reason, the Godhead to faith alone. Limiting the mind to sensory perception and the realm of the empirical was also a way of closing it off from dangerous speculation and heterodoxy. Howe had thought the issue of religious ceremonies too abstruse for the common reader, to which Defoe sharply responded: Indeed, Sir, I believe as you say, that taking which side you will, you may puzzle the most of plain people, who are but of ordinary Understandings in the Controversie about Ceremonies: And give me leave to add, That such is the Subtilty and Nicety of Sophistical Reasonings, that Men may almost Distinguish themselves in, and out of any Opinion, and some People, who are Masters of the Art of Nice Arguing, too often lose both Themselves and their Religion in the Labyrinths of Words: School Divinity and Practical Christianity are Two things, and seldom understood by the same Heads.37 This elasticity of language and religious rationalism, thought Defoe, endangered religion for everyone, whether they be plain person or eminent divine.




42 Daniel Defoe

With this history of Presbyterian disputation in mind it should no longer be possible to find it ‘ironic’ that a Dissenter should have ignited the eighteenthcentury melee over occasional conformity, though Defoe’s action in 1697 may be considered ‘transitional in the sense that it was the last major attack on occasional conformity by a Dissenter’.38 The practice only became a live issue for High Churchmen after 1702 with the accession of Queen Anne and the subsequent rejuvenation of the Tory party which gave them the political strength to do something about it. Tory efforts to enact a Bill outlawing the practice of occasional conformity provided ‘the central political issue of 1702–04’.39 In these changed political circumstances, many Dissenters heeded the prosaic wisdom about airing family linen and refrained from engaging in any internecine debate. To their consternation and his own, Defoe now saw his arguments being parroted in the High Church press.40 Thus he found himself in the intricate and wearisome predicament of simultaneously having to denounce both the practice of occasional conformity and a series of legislative attempts designed to stop it. The real irony of the whole controversy was not that it was sparked by Defoe, the Dissenter, but that Defoe, the inheritor of a dual mistrust in the ambiguities and instabilities of language, chose in December 1702, as part of his polemic campaign, to impersonate, in print, a rabid supporter of the Bill to prevent occasional conformity. His intention was to vilify the Bill without condoning the practice; his methods were irony and satire – rhetorical techniques inherently inverting and subverting of the face-value of words. The pamphlet, entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, public reaction to it, and the maelstrom it was to make of Defoe’s life and career comprise a familiar episode in Grub Street history, but a brief outline will satisfy present purposes. Presented as a tract written in support of the established Church, The Shortest Way championed the Occasional Conformity Bill but with such vitriolic hyperbole that it became a manifesto for the wholesale eradication of Dissent and even of Dissenters themselves. Contemporaries of every stripe, including Defoe in his subsequent explanations of his actions, recorded that the pamphlet initially caused an uproar as many people took it literally. As they came to realize the hoax, those who had been duped, from coffee-houses to Whitehall, became enraged. Political and judicial wheels were set in motion: the pamphlet was burned on the orders of the House of Commons and its author was charged with seditious libel. After five months of hide and seek, Defoe was captured. Five more months in Newgate prison were punctuated by court appearances and three days in the pillory until Robert Harley, Speaker of the House and one of the first politicians to appreciate the potential power of the press, secured Defoe’s release and, thereby, the services of a first-rate propagandist and the abject loyalty of a man rescued from desperate circumstances.41



iii. Occasional conformists and the instability of language

Fortune had intervened but not before Defoe’s fledgling fame as a populist versifier and pamphleteer was reduced to that of a notorious troublemaker. Given that this was an age when a writer perceived to have gone too far risked a sentence of prison, pillory, corporal punishment, even all three, or being the victim of mob or gang violence, and given his ingrained apprehension of the volatility of words, why did Defoe depart from the more straightforward approach of his earlier pamphlets?42 First, because of the double game Defoe had to play against both occasional conformity and Tory bigotry, irony and satire may have been the most pliable literary devices for castigating supporters of the punitive legislation and mildly reproving his wayward Dissenting brethren at the same time. Secondly, Backscheider surmises that the success Defoe enjoyed from his contributions to the paper war of 1701 and especially from his best-selling poem, The True-Born Englishman, of that same year ‘gave him too high an opinion of himself’.43 The most important factor, however, was the year-long crescendo of High Church and Tory invective and the momentum it gave to the first Occasional Conformity Bill which easily passed the House of Commons in November and was due for its first reading in the House of Lords on 2 December 1702, the day after Defoe published The Shortest Way. That crescendo began in the first months of 1702, a year which opened with discussion of an Occasional Conformity Bill in Convocation, but it was not until after the untimely death of William III in March and Queen Anne’s speech in May that the High Church smelled blood. The Queen’s announced partiality for those with the ‘truest zeal’ for the Church of England uncorked a resentment toward Nonconformists, latitudinarians, and Whigs which had been building since the Revolution.44 Only days after the Queen’s speech, Henry Sacheverell, whom Defoe dubbed ‘the Oxford Firebrand’ and ‘Generalissimo of the Oxford Squadron’, preached and published his infamous sermon, The Political Union, in which he called upon the zealous to ‘Hang out the Bloody Flag, and Banner of Defiance’ against occasional conformists, against ‘These Shuffling, Treacherous Latitudinarians’, against the ‘Ignorant, Mean, and Unworthy Ministry, that would Betray Their Own Church’, and against Dissenters, guilty of having joined with ‘Papists … Both in their Arms and Counsels, as well to Extirpate Our Government, as to Subvert our Church’.45 While Sacheverell could inflame the passions of those in box pews as well as the galleries, the former were just as likely to have their opinions honed by a number of other pamphleteers who made the Church’s case. A number of influential tracts captured public attention throughout that election summer and as the new Parliament convened in the autumn, were to sound the ‘church in danger’ bell in successive editions. The most important of these appeared in November, two anonymously published tracts, The Establishment of the Church, the Preservation of the State and The Poetical Observator, together with Charles Leslie’s The New Association, which set out to paint in vivid hues




what many churchmen had imagined in dim contour: the existence of a conspiracy between moderate churchmen and Whigs to overthrow the established Church and the government.46 Preoccupied earlier in the year with debt problems, Defoe, in a rearguard action, hurried two pamphlets into press which defended the great body of Nonconformists from charges of fanaticism and hypocrisy and denounced the Bill against occasional conformity.47 The Shortest Way was hatched in the realization that these tracts were too little, too late. In the first of many accounts of his actions, Defoe wrote: The Sermon Preach’d at Oxford, the New Association, the Poetical Observator, with numberless others; have said the same thing, in terms very little darker, and this Book stands fair to let those Gentlemen know, that what they design can no farther take with Mankind, that as their real meaning stands disguis’d by the Artifice of words; but that when the Persecution and Destruction of the Dissenters, the very thing they drive at, is put into plain English, the whole Nation will … Condemn … [them].48 This was explaining away irony with irony for the ‘Artifice of Words’ had taken the shortest way with Defoe and not his adversaries. If the strategy of exposing High Church intolerance through satire had failed him, there were other ways for Defoe to play his double game. The turbulent history of the Stuart dynasty had generated a series of allegiance controversies making the question of oaths a central feature of the period’s political life and debate.49 Dissenters’ views about oaths, from the most moderate Presbyterians to Quakers on the tolerable fringe, ranged from regarding them as mildly distasteful to entirely detestable.50 Even if oathtaking was permissible to most, almost all Dissenters found perjury and profanity especially offensive.51 Defoe acknowledged the general practice of oath-taking to be scripturally sound, remarking, ‘’Tis true, an oath, which is a calling to God to witness is an Action both Civil and Religious, but still that was appointed and instituted to that end, as expressly notes, Heb[rews].’ It was perfectly legitimate, for example, to swear an oath in church for religious purposes or an oath in court for secular ones. Kneeling was another action designed to be either civil or sacred, as one might kneel before a king or before God. ‘Some religious actions’, however, were ‘so entirely’ religious, Defoe believed, ‘that they cannot without a horrid invasion of the Sovereignty of the Institutor be appropriated to any other use; and such are in especial manner, the Two Sacraments instituted by Christ.’52 Thus, Defoe condemned those Dissenters who ‘deserted … [their brethren] upon the occasion of Preferment, and have made the Sacred Institutions of Christ Jesus, become Pimps to their Secular Interest’.53 The question of sacred oaths, however, could also be used to criticize the authority which instituted them for civil purposes in the first place. By



44 Daniel Defoe

making Anglican communion ‘a Term of Qualification for Civil Imployment’, Defoe argued, Church and crown were ‘levelling the Sacred to the Civil, and making the Holy Ordinances and Institutions of Christ Jesus, Attendants to Politick Projects, Pages to Secular Interests, and Accidents to Matters of Government’. Not only was he unable to ‘conceive that … the Solemn Ordinances of God’s Worship … [could] be made Civil Actions by any End, Design, Will, or Intention of Man whatsoever’, but why attempt to impose such a thing, he asked, if it was so obviously detrimental to the ‘Publick Peace … and Prosperity’ of the kingdom?54 Sacraments represented ‘the most Sacred of Oaths’ and ‘are things appropriated by the Divine Institution of God himself, as things which have no other Signification or Import but what is Divine’.55 Again, one sees Defoe insisting upon a sharp divide between the natural and supernatural worlds lest ‘signification’ become corrupted. Defoe’s solemnity regarding oaths also explains his attitude towards Nonjurors and Jacobites. It was possible to regard the former as the most implacable enemies to the revolution settlement and yet, throughout Defoe’s works, Non-jurors were granted a modicum of respect whereas juring Jacobites, whose loyalty to the Stuarts may have been far more lukewarm, received his greatest scorn. In a pamphlet of 1701, examining the repercussions of James II’s recent death, Defoe extended ‘a kind Invitation’ to Non-jurors to return to the fold and he went so far as to acknowledge the suspicions and hardships they had endured for conscience’s sake. Throughout the Review, Defoe adhered to ‘the Opinion, That a Non-Juror, a Profess’d Jacobite, is by far a better Man than he that Swears to the [present] Government, and yet Declares and Acts for the former’.56 Even Papists ‘act[ing] in Conformity to the Principles they profess’ were less objectionable than the Jacobites, ‘Men of Treason and Falsehood … Danger and Delusion’ who deserved no better than Newgate or the gallows.57 If Defoe’s attitude towards occasional conformists and ‘Jurant-Jacobites’ reflected a symptomatic Puritan disdain for trivializing oaths, it also betrayed his aversion to the obfuscation of categories. The phenomenon of Dissent, whether from Church or state, was tolerable if it was open and clear-cut. Bacon’s experimental philosophy called for precision in the classification of the natural world, in the construction of categories, and in the assignment of words to things. This mandate was extended by men like Bishop Wilkins in his desire to construct a philosophical language, a project which he believed ‘could settle religious and political controversies by eliminating linguistic misunderstandings and errors’. 58 Two patterns in Defoe’s vocabulary demonstrate a kind of nominative reluctance on his part to allow impure examples bearing the name of a particular phenomenon to stand without further clarification. The first was his penchant for assigning compound titles to such cases. Occasional conformists were not ‘Dissenters’ but ‘State Dissenters’ or ‘Politick Dissenters’.59 Though the word




‘Jacobite’ is used throughout the Defoe corpus, he often coupled the term with prefixes such as ‘Jurant’ or ‘Conforming’ to emphasize malevolence.60 In his verse satire, Reformation of Manners, he labelled corrupt Justices of the Peace ‘Justice-Merchants’; and in the eponymous novel, Moll Flanders’ profligate, albeit attractive, second husband was branded a ‘GentlemanTradesman’, a hybrid role difficult to achieve and maintain.61 A second feature in Defoe’s lexicon was his use of the words ‘amphibious’ and ‘ambo-dexter’ as disparaging terms. In modern usage, these terms connote adaptability or versatility; Defoe used them to denote ambiguity, duplicity, or corruption. He did so frequently, referring, for example, to occasional conformists as ‘Ambo-Dexters in Religion’ and its practice as ‘this Scandalous Ambo-dexter Conformity’.62 Defoe’s sensitivity to consistency and uniformity within a single concept may be one reason why he was able to satirize the notion of the ‘True-Born Englishman’ with such success; the opening and closing lines of the following verse from the poem illustrate his characteristic use of these two sets of distinctions: From this Amphibious Ill-born Mob began That vain ill natur’d thing, an Englishman. The Customs, Sirnames, Languages, and Manners, Of all these Nations are their own Explainers … Whose Relicks are so lasting and so strong, They ha’ left a Shiboleth upon our Tongue; By which with easie search you may distinguish Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.63 Using these rhetorical strategies, Defoe communicated to churchmen and occasional conformists alike that the latter did not merit, without considerable qualification, the title of ‘Dissenter’.

iv. Denominational competition: Defoe’s novel rationale for religious pluralism The concept of Dissent in general necessarily implies something to which one cannot in good faith conform. Since 1660, the year Defoe was born, that something had been the restored Anglican establishment. Extending their belief in the central role played by the Church in the ‘spiritual wellbeing of the community’, Presbyterians presumed that the spiritual wellbeing of the nation depended upon the existence of a national Church.64 They had waged a long but unsuccessful campaign to be part of that national establishment, splitting their ranks in the process. Though raised in that camp which acquiesced more easily in its division from the Church, Defoe, like many ‘tolerationists’, never quite abandoned the communitarian ideal which a national Church embodied. The Toleration Act of 1689



46 Daniel Defoe

had secured all that tolerationist Presbyterians had asked for: freedom of conscience to worship as they saw fit beside an Anglican regime. Defoe saw advantages in maintaining the Anglican establishment, despite his objections to the Corporation and Test Acts which politically handicapped his co-religionists. Without ever seeking disestablishment, he underscored those objections during moments when an extension of Church power beyond the bounds of toleration into persecution seemed imminent. Once a crisis was averted, he reasserted the Church’s position as a national institution and true Church of Christ, urging Nonconformists to advance their cause by godly example rather than political agitation. Despite these minor tactical variations, Defoe’s support of the Church’s status was ultimately principled, not provisional.65 Though his ideas were worked out in the context of the highly charged occasional conformity debate, it was faith in the providential nature and power of exchange and not journalistic expediency which led Defoe to make his distinctive case. He called for denominational competition as the path to religious truth, an appeal which in many aspects anticipated nineteenth-century liberalism’s defence of the free market of ideas as the means to intellectual progress. In the summer of 1703, imprisoned and racked by worry and selfrecrimination, Defoe could find solace in the fact that, in February, the House of Lords, albeit on a technicality, had quashed the passage of the Occasional Conformity Bill which he had fought in such foolhardy fashion. While in Newgate, he continued writing pamphlets in defence of Nonconformists. In July, he published The Shortest Way to Peace and Union, which featured a proposal, ‘compos’d some years ago’, to bring about ‘a Union of Affection, as should make us One People, with one Heart, and one Interest’ under an ‘untouch’d, unalter’d Constitution’.66 The proposal, Defoe attested, was premised upon a fair characterization of both Dissenters and churchmen by discounting the minority of extremists in each group, specifically, the few sectarians who espoused ‘Antimonarchical Principles’ and the ‘hot violent’ churchmen who wished Nonconformists ‘a worse Fate than [that of] the French Hugonots’.67 Its central supposition, ‘that ’tis the True Interest of the Dissenters in England, to be govern’d by a Church of England Magistracy’, he admitted, would not please his coreligionists; nor would ‘the first Reason’ he gave in its defence: ‘viz. That they are not qualified to be trusted with the Government of themselves’. Having exploded his bombshell, Defoe proceeded to make his case. He was quick to dismiss Tory shibboleths which proclaimed Dissenters to be congenitally rebellious kingkillers or the eternal sons of ’41. Nor was it a question of the form of government they would choose for love of the constitution, collective wisdom, and their own interests would oblige them to choose a monarchy. Divisiveness was the root of their problem: ‘The General body of the Dissenters are compos’d of Four sorts, and those Four so opposite in their Temper, Customs, Doctrine and Discipline, that I am of




opinion ’tis as probable all Four should Conform to the Church of England, as to one another.’68 Independents and Anabaptists would never tolerate Presbyterian government, Presbyterians would never countenance the reverse, all three would dismiss Quaker rule as an impossibility: each permutation resulted in a negative. Nor was any one sect strong enough to maintain power: In Case therefore of the Government being to be tendred to the Dissenters, they would never agree among themselves who should have it; and if any one Party obtain’d it without the consent of the Other, he would never be able to hold it; and the Nation would be expos’d to inevitable Confusions and Distractions.69 A third disqualifying factor, Defoe contended, was the Dissenters’ lack of a ‘Governing Temper’, especially the qualities of ‘Penetration and Generosity’, which he attributed to their temperament and socio-economic status; in general, they were not ‘Politicians’ or members of the ‘Gentry’.70 Most Dissenters, Defoe believed, already understood, at some level, the validity of these points; the more recalcitrant only needed reminding of the general satisfaction Nonconformists felt under the established Church during William’s reign. An open avowal, by the Dissenting community, that its interests were, in fact, best served under a tolerant Anglican regime would engender a ‘mutual Confidence’ essential to the core of Defoe’s proposal. The resulting decline in the party jealousies of occasional conformists and defensive churchmen would produce a Communion of Charity and Civility between the Parties; this would make way for a right Understanding; and tho’ there are differences in Religion, there need be none in Affection, in Society, in Neighbourhood; People may be good Neighbours, good Friends, and united in Interest, tho’ one goes to the Church, and ’tother to the Meeting-House; let the Strife be who lives Best, and the Contention of the Clergy who shall Preach Best, and by this make as many Parties and Factions as they please; let them Preach one anothers Hearers away, and Increase and Decrease according to the Genuine, Honest Lives and Doctrines of the Party, then the best Church will be the biggest Church; they who Preach Best, and Practice Best, will have the most of their side; and that Church which has the most of its side, will soon have the upper Hand, for Number always prevails.71 Here again, the contexts of trade, Baconian science, and politeness play an important role in illuminating Defoe’s complex attitudes towards the world which the exchange of goods and opinions was creating. Just as we improve ourselves by material trade, this passage suggests, so we can



48 Daniel Defoe

improve ecclesiastical institutions by a competitive exchange between churches. The assumption here, as it was in Defoe’s analysis of the scissile nature of Nonconformity, was that mutual agreement and competition would produce the best national Church, not an equality of disestablishment for all denominations. His argument, therefore, was not for a division of the ecclesiastical pie but the awarding of it to the most morally persuasive and numerically successful institution. The Church of England was welcome to retain its privileges if Dissenters could enjoy toleration and thereby be enabled to compete as religious bodies. At the outset of the occasional conformity debate, Defoe had argued that national churches ‘by attracting so many painted Hypocrites’ were often victims of their own success. In fact, he concluded, ‘the whole Ecclesiastical History, from the first century of the Christian Church, is full of Instances to confirm this, That the Prosperity of the Church of Christ has been more fatal to it, than all the Persecutions of its Enemies’.72 Competition might also keep a national Church from resting on its laurels. Defoe understood that the consequences of his proposal extended beyond the nature of ecclesiastical arrangements. Competition would encourage the morality of society in general as every individual, as a representative of his or her denomination, would be encouraged to demonstrate his or her probity. Rather than ‘pushing at Power, and making Interest by Parties about Religion’, politics would be left out of religious dispute so that ‘the Lives and Doctrines’ would be determinate and ‘they who have the best Principles, and live best up to them’ would prevail.73 Though Defoe’s sanguine picture of competition, especially one centred on religion, seems naive, he clearly believed that exchanges within a plurality of denominations would result in the emergence of religious truth, ‘a right Understanding’, and that the best church was that which satisfied the greatest number. Much of what Defoe had to say in The Shortest Way to Peace and Union was echoed by a later generation of Dissenters and by political theorists in the nineteenth century. Without constructing a genealogy of liberalism directly linking Defoe to Bentham and Mill, it is nevertheless possible to suggest an additional, or perhaps alternative, line of influence between the religious disputes of the early eighteenth century and liberal and democratic doctrines emerging a half-century later. It has often been argued by others that freedom of thought in England derived chiefly from an attempt in certain Dissenting circles to justify Freethinking, or from the assertion of Socinianism against Trinitarian Anglicanism. Defoe was a Trinitarian who, at every opportunity, vehemently denied the applicability of reason to matters of faith. Christologically and theologically, Defoe’s beliefs were diametrically opposed to the growing rationalist predisposition of future Dissenters like Joseph Priestley, whose ‘fundamental assumption [was] that Christianity is and ought to be capable of being “properly understood”’.74 What Priestley was to share with Defoe was a Baconian providen-




tialism and strikingly similar views both about Dissenters as a group and about the contribution of sectarian pluralism to the common good. Priestley argued that ‘a multiplicity of sects’ was ‘beneficial to the state’ and that ‘the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined’. ‘It was this passage’, according to Anthony Waterman, ‘that inspired Jeremy Bentham’.75 Given John Stuart Mill’s Benthamite education, it may be that his theory that truth was only achieved by the free exchange of a plurality of opinion has a Dissenting Baconian heritage. Less speculatively, it is almost certain that any connections between Defoe and modern liberalism are more likely to lie in this area of investigation than in those which seek to fit Defoe into a Lockeian liberal scheme. Why it is a misconception to explain Defoe as a Lockeian will be explored in more depth in Chapter 3.



50 Daniel Defoe

Jure Divino: Defoe, Locke and Milton, and Political Theory

i. ‘Arguing by my own Light, not other Mens’: how a Lockeian identity was attributed to Defoe Despite Defoe’s own denials and ample evidence to the contrary, both historians and literary critics maintain the position that Defoe’s political principles were ‘distinctly Lockeian’ and, in general, credit him with popularizing and ‘propagating the ideas in the Second Treatise’.1 It is easy to see why the works of these two authors might be linked. Defoe and Locke were two of the most famous writers of the late-Stuart age – though their fame as political writers, hypothetically isolated from their roles as philosopher and novelist, was probably enhanced by the exaggerated ideological link between them. Both Locke and Defoe served men who were arguably the two most important politicians of their respective ages, Shaftesbury and Harley; and both were said to have had prickly personalities and habits of secrecy. Locke, however, was a member of the gentry and mingled with the great; Defoe was a tradesman and journalist. Both men wrote extensively about economic matters though neither advocated the kind of possessive individualism or bourgeois capitalism attributed to them. 2 As staunch supporters of the Revolution of 1688, both men shared a set of basic political assumptions: the popular origins of sovereignty, the right to resist tyrants and the concomitant dissolution of government, the sanctity of property, the supremacy of the laws, and the constitutional superiority of a limited monarchy – but they were certainly not unique either in these beliefs or in their advocacy of them. They shared a Calvinist upbringing but while Locke was publicly Anglican and privately Socinian in his beliefs, Defoe was a vociferous Nonconformist and Trinitarian. Though it is the qualifications of these similarities which are important, not the similarities in themselves, the image of Defoe as Lockeian acolyte persists, perpetuating the conventionally exaggerated picture of Locke’s influence upon eighteenth-century discourse and obscuring the true content and context of Defoe’s political convictions. 51



3

In July 1706 Defoe published Jure Divino, the most complete statement of his political philosophy. The form of this text, a verse essay of heroic couplets in twelve books, sold by subscription for ten shillings and published in folio, certainly attests the project’s importance to its author.3 Begun in 1703 during his public and private crises over occasional conformity, imprisonment, and bankruptcy, the poem attacked the doctrines of divine-right kingship and passive obedience which were enjoying something of a renaissance in the press during the first years of Queen Anne’s reign. Jure Divino has been described by one scholar as a five-year project, ‘the literary effort of a lifetime’, and interpreted as a rendition of the Second Treatise in verse form.4 Defoe’s own remarks about its writing and publication actually suggest an eighteenmonth to two-year period of composition. Although it defended liberty, property, and the right of resistance, the work was informed by principles Locke rejected. Jure Divino was not an exercise in Lockeian or timeless liberal generalities but Defoe’s response to specific issues within particular polemical contexts, contexts whose theological dimensions have often been ignored. The first person to link Defoe’s political views with those of Locke was the Nonjuror Charles Leslie, one of the eighteenth century’s principal proponents of Filmerian politics and High Church doctrine and one of Defoe’s most able and abiding adversaries in print. It was a standard tactic of both Tories and Whigs to discredit their opponents’ ideas by imposing disreputable intellectual genealogies upon them; by accusing Defoe of propagating the ideas of Locke, Algernon Sidney, Milton, and others, Leslie was attempting to malign his Whig antagonist by placing Defoe in the notorious company of republicans, regicides, and enthusiasts. As Martyn Thompson has pointed out, however, this charge was to have unforeseen consequences for the Tory party. Over succeeding generations, Locke’s reputation as a dangerous political radical gave way to that of the great Enlightenment philosopher whom the Whigs were proud to claim as their own. The Tories, in essence, had been hoisted by their own Lockeian petard.5 For the most part, Defoe eschewed the tactics of ideological labels and pedigrees though he recognized their popularity and the problems they posed, especially for Dissenters: as this too much divided Nation has always been compos’d of two contending Parties, those Parties have been distinguish’d … by Names of contempt; and tho’ they have often chang’d them on either side, as Cavalier and Roundhead, Royalists and Rebels, Malignants and Phanaticks, Tories and Whigs, yet the division has always been barely the Church and the Dissenter, and there it continues to this Day.6 Blaming the divisiveness of English politics upon high-flying priests who sought to anathematize moderate churchmen and Dissenters, he singled out Sacheverell and Leslie as key culprits.7 Whether read from the pulpit or



52 Daniel Defoe

disseminated in print, Sacheverell’s sermons were histrionic and were easily attacked as such; Leslie’s pamphlets were bitingly effective in their capacity to put the supporters of Whig and Dissenting causes on the defensive. With the exception of the 1705 High Church tract, The Memorial of the Church of England, arguably ‘the most famous single pamphlet from 1702 to 1710’, a series of pamphlets by Leslie, and their successive editions, comprised a main force shaping the debate.8 In November 1702, in the midst of parliamentary consideration of the first Bill to prevent occasional conformity, Leslie published The New Association. It was this pamphlet which Defoe sought to satirize in his Shortest Way and which he singled out, two years later, as the chief agent behind the promotion of Occasional Conformity Bills, the politicization of the clergy, and the perversion of religion into ‘the Pimp of a Party’.9 In March 1703, as part of the High Church rally following the defeat of the first Occasional Conformity Bill, Leslie published The New Association. Part II. The many subtitles advertising its contents explicitly included Defoe among its targets.10 The pamphlet identified the new ‘Scotch-Covenanters’, English Dissenting academies, and Defoe’s pamphlets as agents of faction and sedition, intent upon destroying both episcopacy and monarchy, leaving ‘Imagination … our only Rule’ in religion and the licentious, vulgar multitude to rule the state.11 These charges were followed by several chapters on the theme ‘Forty One Remember’d’, and a Supplement containing ‘A full Answer to Mr. LOCK’s Two Treatises of Government’.12 Though James Owen’s Moderation a Vertue was his next prime target, Leslie’s The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing, published during parliamentary debate over the second Occasional Conformity Bill, railed against what he labelled a ‘Society of Writers … Propagat[ing] their Abhorr’d Principles of Schism and Rebellion’.13 The three writers he singled out, Owen, Davenant, and the ‘Notorious’ and ‘Undaunted’ Defoe,14 attacked each other as often as not but the image of a coordinated Whig campaign was an easy one for Leslie and his readers to adopt. More importantly, The Wolf Stript had directly coupled the cause of occasional conformity with that of popular sovereignty and Defoe’s name with Locke’s. Despite these efforts, the House of Lords threw out the second Occasional Conformity Bill and the cycle of propaganda between the Church and the Whigs began anew in 1704. Leslie published two more lengthy pamphlets on the same themes that June.15 In November the House of Commons attempted to pass a third Occasional Conformity Bill by tacking it to the supply Bill of that year. It too failed and the tacking strategy was strongly criticized by many, including Defoe. Individual pamphlets were not the only means by which Leslie defended the Church and divine-right monarchy. In March 1704, he launched his own weekly newsletter, The Rehearsal of the Review and Observator to combat the Whiggish viewpoints offered by Defoe and John Tutchin in their respective serials.16 Both Harley and Defoe had been visionary in understanding and innovative in encouraging the potential power of the press.



Defoe, Locke and Milton, and Political Theory 53

In the summer of 1704 and again in 1705, Harley dispatched Defoe to southwest England and to counties surrounding London to sound out public opinion and to explore ways to establish distribution networks by which to influence it.17 The two had been aware of the popularity which the Tory John Dyer’s manuscript newsletter had in the provinces but, much to his annoyance, Defoe discovered the extent of the Rehearsal’s influence as well. Mr. Review and Mr. Rehearsal became regular sparring partners. In November 1705, a spate of Reviews described the ways in which High Church propaganda was now being disseminated. Defoe identified the pulpit, the tongue or common discourse, and the press as the three tools of the High Church party. The ‘inferiour clergy’, Defoe opined, ‘meddle in the Pulpit with matters of State … Buffoon the Authority they swear to, and stir up all manner of Disrespect in the People against their Rulers’.18 Thanks to their sermons, ‘every Street, every Town, every Part of the Nation … abound with horrible Language’ and the ‘Mob sing Ballads and Lampoons against the Government’.19 Promoting government policy in provincial towns was proving impossible; ‘to argue with them’, Defoe carped, ‘is to talk Gospel to a Kettle Drum’.20 The true source of all this furore, Defoe believed, was Charles Leslie and the ‘Bundles of inveterate Rehearsals’ being ‘Hugg’d, Applauded, handed about, given for God sake, by our Gentlemen of the Inferiour Clergy’ while copies of his own Review were being stolen from coffee houses to prevent them from being read.21 Though London readers, ‘here at the center of National Knowledge’, were sophisticated enough to dismiss Leslie’s ‘Church in Danger’ rhetoric, Defoe lamented its recent success in the countryside.22 The most significant direct exchange between Mr. Review and Mr. Rehearsal occurred in the summer of 1706, an exchange about which scholars have mistakenly failed to take Defoe at his word. After months of delay in publication and what Defoe described as ‘open War with the Booksellers’ over subscriptions, Jure Divino finally appeared in print in July.23 It was an ambitious work: the philosophical verse essay was a more traditional and elevated genre than Defoe’s usual journalistic modes and one which he hoped might neutralize High Church attacks and perhaps establish his reputation as a serious writer.24 Leslie, however, was doing his best to establish Defoe as the new champion of Locke, Sidney, and Milton. That same month, an exasperated Defoe notified his Review readers that although he had exposed the ‘inconsistent Nonsense’ of Leslie’s ‘Jure Divino Principles, in the Book bearing that Title’, his incessant ‘railing Accusations … Bullying and Sophistry’ compelled him to again address a series of questions posed by Mr. Rehearsal about ‘the Subject of Government, its Divine Original, Right, and Descent’.25 In a number of issues that summer, Defoe denied the validity of divine right, hereditary monarchy and passive obedience, and defended the rights of property and resistance to tyrants. These ideas, of course, were not original to Locke or Defoe but were part of England’s sev-



54 Daniel Defoe

enteenth-century political lexicon. In fact, the three most innovative aspects of the Second Treatise – the individual’s power to execute justice in the state of nature, which Locke had called his ‘Strange Doctrine’ in order to emphasize its originality,26 the labour theory of value, and the role of the invention of money in creating the conditions for civil society – are the only ideas we can identify as distinctly Lockeian: none of them, as will be shown, appeared here or in any of Defoe’s works, including his so-called ‘Lockeian’ Jure Divino. Defoe also sought to correct, once and for all, the attributions Leslie had foisted upon him and to assert his own intellectual independence: ‘I know, what Mr. Lock, Sidney and others have said … and I must confess, I never thought their Systems fully answer’d – But I am arguing by my own Light, not other Mens; and therefore my Notions may be new, yet I beg the Favour to be heard’. Where Locke denied ‘innate ideas’ and credited mankind in a state of nature with a genuine choice whether or not to enter into civil society (so making civil society an artificial, purely human, construct), Defoe was explicit that government had a ‘Divine Original’: Government is an Appendix of Nature, one of the first rational Dictates to Man from his Understanding; ’tis form’d in the Soul, and therefore of Divine Original; he would cease to be rational, when he ceased to live regularly; and if twenty Men born in the dark, and that had never known Men or things, were set on Shore in an Island, where they had no body to imitate, and nothing to do but to live; the first thing they would apply to by the Light of Nature after Food, would be to settle Government among them.27 He was not defining the settlement of government as a right, nor a consequence solely derived from property, nor a development arising from the necessity to regulate social interaction in a world complicated by the invention of money; it was a rational instinct placed in the human soul by God. It is this conception of government as a ‘rational Dictate’, of divine origin, a dictate ‘founded in Nature and Reason, Principles in Man immediately infused by his Maker with his Life’, one ‘as natural as their Apetites [sic] to eat and drink’ that animated Defoe’s Jure Divino.28 Many of the so-called similarities between Jure Divino and the Two Treatises consist in reality of words and phrases which any two political tracts of the period might share. Great importance, for example, has been attached to the fact that both works support the notions of ‘Faith in Reason’, ‘consent of the governed’, the ‘binding nature of laws on monarchs’, and the dissolution of government under tyranny, 29 but these concepts were hardly exclusive to the Two Treatises. Jure Divino was also heavily annotated with footnotes citing various authors and offering additional commentary on their contributions or particular verses in the text. Grotius,




Pufendorf, Milton, Tyrrell, and Sidney were the names most frequently and favourably mentioned; Defoe referred to Locke only once, without comment and in the company of Sidney and Harrington. It was Paradise Lost and not the Two Treatises which provided Defoe with the starting point for his discussion of the origins of government. Both the preface and contents of Jure Divino establish that the work was primarily premised not upon the theoretical state of nature per se but upon the conditions of original sin and redemption. In one footnote Defoe acknowledged his debt to Milton, stating ‘I cannot do too much Honour to the Memory of so Masterly a Genius’ whose poem ‘forms to me the best Ideas of the Matter of Original Crime, of any Thing put into Words in our Language’ (IV, p. 14).30 The Two Treatises were published in defence of the Revolution, but it is now established that Locke wrote them earlier with another purpose in mind. Although Jure Divino can also be said to defend the Revolution, Defoe made several statements in the poem’s preface indicating that it too was originally conceived for a different purpose, a purpose which Locke’s antiTrinitarian and epistemological views would never have permitted him, as a Socinian empiricist, to countenance.

ii. ‘Tyrant SIN’: the real philosophical foundation of Jure Divino Although scholars have wrongly interpreted Jure Divino as a fundamentally Lockeian text, they have rightly recognized it as the fullest statement of his political philosophy. The text also provides us with the clearest testament of Defoe’s most fundamental religious principles. Its Preface reveals challenges to the cause of orthodox Dissent were coming from all sides, not just from resurgent High Churchmanship. In acknowledging the Church of England’s disavowal of religious persecution, Defoe wished to stress that the toleration now enjoyed by his co-religionists did not depend upon the ‘meer Grace and Bounty of the Church’. Nor did it stem from the kind of ‘precarious illegal Liberty’ offered them by King James, founded upon the ‘Dispensing Power’. It was the result of an agreement or treaty made between Dissenters and churchmen, supported and guaranteed by William ‘upon his coming over’, and ‘settled by Act of Parliament’. Defoe expressed his frustration that although toleration was now an established ‘Civil Right’, many people still viewed it as a gift or privilege which the Dissenters must perpetually prove themselves worthy of receiving. On the one hand, mainstream Anglicans continued to expect obeisance, and on the other, more controversial Christian thinkers like William Stephens and John Toland were pressing orthodox Dissenters to agitate for ‘Universal Toleration’ because in factiously denying toleration to others, they were not worthy of it themselves.31 While the High Church searched for ways to circumscribe the Act of Toleration through tactics like the Occasional



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Conformity Bill, Toland had gone so far as to send an epistolary appeal to leaders of the main Dissenting sects advising them to accept all religious opinions as the best way to shed their collective reputation as a ‘People of a persecuting Temper’. Of course, such conflicting demands highlighted the increasingly difficult political position of orthodox Dissenters and Defoe urged them to avoid any public declarations on the toleration question. In answer to Stephens and Toland, Defoe bewailed, ‘will nothing entitle me to a Toleration of my sound and orthodox Opinion, but being willing to Tolerate another Opinion that is Hetrodox [sic], Blasphemous or Heretical?’ (Preface, pp. xviii–xxiii). Scripture provided the answer on how to proceed in such matters. Citing the biblical examples of Ephesus, Sardis, and Laodicea, Defoe declared that as long as individual congregations were ‘Sound in Doctrine’ they were not denied ‘a Name among the Churches’. If their members failed to live up to the teachings of sound doctrine, then they were ‘admonished to repent’. Scripture enabled him to positively assert that Christians of what Denomination soever, being Orthodox in Principle, and Sound in Doctrine, have a Native Right to Liberty of Serving God, according to the Dictates of their own Consciences, and ought to be Tolerated, provided they behave themselves peaceably under the Government, and obedient in all other things to the Civil Magistracy of the Country in which they live. No such scriptural foundation existed for the toleration of heterodox opinions, however. As to the question of what constituted orthodoxy, Defoe’s answer is worth quoting at length because it is the most precise testament of his belief to be found in all his works: the few things which serve to declare the difference between an Orthodox Christian and a Heretick, are so plain, so visible in Scripture, so explicit in our Creeds and Confessions of Faith, in which all Orthodox Christians agree; that we need go no farther; the Scripture is allow’d by all Christians to be the Rule of Faith, sufficient to Instruction; the Christian Confessions of Faith are a Collection of the fundamental Heads of our Religion, deduc’d from the said Scriptures, composed of plain, indisputable Truths, unto which whoever agrees, tho’ in the Addenda and Circumstances of Order, Discipline and Manner, he may differ, he is in the Sense of all Christians, an Orthodox Believer. But if a Man denies the Nature, Being, or Attributes of God, the Resurrection of the Body, Futurity of Rewards and Punishments; the Divinity, Conception, Birth, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and Intercession of our Redeemer; his delegated Power of Judgment and Retribution; the Power, Operation and Efficacy of the Holy Spirit, and the Mystical




Union of the Trinity; if any Man denies the Necessity of Faith and Repentance, and the Salvation of a Soul, only by the Purchase and Merits of a Redeemer, and the like essential Points of the Christian Religion; such a Man is a Disciple of that Jezebel, who calls her self a Prophetess, and who ought not to be suffered, that is Tolerated, in the Church of Christ to teach and seduce his People to commit Fornication, &c. Rev. 2.20. (Preface, p. xxi) This passage proclaims several aspects of orthodox theology which informed almost all of Defoe’s writings. Scripture’s authority as the revealed word, the legitimacy of confessional statements of faith, God’s awesome righteousness, the hypostatic union of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the centrality of faith and repentance to the Christian life, and salvation through Christ’s Atonement would all be challenged in a variety of religious disputes over the course of Defoe’s life. It is a central thesis of this book that Defoe remained committed to each and every one of these positions. They were central, as this chapter will explain, to Defoe’s understanding of the purpose of human life and to the proper relationship between subjects and sovereigns. Belief in these doctrines was essential in order to qualify for toleration. After his own extraordinary deliverance from Newgate in November 1703, the animosity caused by the tack, and its robust defeat in January 1705, Defoe believed the cause of toleration had won the day. The year ahead would nevertheless not be a peaceful one: new elections, the controversy surrounding the sensational, highflying pamphlet, The Memorial of the Church of England, and the continued presence of men like Leslie and Sacheverell renewed the cries of ‘church in danger’, ‘passive obedience’, and ‘non-resistance’. Alarmed by a ‘World … going mad a second time with the[se] Error[s]’ and believing it ‘impossible to reconcile the Principles of Passive Obedience with the whole Proceeding of the Late Revolution’, Defoe readied the Jure Divino manuscript for publication (Preface, pp. i, iii). When it appeared in July 1706, the twelve books of verse satire also included a Dedication to Reason, an invocation ‘To the Author’, a letter to Queen Anne, and a lengthy Preface which outlined the polemical contexts in which Defoe saw himself operating as well as some hints about the work as he had initially conceived it. Defoe acknowledged that the published volume differed substantially from its original design. He confessed to having ‘laid by a Second Volume’ which had been ‘the first in Action’, one containing observations relevant to the published volume but which, coming from his pen, might ‘give Offense’. In a later passage he offered an alternative explanation, stating that a satire on tyranny might be expected to examine ‘Ecclesiastical as [well as] Civil Tyranny’ but that he had ‘wav’d this unpleasant task for many Reasons’. Popery no longer threatened England from within, the



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Church had recently renounced ‘the Doctrine of Persecution, as a thing contrary to her Doctrine, and contrary to the Principles of the Christian Religion’, and party politicians had failed in their attempts to destroy the principles of toleration established in 1689. This much is clear: the original work comprised two volumes but Defoe decided against publishing the second one. He anticipated that readers of the volume he did publish might find his argument ‘incompleat’ and that they might expect him to address the problem of ‘Church-Tyranny’. He declined this task because religious persecution was no longer a live issue in England. Not all of Defoe’s enemies had been vanquished, however, and he feared reprisal. Though he had failed to do so ‘in other Cases’, most obviously in publishing The Shortest Way, this time he would act prudently (Preface, pp. iii–iv, xvi–xvii). In any event, it appears that the first-written but unpublished volume was an attack on ecclesiastical tyranny and religious persecution, subjects which had an immediacy for Defoe given that he began the work while imprisoned for satirizing the High Church campaign against occasional conformity. The same faction of the Church of England so eager to prosecute Defoe for seditious libel was prone to ‘tax other People with Rebellion and Disloyalty’ while asserting its own faithfulness to the crown. Defoe divided his ideological opponents into two camps. The first group were true believers in divine-right monarchy as demonstrated by both their utterances and actions. They argued that kings were sacred persons, accountable to God alone, commanding obedience under any and all conditions, even if those conditions were tyrannical and merited only passive obedience. They decried both the events of 1641 and 1688. Defoe addressed the main text of Jure Divino to these divine-right purists: ‘the Satyr is theirs’, he commented. The Preface and his greatest censure, however, were reserved for those churchmen who, while espousing the doctrines of divine-right monarchy and passive obedience, denounced the civil war but accepted the Revolution of 1688. They too had been responsible for inflating the ambitions of James II with notions of divineright kingship but turned against him when royal aims conflicted with their own. They were a group keener ‘to talk of Loyalty than perform it’ and hid behind the spurious distinction between de jure and de facto monarchy. Kings were not invested with absolute authority by divine right, Defoe repeatedly stated, and ‘when they break the Laws, trample on Property, affront Religion, invade the Liberties of Nations, and the like, they may be opposed and resisted by Force’(Preface, pp. i, iii, ix). In attacking the hypocrisy of many of his High Church and Tory opponents, Defoe went a step further with the provocative argument that the ‘dry martyrdom’ these men had helped to impose upon James II was worse than the ‘wet’ one suffered by Charles I. Charles at least knew his advisers had remained loyal, that thousands of his subjects had been willing to die in his service, and many of his enemies had come to regret their actions.




In the end, dignified death brought him release from intolerable pressures. James, by contrast, saw himself betrayed and abandoned by those very men who ‘had sworn to a Passive Absolute Submission, and taught it to others’, flattered him with the divinity of his own person, and encouraged his own children to replace him on the throne. In many ways, banishment and the need to rely on foreign courts for subsistence was a worse fate than his father’s (Preface, pp. xi–xiii).32 Having blamed the High Church party for infecting king and country with notions of divine-right kingship in the1680s and for their more recent attempts ‘to bring the same obsolete abdicated Principle in play again’, Defoe turned to advance the central thesis of Jure Divino. First, he asserted that it had ‘never been the Opinion of the People of England’ that kings could operate above the laws and against the welfare of their subjects. Given this fact, then divine-right theory was a ‘Piece of Inconsistence in Reasoning’ and ‘Monster’ whose origins and history merited attention. Its intrusion into ‘Modern Politics’ in England may have been new but its pedigree was an ancient one. The doctrine of divine right originated as A meer Device, and politick Invention, furnish’d from the Fountain of Mischief, viz. Man’s corrupt yet fruitful Imagination, prompted by the Author of all Mischief, the Devil; calculated for the erecting, and found out by such as purposed to introduce Tyranny and absolute Government in the World. (Preface, pp. xiv–xv) The invocation of Jure Divino began by reminding readers that when religious idolatry corrupted the ancient Near East, God had sent Elijah and Gideon to convey his truth to the tribes led astray by the worship of Baal. Just as prophets and angels in past ages denounced religious idolatry, the muse instructs Defoe that he must attack ‘State-Idolatry’, ‘Non-resisting Notions’ and ‘Despotick Power’ in order to reveal that their origins were not divine, as theorists like Filmer had claimed, but, in fact, demonic. Led by a ‘Powerful Muse’, the author charges himself with the task of exposing the Devil’s ‘Native Ugliness’ and ‘hideous’ influence on human politics. Defoe considered Satan to be a real historical agent and his engagement with mankind was certainly a subject more suited to the genre of the verse essay than a recent and controversial work of political theory, Locke’s Second Treatise. Given Defoe’s remarks about putting aside an earlier volume, it may be that Jure Divino was originally conceived as a poetic account of the Devil’s role in human history, the earlier, unpublished volume tracing his encouragement of ecclesiastical tyranny and the published text explaining his help in instigating civil tyranny. Throughout his life, Defoe considered Satan’s influence on human affairs an important subject and he would explore it at length again in his 400-page prose work, The Political History of the Devil, published in 1726.33



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NATURE has left this Tincture in the Blood, That all Men would be Tyrants if they cou’d: If they forbear their Neighbours to devour, ’Tis not for want of Will, but want of Power; The General Plague Infects the very Race, Pride in his Heart, and Tyrant in his Face … The only Safety of Society, Is, that my Neighbour’s just as proud as I; Has the same Will and Wish, the same Design, And his Abortive Envy ruines mine. (p. 1) These lines constituted more than a rhetorical exordium. The themes of original sin and diabolical intervention in profane affairs were interwoven throughout the poem’s introduction and first ten books (the last two books were essentially encomiums on William, Anne, and several Whig politicians) but receive their fullest treatment in Books VII–X. In these books, Defoe traced the origins and growth of civil tyranny back to Satan’s corruption of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden: The Captive Man subdued the Fortress quits, And all his Soul to Tyrant SIN submits; There Arbitrary Government begins, And he’s a Slave, as soon as e’er he sins. In ensuing footnotes Defoe further explained that ‘the beginning of all Bondage, is seen in Man’s first Bondage to Sin’. As an additional consequence of the Fall, ‘the Powers, or Faculties of his Soul were contracted in their Operations’ so that ‘Man became an enquiring Creature, that wanted Instruction, and stood in need of Experience’ in order to improve himself (VII, p. 5). From this point forward, Defoe believed, man’s sinful and often foolish nature vied with his divinely endowed reason, with consequences for the individual soul and for the course of human history as a whole. It was not surprising, he commented, ‘that the Fall of Man having made him a Slave to the Devil, Man grew something Diabolical himself, and strove to practice a synonimous [sic] Power over his fellow creatures’ (VII, p. 10) As important scholarship has made clear, Locke was moving away from Calvinist views regarding original sin and redemption as early as 1680 and composition of the Two Treatises may have accelerated this retreat toward Socinianism even before his extensive investigation of heterodox works



Defoe may have dedicated Jure Divino to Sovereign Reason, the Empress of all that was good in humankind, but the very first lines of the poem reveal that her reign was subject to the ever-present threat of usurping sin:

during his exile in Holland. Nothing in the Two Treatises suggested that human vices were the result of the Fall and not simply part of human experience which could be avoided through the exercise of reason and free will, and Satan made no appearance at all in Locke’s text.34 Despite his developing capacity to explain past and present events as the outcome of social, economic, and political processes, Defoe was still disposed to seeing the course of human history, writ large, as an epic drama in which, guided by reason, man’s better nature struggled against his proclivities for sin, passion, and folly. This again was a theme entirely suited to the verse essay.

iii. Idolatry and conquest: the origins and history of ius divinum and kingship Failure to worship the one, true God was the worst consequence of the Fall. For many early-modern thinkers, the early history of mankind was subsumed in the story of the growth of false religion. Defoe’s understanding of the growth of idolatry was informed by patristic theories of its demonic origins and by the theory of euhemerism which attributed the origins of the gods of classical antiquity to the deification of historical persons. This was the historical and theoretical context in which Defoe located the origins of belief in divine-right monarchy. Whereas many euhemeristic accounts focused on the deification of dead heroes and good kings, Book I of Jure Divino argued instead that the Devil had deluded nations into making idols of ‘Tyrant Kings, and more than commonly Wicked Men’ (I, p. 1, 7–8). It satirized a host of figures from Bacchus and Jove who had been ‘fabled into Deities’ to the ‘Bacchanalian King’, James I, apotheosized on the painted ceiling of the Banqueting House (p. [xxix]; I, p. 25). Books VII–X of Jure Divino chronicled the way in which the activities of the Devil combined with man’s corrupt nature to create and sustain a doctrine that was not only false but blasphemous. Following Greek mythology, Defoe named Ninus, son of Belus or Baal, as the world’s first tyrant to claim authority by divine right. Through Satan’s cunning and Ninus’s ambition, the father, who had been a good and just prince, was deified in order to sanctify his son’s tyrannic rule. ‘This was Hell’s Master-piece for Idolatry’, Defoe acknowledged (VIII, p. 1). Conspiring with a tyrannic son who happened to have a powerful father afforded Satan the opportunity to establish idolatry and cloak despotism with the mantle of hereditary divine right in one stroke: Satan and (a) Ninus thus began to reign, And (b) Brother Monarchs, Brother Crimes maintain The well matcht Kings, their well matcht Projects join Idolatry and Tyranny alike Divine. Belus the Father, Ninus now the Son;



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This Idol-Gods, that Idol-Kings begun… Thus Ninus early Monarchy erects, Concurring Hell, the new Design protects… Tyrannick Power’s an Idol in the State, And High-Church-Idols Tyranny create: The high Alternate Mischiefs well combin’d; This blasphemes God, and that insults Mankind. (VII, p. 23) Like other writers of his period, Defoe tried to reconcile Christian history with the myths of classical antiquity. He accepted the theory that the earliest Greek gods were simply mythologized representations of the Noachic line. Belus, he explained, ‘was the Original of the Idol Baal’ who deluded the Israelites and Ninus was also Nimrod, the biblical figure first associated with conquest, empire, and oriental despotism (I, pp. 3, 6; VIII, p. 1). Either in conscious conspiracy with Satan or flattered into believing in their own divinity, by utilizing all the trapping of idolatry, ancient kings convinced their subjects to reject reason in favour of superstition and shrouded their tyranny in religion. Eventually their crimes would come to be veiled by custom as well. Defoe understood the force of custom and appeal to prescription but dismissed these as inferior to the laws of nature which, as we shall see, he believed contradicted divine-right theory (IV, pp. 1–4). Even more powerful than the force of custom on human belief and behaviour, however, was the imprimatur of divine authority and this had been grossly abused over the centuries. ‘Nothing’, he lamented, ‘could so well have reconcil’d us to the Absurdities of Arbitrary Power, as to back the Preposterous Notion with strange Suppositions of a Sacred Stamp upon the Royal Thing imposing, as a proper handle to prepare our Subjection to what on no other Terms, or by no other Method we could be brought to’ (Preface, p. xv). The use of this method first appeared with Ninus or Nimrod but Satan was its true author: The Cheat’s a Manufacture of the Deep, Contriv’d to lull the Wheedl’d World asleep; From Hell deriv’d, a meer Original, And Providence is not concern’d at all; Mankind’s drawn in by Pious Fraud of Words To make them quit their Senses, and their Swords; To tell us Tyrants act by Power Divine, And must be suffred for the Sacred Line. (III, p. 23) The most recent ‘Pious Fraud of Words’ to hoodwink mankind was that which prompted Defoe to publish Jure Divino, namely the doctrine of passive obedience, prevalent in the 1680s and rejected in 1688 until its recent revival by the likes of Leslie and Sacheverell. Just as Ninus or Nimrod




had developed the cult of Belus or Baal to sanctify his rule, James II relied on High Church propaganda to rationalize his absolutist ambitions. Instead of castigating James II, as he had done in numerous pamphlets during William’s reign, however, Defoe now placed the blame on those clergymen, especially Bishop Compton, who adulated the king in order to enhance the political power of the Church only to turn on him when their own interests were threatened.35 Too often, Defoe observed, ‘Court-Parasites, and Men of Design’ flatter themselves into the grace and favour of princes ‘who would otherwise have been tolerably sober, swelling their Thoughts with the Fancy of being God’s Vicegerents, and accountable to none but him; and all, by the Hypocritical Promises of that blind Obedience on their own Parts, which they never desig’nd [sic] to pay’. The High Church aggrandized the ‘Doctrine of absolute undisputed Obedience’ to such an unprecedented degree that ‘the King’s Command extended even to the Lives and Liberty, as well as the Estates of his Subjects’, insisting that ‘his Attempts must not be resisted, but submitted to as a Judgment from God’ (IV, pp. 14, 16). To suggest that ‘Kings can be accountable to none’ smacked of Popery: King-Craft in State, and Priest-Craft in the Church, This does our Faith, and that our Sense debauch … The personal Independency of Kings, Is meer State-Popery in several Things: That Kings have absolute Command of Fate, Is Transubstantiation in the State. Like the doctrines of transubstantiation and papal infallibility, the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience were, in Defoe’s opinion, invented ones. Comparing the acts of ‘Consecration’ in Roman Catholic mass and the ‘Coronation of Princes in other Countries’, he argued that priests falsely claimed to transform both bread and kings into divine substances (VI, pp. 8–9). Because the principle of divine-right kingship and passive obedience had been promoted as the word of God, Defoe contended, king, clergy, and commons had been persuaded to embrace these ‘Sacred Lyes’ (IV, p. 14). The light of reason and nature, though, was impossible to extinguish; sooner or later the law of self-preservation was bound to prevail. Eventually it led ‘the Passive Swearing Clergy up in Arms/Defending Glebe, and Dean and Chapter Farms’ to cry out in defence of ‘Liberty and Property’ (IV, p. 6). Defoe could hardly blame these men for coming to their senses though he did think some members of the Church had espoused doctrines they knew to be false and took oaths they had no intention of keeping themselves. Defoe had already expressed his abhorrence of the use of sacred oaths for secular purposes in the context of the occasional conformity debate but knowingly to commit perjury in the process was ‘a Horrid Deceit’, requiring



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forfeits all the Title to his Sense, And quits his Claim to Heaven and Providence, When he betrays the Freedom of his Life, And holds his naked Throat to the Tyrannick Knife. (VI, p. 17) If the origins of the theory of divine-right monarchy could be traced to the Devil’s work and subsequently to the connivance of clergy and kings, the origins of kingship itself, Defoe believed, were first the product of human convenience. Denying the Filmerian position that all authority was patriarchal in nature, Defoe nevertheless believed that ‘First Government was Nat’ral all and Free/And fixt in Patriarchal Majesty’ but in this ‘Paternal Right no Man could reign/Farther than his own Household did contain’ (II, pp. 16, 3).36 Providence had foreseen that While in the Infant-Ages of the Kind Nature to first Paternal Rule confin’d; The Men untainted, and their Number few, The Patriarchal Government might do. (II, p. 4) Defoe conjectured that this mode of authority lasted at least through the time of the Deluge because he could not imagine that a more organized society, one which enjoyed ‘the Power of Magistrates and Laws’, would have ever ‘run into such Enormities, of which God Almighty was oblig’d to purge the World by an Universal Punishment’ (II, p. 4). As long as these heads of families were ‘just and few’, this most basic socio-political structure was sufficient but ‘Patriarchal Power was not adapted to Rule great Nations’ because ‘infinite Feuds and Petty Wars’ eventually ended ‘in Conquest and Monarchy’ (V, p. 1; II, p. 5). Despite Locke’s overwhelming objective to demolish patriarchalism, Peter Laslett noted that he made considerable concessions to it in his acknowledgement that in sparsely populated areas, like those which existed in America or during the early ages of man, it was easy to imagine how ‘the Father of the Family’ became ‘the Prince’ of the region ‘but that this was not by any Paternal Right, but only by the Consent of his Children’.37 ‘Undisputed Obedience’ rather than consent characterized clan authority in the western highlands of Scotland where, Defoe alleged, ‘Patriarchal Power seems to retain its Original and the Nature of it is display’d’ (II, p. 6). Both Locke and Defoe deduced that population pressure was a factor in the progression from patriarchal societies to polities based on consent, or as



‘some new-made Word’ which could convey the full treachery of this crime. By preaching the doctrine of passive obedience the High Church had not only seduced James II into a fateful course but had also cozened people to ignore nature and reason and therefore to neglect their duty to God. Every beguiled subject

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But men and Crimes, as they in Numbers grew, Old Rules laid down, and Vice directed new; Pride and Ambition hand in hand invade, Nations, by equal Seeds of Crime betray’d … Thus Pride brings Strife, and Wars to Strife succeed, Truth yields, and Falshood governs in his stead … Hence Tyrants, and from these Infected Springs, Flows the best Title of the best of Kings … The first Oppression’s the produce of Sin, And always follows where our Crimes begin. (II, p. 8) Once there was competition for territory, ambition compelled some leaders to invade their neighbours’ lands; reason and nature directed those neighbouring families to band together in self-defence. Sin and ambition were not part of this scenario as depicted by Locke. As patriarchal families found their only safety in banding together, ‘they continue[d] thus United’ by electing a captain, later called a duke or king, to command the defence of inhabitants and their properties (II, p. 16). Property ownership conferred the right of election because nature directed men to preserve themselves and therefore the means to self-preservation as well. The connection between men’s property and their elective rights, Defoe asserted, was thus a ‘Law they find within their own Breasts’ (II, p. 17). In these new arrangements ‘all the Kinds of Government began’ including kingship: Here, and here only Monarchies begin, Such Governments as these are all Divine: The Person the Proprietors erect, All the Proprietors are to protect; His Person’s Sacred, and his rightful Crown, No Men, but they that gave it, may pull down: Nore they, unless he proves to be unjust, And then they all not only may, but must. (II, p. 18) Sacred history provided additional proof that kings were human and not divine in origin. Defoe recounted the story of how Saul came to be Israel’s first king, pointing out the people’s crucial role and the need for Saul to be a warrior as well as a king. Despite the prophet Samuel’s warnings, the



Defoe put it from ‘Families to Nations’ (II, p. 3). However, whereas Locke had argued that it was this ‘Increase of People and Stock [coupled] with the Use of Money’ which prompted these communities to settle boundaries and create laws,38 Defoe underscored the role of sin in this historical transformation:

Israelites prayed to God to provide them with a king. Though ‘Heav’n the Design abhorr’d/And left his High Dislike upon Record’, God relented and, ‘in Anger’, chose Saul to be their king (II, pp. 23–4). Saul accepted the crown, according to Defoe, under conditions imposed by the people and recorded by Samuel. Though appointed by God, anointed by Samuel, and sanctioned by the people, Saul proved to be a ‘Bashful Boy for Crown and Power unfit’, causing Israel to reject its new king until he proved himself. Instead of punishing the Israelites, Defoe explained, God, recognizing their justifiable disappointment in so callow a king, enabled Saul, through miracle, to earn his subjects’ obedience through military victory over the Ammonites. Saul may have had God’s help in battle but scripture made it clear, at least to Defoe, that it was the people who declared him king (II, pp. 27–30). If the story of Saul was open to conflicting interpretations, the fact that ‘God justified the Revolt of the Ten Tribes, for the Tyranny of Rehoboam’ was proof positive of the people’s right and duty to resist arbitrary oppression: The Sacred Story stands upon Record, Voucht by the High, Divine, Immortal Word: When Israel’s Tribes from Judah’s Scepter stray’d, And Laws of Nature, not of Kings, obey’d. (V, pp. 19–21) Scriptural history of the Median and Persian monarchies demonstrated that their leaders understood that their powers were not absolute and thus ‘the Limitation of Power and Superiority of Laws in matters of Government, have an Original in the very early Ages of the World’ (VIII, pp. 8–10). Urging Satyr onward to ‘less remote Examples’, Defoe thought it superfluous to give a complete account of Rome’s tyrants for ‘no Man [today] can pretend they had any Divine Right’ though the emperors made such claims for themselves (VIII, p. 19). Power continued to be the only source of authority in post-Roman Europe as the leaders of barbarous nations founded each new throne in Christendom in Roman fashion, by the sword (VIII, p. 24). During this period of violence and conquest, however, Defoe discerned the indomitable workings of ‘Nature’ and ‘Reason’ and the emergence of his own social structure: Soldiers the conquer’d Countries divide, And Properties the Rights of Rule decide: The Leaders by the Tenure of their Lands, Had Honours suited to their High Commands: Nobility upon Behaviour stood, Commenc’d in Merit first, and not in Blood. The Captains form’d the Gentry of the Land, Did now the Farm, as once the Troop command:




The Gen’rals of superior Rank and Fame, Grew Lords and Princes, only chang’d their Name: The Legionary Soldiers fell to Trade, And all were Freemen and Freeholders made. The mighty leading, All-Commanding Thing, Govern’d the Whole, and gain’d the Name of King: A Name indeed, for Laws of his Command, He shar’d with them, with whom he shar’d the Land; And if he ceas’d his due Respect to pay, To stated Rules, they quickly ceas’d t’obey … These were the Gothick Rules of Government, On Reason built, and fixt in general Consent. Nature first taught Men Schemes of Life to draw, In order live, and call’d that Order LAW. (VIII, pp. 27–8) Kings who ignored the rule of law could expect men of reason to protest and rebel against them if necessary: ’Twas always natural for Men opprest, Whene’er the Occasion offers, to resist; ’Tis not enough to say they may, ’tis just, But strong Necessity commands they must; They’re Traytors else to the Entails of Sense, And Rebels to the Laws of Providence. (VIII, p. 30) The claim that people have not only a right but a duty to resist oppression is made in several places throughout Jure Divino and received its fullest explication in Book III. As the penultimate stanza in Book VIII, the above quotation is followed by one more heavily annotated stanza which provided an expeditious inventory of popular uprisings against tyrants throughout medieval Europe, before a review of the English monarchy, the subject of Books IX and X. Defoe began Book IX by reasserting that monarchy originated not in divine mandate but in the vagaries of human history. Even if such a sacred foundation had existed, dynastic bloodlines were so corrupted that no ruler could claim hereditary title to it through an unbroken line of succession: all our Royal Lines are so decay’d, By Bastardy and Blood precarious made; That no Successions can their Title clear, To make a Crown’d Divinity appear: For how can that Descent be call’d Divine, Where Whores and Bastards interrupt the Line. (IX, p. 2)



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He was careful to add that Britain’s present royal family was as illustrious as most but its true authority derived from ‘the Revolution, and Parliamentary Settlement, from which, who ever reigns in England, has without doubt, a Divine Right to the Crown, and possesses it by the best Tenure in the World’ (IX, p. 4). The secular origins of monarchy in conquests and compacts made it ‘subject to Contingencies of Fate’ as the island’s earliest history made abundantly clear (IX, p. 5). Were the rights of kings ‘sacred in themselves, and of Divine Original, they would never be subject to Changes and Interruptions, as we always see them, but permanent and durable, like their Original’ (IX, p. 5). Citing James Tyrrell’s General History of England as his main source,39 Defoe recounted how Britain endured centuries of invasions by the Romans, Picts, and Saxons and its natives ‘fought to the last Gasp, for their Liberty and Country’ (IX, p 14, fn (d); p. 11, fn (b)). Warrior commanders eventually established a heptarchy but it was rooted in ‘Robbery and Blood’ (IX, p. 15). The Saxons had ‘subdued, but never conquer’d’ the ancient Britons who ‘always insisted on their Right’ and, like conquerers throughout history, used religion to legitimate their authority. As this abuse of religious authority was ‘first in Hell contriv’d’, Defoe moralized, it succumbed to its own logic of violence and pretended divinity (IX, p. 19). Petty Saxon kings fell prey to their own ambitions and usurpation, fratricide, and bastardy characterized the Saxon line of succession. Like Defoe’s True-Born Englishman, the earliest English kings were a ‘mixt’ and ‘Black Race’ whose ‘intangl’d Line’ eventually died out, leaving the throne up for grabs (X, pp. 7–9). The history of the ‘usurping Race’ of Normans who succeeded was not much different with one crucial exception. Defoe accepted the convenient fiction that William the Conqueror only accepted the crown at the request, by the election, and subject to the conditions of the people (X, p. 11). The history of the sceptre through Norman and Plantagenet hands enabled Defoe to show that disputed succession, and not the orthodoxy of divine right, determined the course of events and this continued to hold true through the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York when ‘Usurpers by Usurpers are pull’d down/And Tyrants make a Foot-ball of the Crown’ (X, p. 24). If his own age of standing armies proved the longest purse was the longest sword, then England’s baronial past proved that in the lofty Pedigree of Kings, The longest Sword the longest Scepter brings … The Right of Conquest’s all our Right Divine, And while the Line can keep it, keeps the Line. (X, p. 4) Defoe was quick to point out any royal acknowledgement of the people’s rights as in the cases of William I and King Stephen. He also pointed out




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Conquest, or Compacts, form the Rights of Kings, And both are humane, both unsettled Things; Both subject to Contingencies of Fate, And so the Godship of them proves a Cheat. (IX, p. 5) Nevertheless, the fact that usurpers were often usurped themselves suggested to him that the world was not left entirely to human folly as ‘Heaven[’s] due Vengeance on Ambition shows/One ravish’d Crown, another overthrows’ (X, p. 25). The surfeit of worldly ambition which made individuals dissatisfied with what they had and nations prone to tyrants was one of the many symptoms of original sin and therefore an indication of Satan’s influence upon human affairs as well. It was, however, ‘the Hand of Heaven’ which ultimately permitted tyranny, war, and suffering to happen so that one had to accept ‘the blackest Parts of Villany … in this abstracted Sense/Are all the stated Works of Providence’ (IX, p. 14). Defoe’s answer as to why God permitted such things lies at the core of his theories about the laws of nature, the origins of government, and the right to resist. Before examining this answer it is important to note that Defoe was also careful to stress that just as the laws of reason, nature, and God demanded that people defend themselves against tyrants, they also required people to obey lawful kings for ‘He that Resists, and dares to Disobey/Insults his Maker, and demands to Dye’ (III, p. 26). The rule of just and virtuous kings received divine sanction as did the reigns of their successors as long as they too ruled by law. Because the High Church had been so successful in associating arguments for limited monarchy with republicanism, Defoe felt compelled to declare that ‘nothing in this Book is design’d, or can be construed to Decry or Expose Monarchy, or the Sovereignty of Government by Kings; but to prove that they have no Powers immediately Deputed from Heaven superiour and unsubjected to the Good of those they govern; and that when they assume such a Right, they become Tyrants, Invaders of Right, and may be Deposed by the People they Govern’ (II, p. 2).

iv. ‘The whole frame of Nature, Time, and Providence’: Defoe on God’s intentions for mankind In dedicating his verse satire to ‘REASON: First Monarch of the World … [and] The Almighty’s Representative and Resident in the Souls of Men’, Defoe placed his text squarely in the natural law tradition, a position



that however strong the usurper, his right to rule remained incomplete without the people’s consent. Though Defoe emphasized that compact and conquest were the products of historical contingency, other forces were at work. In order to impeach the doctrine of divine-right monarchy he had emphasized that


The Laws of God, as I can understand, Do never Laws of Nature countermand; Nature Commands, and ’tis Prescrib’d to Sense, For all men to adhere to Self-defence: Self-Preservation is the only Law, That does Involuntary Duty Draw; It serves for Reason and Authority, And they’ll defend themselves, that know not why. (III, p. 10)40 By virtue of their capacity to reason human beings were superior to other creatures. ‘Man was their Master by their Maker’s Law’ and yet, despite man’s ‘undeniable Right’ of dominion ‘over the Creation’, it did not overrule the instinct for survival in the animal kingdom (III, p. 15).41 Though superior to other creatures, human beings were equal to each other through sharing in the divine attribute of reason, described by Defoe in common metaphorical terms as ‘The Light of Heaven which shining in the Soul/ Instructs the Parts, and Luminates the Whole’. Reason was the foundation for the two conventions human beings used to order their world, government and language: Reason’s the Sovereign Guide of Humane Things, Which Leads the Subject, and Commands their Kings … The Arbitrator of the Grand Dispute, Betwixt the Humane Nature and the Brute; The Dignity and Honour of the World, Without it all’s a Chaos ——… The Faithful Councellor in all Debates, The Test of Law, the Charm a Tyrant hates; The Frame of Peace, and Shape of Government, Essence of Speech, and Test of Argument. (III, pp. 5–6) Like Defoe, Locke too had premised his arguments upon the tenets that self-preservation was the first law of nature and that God directed men through their ‘Senses and Reason’ and ‘inferior Animals by their Sense, and Instinct’, but here the direction and goal of the two men’s arguments diverged.42 There are forty-one references to reason scattered throughout the Two Treatises, many of them general statements about the rational nature of man. Twenty-one of these, however, cluster around three arguments crucial to Locke’s project but immaterial to Defoe’s. The first concerned Locke’s desire to disprove Filmer’s notion of absolute patriarchal



confirmed and explained in several stanzas and numerous references to Grotius and Pufendorf. The most fundamental law of nature affirmed the instinctual right of self-preservation for all creatures:

rule by arguing that it was parental, not political, and limited to the command parents had over their children until they reached the age of reason.43 The second argument concerned man’s right to property which was dictated by both ‘Revelation’ and ‘natural Reason’. God did not give exclusive dominion of the world to Adam and his heirs in succession as Filmer had argued but ‘to Mankind in common’ and reason directed men to those things ‘Nature affords for their Subsistence’. Locke went on to cite reason and revelation in support of his labour theory of value. In granting man dominion over the earth, God ‘commanded Man also to labour, and the penury of his Condition required it of him’. Because ‘every man has a Property in his own Person’ and in ‘the Labour of his Body’, Locke argued, private property was also divinely sanctioned and rationally confirmed.44 A third spate of references to reason appeared in Locke’s most extreme contention that any king who made war on his people ‘makes a forfeiture of his Life. For quitting reason, which is the rule given between Man and Man, and using force the way of Beasts, he becomes liable to be destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage ravenous Beast.’45 Although Defoe shared Locke’s belief in the divinity of reason, the lack of any parallel development of argument from this premise in Jure Divino discredits the presumption of any link between that text and the Two Treatises. The idea that tyrants may be treated like beasts of prey appeared only in a footnote and was not germane to Defoe’s own justification of resistance. Locke’s focus on the age of reason as the precondition of freedom and his labour theory of value, two central features of his attack on patriarchy, received no attention in Jure Divino or any other work of Defoe’s. It is also interesting to note that in a footnote citing Sir Robert Filmer as ‘the Great Champion’ of the doctrine of passive obedience and divine-right patriarchal monarchy, Defoe identified ‘Algernoon Sidney’, not John Locke, as Filmer’s greatest critic.46 Sidney’s text, Defoe stated, ‘exploded’ Filmer’s doctrine so completely as to be ‘unanswerable’, an odd endorsement for such a ‘thoroughly Lockeian’ work as Defoe’s has been claimed to be (IV, pp. 27–8). As he had insisted in his debate with Charles Leslie in the weeks that followed the publication of Jure Divino, Defoe had found both Locke’s and Sidney’s accounts ultimately inadequate and went on to explain his belief that government was instinctual and based upon the human need to ‘live regularly’ and impose order in the world.47 Though God had imposed a moral order upon the universe, the construction of the political order was left for men to realize: Th’immortal Laws of Moral Right were giv’n, As Guides of Conduct by indulgent Heaven … The Rules of Worship and Subjection set, What things we ought to do, and what omit … But as to Government, he left him Free,



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Nature directed: Rules of Politie … Why did not Heaven prescribe the Laws of Life, As when to eat, or Sleep, or kiss his Wife; But that directed Nature knew its Law, And faithful Instinct wou’d Performance draw … Society to Regulation tends, As naturally as means pursue their Ends; The Wit of Man could never yet invent, A Way of Life without a Government. (II, pp. 9–10) In response to the patriarchal line promoted in Leslie’s Rehearsal, Defoe attempted to clarify this very point by stating categorically that there was never a time when man was ‘without Government’ because ‘he had the Quality infus’d with his Life’. Equally important, the right to act upon this trait, namely ‘Dominion of Property’, was also ‘given [to] him immediately at his Creation’. Government, Defoe explained, was as natural an activity as breathing and rearing children.48 Defoe had no conception of a time before government and therefore no need to employ the theoretical state of nature – no need, in other words, to mention, let alone rely upon, Locke’s ‘Strange Doctrine’ which argued that individuals exercised retributive justice in their own name until at some later date (which Locke never related to the Fall) mankind entered into civil society.49 Locke too had argued that human beings had a duty to preserve themselves but he grounded his argument in the notion that as God’s creation, human beings were products of his labour, and therefore his property.50 Defoe accepted the argument that God was entitled to the ‘Obedience of Mankind, as he is their Maker’ but this acknowledgement appeared in a footnote to his discussion of property rights in Book V and played no part in his own argument that self-preservation was not just a right but a duty (V, p. 4). A look at Jure Divino’s reproof of suicide provides the starting point for understanding the cosmic implications of passive obedience and resistance as Defoe understood them. Defoe variously described life on earth as a ‘Debt’, a ‘Gift’, and a ‘High Trust’, given to us by God not only ‘to improve and propagate’, but also to repent. By committing suicide or declining the duty of self-preservation one became A Traitor to the Laws of Common Sense, And Contradicts the Ends of Providence; Rebels against his Reason, and Defies, The Rules of Life, and puts out Nature’s Eyes. If no Man then may his own Life destroy, But what Heaven gives, it binds him to enjoy … And still as clear the meaning must extend, That what he mayn’t Destroy, he must Defend:




He’s Damn’d without Retrieve, if he lets go The Reins of Life, and Nature Tells him how, With Hand and Tongue his Life he shou’d maintain, Or else his Hands and Tongue are given in vain: Self-murther’s punish’d by the forc’d Event He can’t be pardon’d, ’cause he can’t repent. (III, 16–17) Suicide was so abhorrent, Defoe explained, because ‘the very act it self carries us beyond the Space and Time allotted for Repentance; and the Fact is no sooner finish’d, but the Man is Launch’d into the Ocean of an irretrievable State’ (III, p. 17). Because divine-right monarchy was a threat to people’s lives, it was also a threat to each individual’s opportunity for the repentance of sin and the possibility of eternal life through Christ. As such, it contradicted the purpose of the secular realm, that ‘Space and Time’ created by God in which human beings could develop their faith in order to rejoin their creator. Jure Divino was not the only text in which Defoe presented his vision of the world. During the period in which he was composing his verse satire, an Irish MP named John Asgill published a pamphlet in which he argued that it was possible for believers of unusually strong faith to be translated to heaven without enduring bodily death. Such an opinion was heterodox in the extreme, not least because it suggested that the redemption of certain souls was beyond Christ’s power. Defoe, as a staunch Trinitarian, lambasted this notion: ‘God has prescrib’d Ways and Methods of attaining to Eternal Life, the time for which is the space of Life, and if Christ should have pray’d [to] the Father that all should have been taken out of the World, the whole frame of Nature, Time and Providence had ended.’51 Defoe’s view of the world as God’s spatial and temporal provision for repentance was in perfect accord with his view of human history as the struggle between the forces of reason and faith, sin and passion. Because God had given human beings world enough and time to reside and repent, the demand to surrender these gifts to a king was to place secular above divine authority. It was both a ‘Universal Rule’ and the ‘Practice of all Christian Ages’ to affirm that ‘all Humane Laws are subject to the Divine; and if a Law is made by Humane Power, which contradicts the laws of God, it is void in Nature’. Passive obedience, Defoe concluded, was ‘a thing [which] gives Human Power a Superiority over the Divine Law, and raises War and Rebellion against God in the World’ (IV, p. 23). To argue that God had given monarchs the power of life and death over their subjects was akin to rewriting the physical laws of the universe: Can they make Fire and Water correspond, Couple the Poles, measure the Pathless Round; Untie the Bond of Nature, and explain,



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The hidden Fluxes of the fluid Main? … When they can these, and such as these Dissect, Then, Satyr, let them Solve what we Object: How the Immortal Justice can invade, And Ruin the Creation he has made … If Kings may Ravish, Plunder, and Destroy, Oppress the World, and all their Wealth enjoy; May Harass nations, with their Breath may kill, And limit human Life by Human Will; Then Nations were for Misery prepar’d, And God gave Kings the World for their Reward … But to believe that Heaven in vain Creates, And give up what he loves, to what he hates … ’Tis horrid incoherent Blasphemy, Gives Nature, Sense, and Soveraign Truth the Lye: It Contradicts the Notion of a God, And all the Rules by which he’s understood. (III, pp. 9–10) Defoe also subjected the precepts of passive obedience and divine-right monarchy to his own Baconian rules of understanding. Things were evaluated according to their utility; they provided the means to achieve a greater good but were not to be valued above that greater good. Monarchy was one of several political arrangements men made to provide themselves with security and convenience; but as a means to these ends, kings could not be considered more important than the goals of government themselves: He that to Arbitrary Power Inclines, Subjects the End of things below the Means; Inverts the World, and Crosses Providence, And mingles mighty Cause with Consequence … All things on proper Causes do depend, Kings are the Means, ’tis Government’s the End. (III, pp. 22–3) To those defenders of divine-right monarchy and passive obedience who asked why God allowed absolute monarchs, and even tyrants, to exist if they posed such a threat to human salvation and the divine order, Defoe responded: ‘the Reason’s plain, and may be eas’ly known/ ’Tis not Heaven’s proper Bus’ness, but our own’ (II, p. 18). God left the responsibility of government to human beings, leaving them ‘Masters of themselves, and Free/And trusted them with their own Liberty’. Though God was the primary cause of all things, Providence left politics to the realm of ‘latent Cause and Consequence’ (V, p. 6). God endowed human beings with reason and instinct, instilling in them the need for self-preservation and order, but government itself was human in origin and responsibility. It was




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The Gift he gives he looks that we maintain, And till we strive, we Cry to Heaven in vain: Prayers and Tears no Revolutions make, Pull down no Tyrants, will no Bondage Break; Heaven never will our faint Petitions hear, Till Just E[n]deavours supersede our Prayer. (II, pp. 18–19) Christians, Defoe warned, must not expect Miracles, even in the most extreme situations. It was not that he undervalued the ‘Agency of Prayer’, but he wished to emphasize that one must join prayer with endeavour (II, p. 19; III, p. 4). God had left human beings ‘Masters of themselves, and Free/And trusted them with their own Liberty’ but he also ‘left them to be by their own Follies curst’ (V, p. 6). For Defoe, as for Milton, politics was ‘a public projection of the war waged between reason and passion within every soul’.52 Man’s ‘corrupted Nature’ frequently got the better of him with potentially dire consequences not only with respect to his own salvation but to the political community in which he lived as well (V, p. 15). Thus, the campaign for the reformation of manners was a crucial component in the struggle to maintain life and liberty. A society which failed to curb vice provided fertile ground for the seeds of tyranny. Though a minor motif in Jure Divino, during its composition the reformation of manners remained an important theme in the Review and many other works. In one of the most Baconian projects of his career, Defoe had sought to provide a complete account of the great storm of 1703, soliciting and compiling observations from around England. Such an event invited both scientific and moral speculation. Defoe combined the two by adding to his prose report a section of didactic verse in which he connected the theme of reform with the hypocrisy of passive obedience: Let me be where I will I heard the Storm, From every Blast, it eccho’d thus, REFORM … And every Blast proclaim’d aloud There is, there is, there is a GOD … They say this was a High-Church Storm, Sent out the Nation to reform; But th’ Emblem left the Moral in the Lurch, For’t blew the Steeple down upon the Church.53



not absolute monarchy that was in accord with the creation but the right of resistance. Resistance was not only ‘just’, it was a ‘must’; otherwise men were ‘Traytors … to the Entails of Sense, And Rebels to the Laws of Providence’ (IX, p. 30). Discharging this fundamental responsibility, furthermore, entailed active protest and rebellion:

Whether expressed in terms of the choice between active responsibility or passive obedience, the strain between man’s rational and sinful instincts, or the struggle for reform against widespread vice and corruption, the lesson of Jure Divino was that tyranny was contrary to the will of God and that individuals were responsible for the proper maintenance of the temporal sphere whatever the providential or diabolical forces that might be operating within or upon it.

v. Conclusion Defoe believed the High Church, by preaching the doctrines of passive obedience and divine-right kingship, was guilty of both hypocrisy and heterodoxy: its own actions in 1688 proved the former; the redemptive purposes of secular time and space the latter. If government was about preserving both order and liberty, Defoe believed it was also about perpetuating and shaping a world in which post-lapsarian man could recover his moral and mental capacities, a view of politics he shared not with John Locke but with John Milton and Francis Bacon.54 The heated dispute about the origins and nature of political authority between Defoe and Leslie in the summer of 1706, however, was put on hold when Robert Harley dispatched Defoe to Edinburgh in September to drum up support for the Treaty of Union between England and Scotland, the first of two successive assignments in Scotland on behalf of the government. He returned again as an informant and propagandist during the elections of 1708. Defoe had resettled in London less than a year when the public spectacle surrounding the trial of Henry Sacheverell reoriented public debate once more around the politics of church and state, an event which made Defoe’s 1704 depiction of swelling loyalty around High Church priests who ‘disturb the state’ sound almost prophetic.




Defoe and the Union of 1707: Constructing a British Identity

i. Introduction Defoe left London in September 1706, posing and, for the most part, passing as an English businessman in search of economic opportunity in Edinburgh. The guise was a necessary and credible one; in the present crisis over the Anglo-Scottish union, habitually peevish relations between the two kingdoms had deteriorated into rash belligerence. Defoe’s recent ignominy as a debt-ridden entrepreneur helped to divert attention from his greater reputation as a trenchant political pen and from the real purpose of his expedition – to advance the cause of union. He spent fifteen months in Scotland, writing tracts in support of the treaty both before and after its ratification, gathering intelligence for the English ministry and materials for his lengthy History of the Union of Great Britain, and pursuing actual commercial ventures once political urgency and the pressing need for his talents had subsided.1 Defoe described the part he played in the passage of the Act of Union in various ways: to his Review readers he rejoiced in being an instrument of God’s Providence; to readers of his History of the Union, he proclaimed his status as an ‘Eye Witness to much of the General Transaction’ with special access to documents furnished by ‘the best Hands’ as well as the ‘publick registers’; to his sometime and secret patron, Robert Harley, he compared his operations to those of Cardinal Richelieu and confessed a Pauline devotion in being ‘all to Every one That I might gain some’.2 Though, in their proper contexts, these statements may best be explained respectively as measures of faith, historiographic convention, and subservience, modern historians have delighted in diminishing the importance of such a self-promoting actor. More notably, historians have also dismissed the role of ideologists and their texts in the founding of the entity known as the United Kingdom. 3 Revisionist analyses which affirm a Scottish political system subverted by magnate factionalism, patronage, and corruption have superseded the benign story of progressive English gesellschaft, but historical scrutiny 78



4

throughout has remained steadily focused on parliamentary dynamics ‘within doors’.4 Emphasis on Scottish patrimonial politics neither explains nor explains away the function of political thought as represented by the debate ‘out of doors’. During the decade preceding union, the Scottish Privy Council was able to maintain tight control of news dissemination while in England legislative ineptitude and the opportunism of factional politics, increasingly rampant in frequent general elections, combined to revolutionize print culture. An explosion of news publications and fiction, voraciously consumed by an ever-widening literate populace, created a sphere of public opinion which transformed political discourse and political conduct.5 As one of London’s pioneering propagandists, Defoe brought an unmatched professionalism to the subsequent frenzy of opinion unleashed by the union controversy. In the 1701–2 paper war, in the bitter 1705 electoral campaign, and as editor of the Review, Defoe had advanced the coordination of propaganda directed both in and out of parliamentary doors, the organization of intelligence and distribution networks, and the production of sustained, serialized commentary – methods he then employed in support of the union. This chapter will demonstrate that Defoe’s contributions to the union debate reflect more than his talents as a polemicist. They convey a whole set of beliefs about the value of the concept of exchange within a plurality of cultures, polities, and economies – a world-view essential to understanding the development of historical thought in the early Enlightenment.

ii. Pre-union polemics and the development of Defoe’s historical thought As its title and length suggest, Defoe’s History of the Union, published in 1709, represented his most sustained attempt to place the events of 1706–7 in broad historical context.6 Centuries of stability, state action, and state documentation fostered an acute historical consciousness in England, and, as antiquarian activities and historical scholarship progressed in this period, men of all parties and opinions increasingly and instinctively ‘turned to the past in order to discover … a solution to the problems of the present’.7 It was not just the classically minded who considered history the most respected of prose genres, and to Defoe’s mind the union merited attention. As the elegant folio size and subscription list of the work attested, Defoe conceived of his History as a proper history which in this period still meant political history – written by and about great men engaged in public affairs.8 Within the conventions of this neo-classical tradition, the union qualified as subject matter even if Defoe, who sought to write a political history but was not a ‘great man’, did not. An assembly of relevant documents, minutes, and historical narrative in the tradition of Whitelocke and Rymer, the History presented Anglo-Scottish relations from



Defoe and the Union of 1707 79

the reign of Edward I to Queen Anne as a prolonged chronicle of ‘Proposals for Union between these Kingdoms, [which] met with their particular Obstructions from Popery, French-Interest, Home-Tyranny or CourtIntrigues; These were the only Enemies of Union … AND SO IT IS NOW.’9 This was done in part to assure sceptics that union ‘was not a new idea in these nations’ histories’ but also to drive home his central message that, despite various anti-union interests, ‘concurring Providence, like the Wheel within all their Wheels, center’d them all, in Uniting the Nations’.10 In his unswerving pursuit of Jacobites under any and every partisan bed, however, Defoe’s polite intentions dissipated and the purpose and power of his providential thesis declined into Whiggish cliché.11 It may seem at first surprising that Defoe’s most penetrating historical analyses appeared not in his History but in pamphlets more intentionally polemical and more sparing in scholarly pretence. Public opinion compelled the journalist to address a range of union issues beyond the political historian’s ken: debate over complex socio-economic questions allowed Defoe to develop more fully the rationale behind his providential argument. It is worth emphasizing that Defoe’s Scottish sympathies and prounion stance were forged in the crucible of shrill factionalism. During the first years of Anne’s reign, as relations between Scotland and England soured, Defoe had emerged bloodied but unbowed from prison and pillory to which he had been sentenced for his Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). With his new success as ‘Mr. Review’, he expanded his reputation as the irrepressible, Whiggish bête noire of High Churchmen enraged by occasional conformity and of Tories irritated by the cost of war against France. Among such opponents, arch-Anglicanism combined with blue-water bias in attempts to impede various ministerial objectives including an incorporation with neighbours maligned by many English men and women for their Presbyterianism and poverty. By urging strict and even military measures to impose the Hanoverian settlement upon Scotland, politicians could appear to support the union or the Protestant succession while hoping to undermine them. High Church Tories hoped that talk of armed conflict might exacerbate Anglo-Scottish prejudices and prevent an alliance between English Dissenters and Scottish Presbyterians. Jacobites calculated that real military engagement would divert English troops from the continent, freeing French forces for a Stuart invasion. Indeed, Scottish intransigence over the succession coupled with Louis XIV’s defiant support of the Pretender had increased the possibility of a French-backed Stuart restoration in the north. Despite the fact that Anglo-Scottish tensions could jeopardize national security, there were politicians, both Jacobite and nonJacobite, in Westminster as well as in Edinburgh, who were willing to exploit them. The Tory Lord Haversham was one such party player. Defoe’s engagement with him is illustrative of precisely how and why certain discourses,



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originally marshalled in factional dispute, became part of the larger historical perspective that Defoe brought to bear on the union. In November 1705, Haversham denounced the amelioration of England’s pugnacious Alien Act, attacked the uncooperative Scots and avaricious Dutch for trading with France in wartime, and suggested that the Hanoverian Electress reside in England to secure the succession. The speech itself was meant to embarrass the Whigs and manipulate court supporters in Parliament onto weaker ground, but its printing was a direct bid to agitate public opinion against the conduct of war on the continent and to aggravate English bigotry against the Scots. Defoe condemned the speech as one in which ‘some Snake lies hid in this Grass’ and used the Review to defend both the Scots and the practice of wartime trade.12 The Scots are ‘Too much and Too little united to us for their own prosperity’, Defoe warned, and the English should neither be surprised by nor feel the right to ‘hinder … their taking their Decaying Body into a Course of State Physick, in order to restore it to its Health, Vigour, and Capacity, of acting for itself’.13 At the climax of the quarrel, he countered a second Haversham pamphlet with one of his own, in which he asserted that a union by force was antithetical to the principles of a free nation: our being Superiour to Scotland in Power, does not singly give us a title to suppress them … a Law to force them to declare the Succession of their Crown with ours, Only because we think we can do it, has no Maxim of State in it, but what will justifie the French King in all those Invasions of the Liberties of Europe, and the rights of his Neighbors, for which we think fit to declare War against him. The Justice of Government, has no manner of Dependence upon the Power of it, and our being superior to the Scots in Strength, tho’ that Presumption once cost the Lives of 30,000 English Men, is far from being a reason, why they should not have an Act of Security, nor why the Queen should not pass it; and [for Godolphin] to have advised Her Majesty against it, had been indeed to show the Politician, but to conceal the honest man.14 The allusion was to England’s defeat at Bannockburn, but in conjuring additional historical contexts Defoe went beyond a simple appeal to the English constitutional tradition. The juxtaposition of English and European civil liberties with French absolutism was part of his wider invocation of the historical forces of commerce and conquest, a dialectic he had used in the past to deflect criticisms levelled at England’s ministry. Scottish violations of the Navigation Acts piqued those who, in their aversion to Godolphin and Marlborough’s taxes and troops, preferred to check French aggression through the ‘Police [of] Trade with our wooden walls’.15 Haversham’s castigation of the Scots for




trading with the French sprang from this thicket of country, Tory, and High Church opposition to the court. Defoe was quick to grasp the nettle, exposing this coalition’s indignation as rooted not only in faction but in economic folly as well. Only some ‘Party Cause’ could explain the hypocrisy of using naval force to prevent the Scots from trading with France while allowing the Dutch to do so; only blindness to national interest could explain why the English did not trade with the French themselves.16 Just six months earlier Mr. Review had snapped at Mr. Observator, John Tutchin, Haversham’s former creature, that England’s hallowed ‘wooden walls’ resonated with the echoes of a previous controversy – namely ‘the Dispute about Standing Armies, in the time of King William’.17 In that debate, as we have seen in Chapter 1, Defoe had argued that the forces of commerce had revolutionized military technology and empowered the commons at the expense of a vitiated baronage. He therefore condemned reliance upon the militia and any notion of gothic liberty in favour of a standing army, one subject to the pay of Parliament and command of William, the warrior prince and chief hero in his Protestant pantheon.18 The point of departure for his critique was that characteristically ‘modern’ move, the historicization of his opponents’ central and supposedly transcendent categories. Now, in confronting an entrenched mercantilism and naval chauvinism, Defoe once again found himself exhorting men like Haversham to relinquish comforting national mythologies in the light of fundamental structural change. For the Romans, as for the Goths and Vandals in their turn, poverty had been a ‘Spur to their Valour’, and therefore a condition of military success in the ancient world. In this age of commerce, however, ‘The Art of War has Conquer’d the Bravery of the Warriour’, reiterating his favourite maxim, ‘’tis the longest Purse, and not the longest sword that conquers Nations’. Because victory now belonged to those who could ‘bear the Expence of the War the longest’, a nation must not only build a robust economy but also inflict costly punishment upon an enemy through offensive campaigns. Louis XIV, ‘who fain’d Victories enough [in] the last war to have subdu’d two Worlds, was oblig’d at last, by the meer Expence of the War, to think of making an end of it’.19 Thus, the rise of commerce, which had made obsolete a defensive strategy based upon faith in the county militias, held the same fate for one based solely upon the navy; trade could be borne but not liberated by the towering timber of ‘fair Windsor’.20 Since 1698, when Defoe had pictured the French menace in terms of infantry and artillery, he had developed both his historical theories and journalistic rhetoric. In 1705, he depicted French power: We have Talk’d long of the French aiming at Universal Monarchy, and we have, with the Divine Assistance, given them lately a blow in their Progress that way. But I see no body observes, or at least concern’d about



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the Measures they take, and the Designs they have laid at an Universal Trade … [and this] visible growing Greatness of the French Trade … [is] not the least Article, in the Foundation of the immense Greatness of their Power … the Conquests made by the French upon our Trade, tho’ they do not make an equal Noise in the World; yet like a slow Poison, they are equally Fatal to our Prosperity, with the greatest Victories they obtain; and will in Time, if not prevented, as certainly work in Destruction of these Nations, as it if was wrought by immediate force. And what is still more Unhappy to us, the Mischief of this Encroachment is not discern’d; ’tis a Silent Evil, that creeps upon insensibily, like Dust upon our Cloaths, or Chronical Diseases upon the body, which consumes as surely tho’, not so violently, as Fractures and Contusions on the Members and Feavours in the Blood.21 Most recently, Louis XIV’s plan to ‘engross the Trade and the Wealth of the World’ was manifested in the growing throng of French ships in Spanish harbours as the mercantile interests of the two Catholic and now dynastically linked nations conspired to supplant English merchants in their lucrative exchange of wool manufactures for new world bullion. Naval warfare might be able to protect East India Company trade (and therefore Tory investments) but it could not dislodge French merchants and a puppet-king from Spain in order to save a commercial enterprise which Defoe and others deemed far more essential to the vigour of England’s inland economy and war chest.22 Whatever role mercantilist theory may have played in the conceptualization of a universal commercial monopoly, certain mercantilist policies were now suspect. As a defence of Protestant Europe against the latest manifestation of ‘Universal Monarchy … and the tyranny of the House of Bourbon’, the Dutch and Scots understood, as Haversham and his ilk did not, that wartime embargoes were as ineffective as ‘a Hedge about the Cookoo’.23 Embargoes were ineffective and even obscurantist, for, to Defoe’s mind, the defence of commerce was not only a practical aim, but one of providential proportions. In fact, the ‘Subject of Trade’ had been the intended theme of the Review’s second volume until interrupted by the ‘Violence of Parties … and the Subject of Tacking’, in which the Haversham skirmish served as denouement.24 In resuming his launch ‘into the boundless Ocean of Public Negoce’ immediately thereafter, Defoe proclaimed his belief in the sacred nature of trade itself: the Wisdom and Direction of Nature Natureing, which I call GOD, produced such differing Species of things, all of them in their kind equally Necessary, or at least Useful and Desirable; as insensibly preserves the Dependence, of the most Remote Part of the World upon one another;




and at least makes them useful to each other, and Contributing to one anothers Convenience, Necessity, or Delight. The Variety, both of the Produce and Manufactures … are the Foundations of Trade, and I Entitle Providence to it; not only as it is found in Nature, but as it is found in Customs and Consequences of things; for GOD in whose Infinite foreknowledge, all the Accidents of Time are always present … must be suppos’d to foreknow that Natural Causes consider’d, and to Natural Causes, he had in his Infinite Wisdom by Laws of Nature, submitted all the Variety of Consequences; the Generations of the World, could not subsist in the Manner prescib’d, without the Mutual Assistance, and Concurrence of one another.25 Implicit in this understanding was the expectation that trade not only led to mutual assistance but also to mutual advancement. Defoe’s Baconianism, discussed in Chapter 1, was central to this predilection for a concept of human progress based upon the industry and exchange of men and women engaged in the pursuit of liberty and property.26 Because trade was the key to the divinely ordained moral and material advance of human history, Louis XIV’s bid for a universal monarchy of commerce constituted a direct threat to God’s order. The Review itself had begun in 1704 as a serialized investigation of the rise of French power. Its flexible format enabled Defoe to make explicit, at a moment’s notice, any of a number of implicit themes, including the party pedigree and geopolitical naivety of a blue-water strategy. Haversham’s attack on the Scots certainly prompted Defoe’s consideration of their plight but his defence of their trade with France was decidedly part of his longstanding crusade to instruct a discordant nation to accept its responsibilities as the defender of a free, Protestant, commercial world order. What remains to be examined is the way in which Defoe defended the AngloScottish union as a linchpin to that order, and how the ensuing debate contributed to the developing ideas of plurality, exchange, and sovereignty inherent within it.

iii. Plurality, exchange, and the premises of union Until the treaty commissioners convened in London in April 1706, Defoe’s observations on Scotland and union matters had been sympathetic but intermittent, a subtext in his disputes with Tories over trade, toleration, and war. Although the debate over union had by no means cooled in the first months of 1706, with the demise of the tacking Parliament and its coalition of High Church and blue-water extremists, Defoe turned his attention to other matters. In May, however, he began to focus almost exclusively upon the union question, publishing the first in a series of six essays aimed ‘at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with



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Scotland’. Ironically, Defoe’s tenure as England’s primary pro-union pamphleteer commenced in the employ of Scottish negotiators who had been favourably impressed with his ‘understand[ing] of trade and the interest of nations’.27 That understanding had been shaped by Defoe’s faith in the virtues of plurality and exchange and by his sensitivity to the structural changes through which commerce had supplanted conquest as the basis of national power. Talk of an English conquest of Scotland, though, was precisely what the recent exploitation of Anglo-Scottish hostilities for political gain had encouraged. In hiring Defoe, the Scots had found a public voice sufficiently voluble to combat it. Defoe responded to the increasingly belligerent tone of English public opinion by attacking the parochialism upon which it fed. The raillery he had used to satirize native xenophobia in his best-selling poem of 1702, The True-Born Englishman, gave way to an excoriation of ‘National Prejudices’ in both kingdoms as ‘the worst sort of Humane Antipathies’. Since the reign of Edward I, their sorry legacy to the island of Britain had been one of depredation and bloodshed at home resulting in missed opportunities and a diminished stature abroad.28 In one respect this opening was a cautionary tale, a response to the reciprocal provocations and bellicose rumours of the past year. Even pamphleteers decidedly sceptical of union, notably George Ridpath and James Hodges, made efforts sanely to steer their readers away from the polemics of men like William Atwood and from notions of another Anglo-Scottish armed conflict.29 But Defoe’s affective rhetoric reified their more conventionally expressed warnings. The master of verisimilitude invited his readers to reflect upon the ‘Consequences of Armies ranging [over] an open and defenceless Country’, to hear the groans of widows and children, and to picture ‘the Despair of flourishing Families … with their Fields over run, their Barns and Houses plunder’d and burnt, their Cattle driven away, and their whole Substance destroy’d’. On both sides of the Tweed, ploughshares frequently unearthed the skeletal, ‘miserable Antiquities of eternal Feuds’, and he goaded more genteel readers to consider ‘what noble Branches of their Ancestors spilt their Blood on the desolate Borders’ who now lay ‘buried [and] blended with the Carcasses of the Common People’.30 No doubt Defoe’s arduous ride through the northern counties some weeks later fortified his historical imagination as the first Reviews dispatched from Edinburgh continued to rue the days when ‘the Borders were the Courts of Judicature’ and ‘the Rights of Families and Nations were tryed by the unequal Decision of the Sword’.31 Beneath his depiction of this barbarous and reproving landscape, however, lay Defoe’s bedrock belief in a providential theory of material progress. This first Essay unveiled Defoe’s dogged attempt, unique among the union debaters, to construct a corresponding British identity, which he termed ‘a New National Interest’, predicated upon England’s and Scotland’s shared commercial future and Protestant past.32 Other aspects of their past,




therefore, were subject to revision: Bannockburn again was cited, along with Flodden, Musselborough, and Dunbar, with the intended message that these battles should not be remembered as respective national victories, but lamented as blots upon a British escutcheon. Moving from the historical to the statistical, Defoe then cited the trebling of land values, which the island’s most recent irenic interval had brought to England’s northern counties, in order to demonstrate the ‘Security and quiet Possession of … Wealth and Improvements’ which union would afford the ‘common man’ on both sides of the Tweed.33 This conceptualization of a national identity founded upon material rather than military achievement marked Defoe’s participation in two critical Scottish cultural controversies of the period: the conceit of its martial heritage and the feudal and futile nature of its agrarian system. ‘Men never seek Bread by Arms’ until ‘Want … renders them a little desperate’, he remarked. This became especially true around 1500, a date which Defoe, like Andrew Fletcher, had identified as the point when the growth of trade and luxury in Europe had induced the decline of armed baronial independence. In England, this historical trend was accompanied by the expansion of a prosperous freehold tenantry, the ascendancy of the House of Commons, and the need for a standing army – all of which Defoe had spelled out in 1698. But in Scotland, want and desperation were the legacy of a nobility who, in abandoning their gothic tastes but not their gothic constitution, had rack-rented their estates, thereby creating a discouraged peasantry and dysfunctional economy. Obliged to seek opportunity elsewhere, Scottish yeomen made their way as mercenaries abroad, where at further ‘Expense of their Country’s Impoverishment, [they] gain the empty Reputation of being the best Soldiers in the World’.34 Possessing formidable prowess and pride but an empty purse, the Scots were ‘only valued as Regiments in Pay, not as a Nation’.35 In 1698, Defoe had challenged the civic humanist ideal which defined personal liberty and identity in terms of one’s public military and political capacity. Now, in the union debate, Defoe sought to extend the scope of his critique in order to expose the literal and cultural bankruptcy of liberty and national identity if predicated upon a martial heritage and upon political and legal institutions made increasingly obsolete in a commercial world.36 Lest the English resist union on the grounds that Scotland’s difficulties were innate to its land or people, Defoe repeatedly emphasized that historical circumstance and hypocrisy had created the imbalance of wealth between the two neighbouring kingdoms. As he had tried to persuade Haversham, the Scots were not solely to blame for their economic plight. Since the union of crowns under James I, the English had ‘remov’d their Court, Engross’d their Trade, drawn off their Gentry, and thus, their Capital is Destroy’d; they wither under our Shade, and we not only keep the Sun-beams of Prosperity from them, but we drop a sort of bitter Water



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upon them’.37 The Essay also acknowledged Scottish complaints that English policies ‘exclude[d] them in Advantages as Aliens, and use[d] them as Natives in Cases to their Loss’, as exemplified by the Navigation Acts and Darien fiasco. Union would mend these injustices, Defoe argued, by guaranteeing a ‘Freedom of Trade’ throughout Britain and by instituting ‘English Articles of Possession’ between Scottish landlords and their tenants, thereby ensuring prosperity and improvement for the entire island.38 Should his English readers fear the burden to be imposed by fairness to the Scots, a second Essay at Removing National Prejudices assured them of redoubled benefits, both for England’s colonial and inland commercial development, and for London’s pre-eminence as the ‘Emporium of Britain’, the centre of wealth where ‘all Circles will meet’.39 Although the first two essays devoted more space to economic matters, Defoe did identify objections to the coexistence of two established churches within one polity as perhaps the ‘greatest Obstruction’ to union and he examined the various components of the problem.40 He cited the Dutch and Swiss unions as successful (if not entirely apt) examples of composite settlements in order to refute the contemporary axiom which held religious pluralism to be incompatible with political stability. In keeping with the controlling theme of the essay, he blamed ‘Party-prejudice’, and high Anglican, anti-Presbyterian rhetoric in particular, for arousing popular jealousies with regard to Church and Kirk.41 In response to fears, primarily Scottish ones, that incorporation might jeopardize the religious status quo, he argued that the union was ‘not to ALTER, but to CONFIRM’ the present settlement in both kingdoms.42 Above all, Defoe tried to emphasize the common bond of Protestantism between the two kingdoms: ‘The Difference in both Nations is not of Religion, but in Religious Circumstance; both are Protestant, both Orthodox in Principle, and equally opposite to Popery, and Antichristianism.’43 In the present crisis over union, however, Anglicans and Presbyterians were nursing their differences, not the pan-Protestant ideal which had inspired their forebears and which Defoe was trying to promote in his construction of a British national consciousness. Circumstances demanded that the treaty preserve the division of British Protestantism in perpetuity. Defoe’s defence of this arrangement represented a novel application of the logic of exchange and improvement to the traffic of mental and moral, as well as material, goods. While wishing that those ‘worshipping the same God’, and sharing the ‘same faith, and the same redeemer’ might agree on the ‘same terms’, he submitted to the fact that ‘inscrutible [sic] Providence has directed otherwise’, concluding: Perhaps these things are suffer’d in the Church of Christ, for the Exercise of Charity, Forebearance, and mutual Temper, of Christians to prevent worse Inconveniences, which from the Pride of Prosperity, the Power




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This was no mere rationalization on Defoe’s part but an argument with a complex etiology at once both Baconian and Ciceronian. Defoe, as we have seen, embraced Bacon’s programmatic sense that the natural world was to be fully explored in order to put it to use. The contention that Providence admitted ecclesiastic plurality in order to promote the exercise of Christian virtues paralleled his argument, cited above, that God had created a world of diverse resources to encourage ‘Trade’, ‘Dependence’, and ‘Mutual Assistance’.45 Also implicit in this argument was the idea that individuals improved their moral personalities through the process of correspondence and conversation – an ethos of ‘politeness’, or ‘sociability’, generally ascribed to the third Earl of Shaftesbury, and more broadly associated with the works of Addison and Hume.46 Because it might lead to conversations about the Deity, however, the trajectory of ‘politeness’ had a Socinian endpoint unwelcome to Trinitarians like Defoe: hence his occasional critiques of Arians and Deists and his repeated use of the word ‘orthodox’ to accent the Trinitarianism of both Church and Kirk throughout the course of the debate. Far more palatable to Defoe were the ecclesiastical implications contained in the agendas set forth by Bacon and the new scientists. They sought experiential knowledge of the natural world in order to distinguish it more clearly from the supernatural, the territory of enthusiasm. This sharp separation of the natural and supernatural worlds fostered an Erastianism which was entirely compatible with the sort of settlement demanded by the union: the toleration of Trinitarian Nonconformists and the acceptance of two established churches within one polity.

iv. Fundamental law, majority rule, and the Kirk The ‘Charity, Forebearance and mutual Temper’ which Defoe had hoped for were not in evidence during the summer of 1706. Correspondence with his patron, Robert Harley, reveals a growing awareness by both men that Scottish Presbyterians had been campaigning against the treaty both at home and in England. In September, Harley dispatched Defoe to Edinburgh.47 He arrived in early October to find the Scottish Parliament already in session and mobbed daily by anti-union protesters outside; ‘The Church men … goeing mad’; and his own two Essays, written to cool English passions, now reprinted and circulated to fuel Scottish ones.48 Even before this first-hand experience with Scottish discontent, though, Defoe had introduced to the debate another weapon from his discursive arsenal. Adapting quickly to its author’s changes in rhetoric and residence, the Review, in late September, presented its readers with a doggerel salute to



and Glory of an United Church, might in Conjunction with Human Infirmity, have risen in the World.44


UNION is Nature’s strong Cement; The Life of Power, and Soul of Government: Without it, all the World’s a Mob; Confusion’s Universal Monarch of the Globe … Even Government it self must dye, In Wild Uncultivated Anarchy.49 At this stage, the rhetoric simply warned readers that another AngloScottish conflict would result in the dissolution of government. But as public apprehension of union by force shifted to that of union by ratified treaty, so too did Defoe’s use of this discourse. As early as 1703, the Presbyterian minister and propagandist, James Hodges, had argued that a united British Parliament would not adhere to treaty provisions which protected Scottish interests. By 1706, the Scots had come to doubt completely the safety of the Kirk in the hands of a parliamentary majority composed of bishops and staunchly Anglican MPs. Probably in September, pamphlets by Ridpath and Fletcher appeared which reiterated this distrust.50 It must also be noted that all three writers made this point in the context of promoting various schemes for a federal union which would preserve both the Scottish Parliament and Kirk. While accepting a Presbyterian push for added insurance in an Act of Security, Defoe attacked notions that incorporation would threaten the religious settlement of either nation. In a third Essay at Removing National Prejudices, Defoe argued that should any power, including a united British Parliament, tamper with the treaty or the rights of either church, then the Union is Broke, the Constitution is Overthrown … The fundamental is destroy’d, the Government dissolves, and the whole Island becomes a Mob, one Universal Rabble. Just as in the case of a Tyrant, dispensing with the Laws and Setting up Arbitrary Power, Property ceases, Authority dissolves, Constitution suffocates, and the National Capacity dyes.51 To argue that some future Parliament would risk such an action was to ‘say a Parliament may be mad’ enough to ‘annihilat[e] their own Body’.52 The language reminds us that Defoe was a man of ‘Revolution Principles’, willing to invoke dissolution theory even after most Whigs had settled upon less radical discourses by which to explain changes in government and power. Even more significant, though, is the fact that, in responding to public opinion at large and to challenges made by other able pamphleteers, Defoe had elevated the Treaty of Union to the status of fundamental law. Conversely, commentators seeking a federal union argued that in accepting



‘Peace and Union’ whose presence brought nations happiness, and whose absence, their destruction:

the treaty, the Scottish Parliament was, in fact, violating fundamental law. The idea that a foedus might become, in effect, a social contract was a politically explosive one. In an important sense, it terminated the status of the Scots as a people in a way that Defoe’s attempts to forge the idea of a British people – as Protestant, free, commercial, and improving – had not. At the heart of the matter was the problem of the relationship between the represented and their representatives. Both Ridpath and Hodges had published pamphlets arguing that the abolition of separate parliaments challenged the fundamental law of the original rights of freeholders. Consequently, the Scottish Parliament could not ratify the present treaty without first appealing to the freeholding electorate.53 In response to this line of argument, Defoe agreed with its first premise: the Right of a Freeholder is an Original, ’tis claimed by his Possession, which is to be trac’d back to God Almighty’s first Donation, when he gave Man Possession of the Earth to him and his Heirs … from whence ’tis easy to deduce the Right of all Government in the World.54 But he went on to say that the treaty did not alter those rights, only their circumstances. The right to change those circumstances, to reapportion representation, rested squarely with Parliament. It could alter the terms of representation for counties, towns, and corporations without their special consent and had done so on numerous occasions in the past. The treaty was merely the exercise of that authority writ large. The argument betrayed an assumption on Defoe’s part that Parliament was not just an expression of the people’s will but an embodiment of their original right. Like his description of the dissolution of government, cited above, Defoe’s defence of the rights of freeholders has the Lockeian ring we have been conditioned to expect in his writings. But rounding up the usual suspects will not do if we wish to understand his emphasis upon the idea of Parliament as a mystical incorporation. Putting aside Defoe’s theoretical beliefs for a moment, it is important to note that he blamed alternative conceptions of Parliament for creating a series of practical hazards in the ratification process. Unionists successfully avoided the first of these by rejecting early calls by the opposition for a parliamentary recess so that members could consult their constituents about the various articles. Such a delay, Defoe later reflected, might have ‘furnish[ed] a Variety of Accidents to disappoint the whole’.55 At this juncture, Hodges’ third treatise against incorporation had appeared, which Defoe wrote to Harley ‘has done more Mischief than a thousand men’.56 Not only did it incite the ‘poor people’ by posing ‘the dark Side of everything’ and concealing ‘the true Sense of things’; it and other anti-incorporating pamphlets encouraged constituents to turn their ‘private Letters into Publick Addresses, and those [in turn] introduc’d Mobs, Tumults, Insultings of



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Magistrates … and all manner of Popular Disorders; Till, at last, it came to downright Insurrection’.57 However monocausal this was as an explanation, Defoe clearly linked freeholder demands that representatives act as agents accountable to the voters’ beck and call with the stream of addresses of protest to Parliament and with wider public unrest. In reviewing State of the Controversy, Defoe could not hide his contempt for its author’s assertion that ‘By the Constitution of Parliaments, the Laws are to have their Rise from the Will and Humour of the People, signified by the Lords and Commons.’ Such remarks, Defoe grumbled, insulted ‘Parliamentary Dignity’ and ‘endeavour’d to stir the People to Mob, Clamour and Tumult’.58 Defoe too, in his day, had been accused of insulting Parliament and inciting faction, most notably after his infamous 1701 petition Legion’s Memorial and after his 1702 Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, a rejoinder to a Tory MP.59 Both of these pamphlets contain Defoe’s most overt defences of the right of a people to hold their representatives to account. As explained in Chapter 3, the Nonjuring polemicist Charles Leslie was the first to tar these works with a Lockeian brush and Defoe’s political thought has been linked with that of Locke ever since. Conal Condren has shown, however, that the Original Power displays a considerable debt to George Lawson’s Politica sacra et civilis. Indeed, in spite of its assertions of popular sovereignty, the Original Power, like the Politica, propounded a corporate conception of the people and their representatives.60 This Lawsonian legacy helps to explain Defoe’s belief that the Scottish Parliament, as the embodiment of freeholder rights, had the power to transfer representation of those rights to another institution, namely a unified British Parliament. There is, however, an even more direct connection between Defoe’s Original Power and his union activities. While Defoe had described members of Parliament as ‘an abridgement of the many volumes of the English Nation’, he often elided the concept of a corporate people with that of the majority.61 His watered-down corporate theory made him very aware of the power of forms of public opinion which appeared to speak for that majority, as had his Legion’s Memorial. Thus he expended a great deal of effort to minimize and even denigrate the quality and quantity of addresses to the Scottish Parliament lest they be taken, especially by the English, as ‘universal’, or as proof of ‘a rooted Aversion in the Generality of the Scots Nation against the Union’.62 Consequently, he frequently portrayed addresses as either orchestrated and signed primarily by Jacobites, or as representing only poor and insignificant parts of the nation, or as generally exaggerated in number.63 His overall campaign to repudiate both the forms and theory behind Scottish protests goaded the Jacobite, Patrick Abercromby, into republishing some of Defoe’s earlier arguments in an avowal of Scottish rights and Scottish expression.64 Put on the defensive, Defoe reaffirmed the right of freeholders to oppose assaults on their fundamental rights but denied that Parliament’s




ratification of the treaty invaded those rights in any way. Moreover, he explicitly located original right in the opinion of ‘the majority’, a body whose numbers were easy to manipulate but difficult to gauge. He was, however, certain that no majority of freeholders had yet appeared to constrain the House against union.65 In 1701, Defoe’s Legion’s Memorial and his offer to append the petition with the signatures of 200,000 Englishmen was clearly intended and understood as a symbolic representation of the people. But his conception of the collective body, ambiguously presented in the Original Power, would further weaken when employed in the union debate. In Defoe’s navigation through the various streams of union opinion, the language of popular sovereignty had inched a step closer towards becoming the language of majority rule.

v. Defoe’s discourses and the new national identity As England’s chief pamphleteer for the union of 1707, Defoe was an active agent in, and chronicler of, negotiations which transformed two kingdoms into an imperial power with a political and economic destiny. The regime of William III had introduced England to a new military and financial reality and had committed its people to a greater role in protecting the European balance of power against the ‘mighty Nimrod’, the aspiring universal monarch, Louis XIV. Much of Defoe’s pro-union writing demonstrates his ability to perceive the rapidly changing relationship between economics and politics. For the most part, Defoe accepted these developments as necessary, if not progressive, but they demanded corresponding changes in Anglo-Scottish relations which would give new meaning to the concept of a British imperial state. In urging the English and the Scots to accept the union, he was also encouraging them to accept a new national identity. The new British nation needed to embrace its providentially ordained and historically inevitable role as champion of a free, Protestant, and commercial world order. The subject of identities is a sensitive one, all the more so when insiders perceive that an outsider is defining one for them, and the Scots mounted a vigorous campaign of their own to defend their sovereignty and cultural integrity. In one of the more famous defences of Scottish independence, John Hamilton, Lord Belhaven, implored his fellow members in the Edinburgh Parliament not to sign the union treaty: ‘I think I see our Ancient Mother CALEDONIA … attending the Fatal Blow, and breathing out her last … None can destroy Scotland save Scotland’s self; hold your Hands from the Pen.’66 Defoe had certain grasp of his own pen. Months of Reviews, many essays, shorter pamphlets, and poems, as well as his History attest to a massive political and literary effort on behalf of the Treaty of Union. Defoe had two strategies: one to address anti-union propaganda and the other, to promote a compelling vision of a united British nation. He con-



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ducted his assignment in three sets of discourses – providential, Baconian, and natural law – which developed in compelling ways themselves. His use of providential rhetoric, including both its inscrutable and progressive variants, placed the union either in the path of God’s direct intervention or within the indirect but divinely inspired unfolding of time. Defoe’s Baconian arguments also betrayed a providential logic of improvement. Although he made occasional reference to continental thinkers during the course of the debate, this chapter has focused on a subset of the natural law tradition known as ‘Revolution Principles’ and on Defoe’s English political inheritance. All three discourses represent a central feature of Defoe’s Presbyterian world-view in that each in its own way could be said to support a Dissenting ideology which stressed that man should exercise his reason to understand both divine will and the world around him. At their most basic level, all three traditions accepted nature as the continuous manifestation of God’s will and perceived change in the physical world as a sign of this process. They could therefore be used to explain or even justify changing material conditions in society and to argue that human relations, including political ones, would naturally develop accordingly and/or should be encouraged to do so. In choosing these discourses to defend the union, Defoe adopted an historical scheme which argued that socioeconomic process determined the validity of political arrangements. He could also argue that the expansion of commerce was part of the divine order. What is epistemologically significant in this is that the process of exchange, both material and moral, figured prominently in developing social theories during the eighteenth century, including those associated with the Scottish Enlightenment. In his union writings, we can see Defoe, the journalist, participating in the efforts to understand mutuality, experience, and the historical process as principles in themselves. Ratification of the Treaty of Union in January 1707 may have represented the culmination of Defoe’s original mission but it did not end his Scottish sojourn. Instead, Defoe remained in Scotland awaiting further instructions from Harley and hoping to be rewarded for his efforts with a government post in the new United Kingdom. When neither of these materialized, despite his repeated pleas, Defoe occupied himself as best he could.67 He continued to write the Review and pamphlets about subjects relating to the union and began working on his full-length history of the event. He dabbled in various investments and business ventures in Scotland, joined the Society for the Reformation of Manners in Edinburgh, and kept Harley informed of persistent Scottish reservations about the treaty.68 For the most part, however, Defoe spent the year fretting about his finances and feeling abandoned by Harley. Relief finally came in November in the form of much-needed funds and instructions to return to London. Defoe’s homecoming was short and not so sweet. Political infighting led Harley to resign as Secretary of State in February 1708. A despondent Defoe




remained loyal to Harley and wrote to his patron to express his ‘Desire to be The Servant of your Worst Dayes’, but Defoe’s future activities now fell under the direction of Godolphin, Lord Treasurer and Harley’s ministerial rival.69 Following an attempted landing by the Pretender, Godolphin called upon Defoe’s skills as an informant and propagandist, sending him back to Scotland in March. The invasion was abortive but it had stoked northern Jacobite sympathies and union antipathies, potentially jeopardizing a Whig election victory.70 After the government’s successful, if seamy, management of the 1708 general election, Defoe remained in Scotland working on his History of the Union, returning to London in December.71 Personal rather than political reasons obliged Defoe to make his next trip to Scotland. In the autumn of 1709 he enrolled his son, Benjamin, in the University of Edinburgh which unlike Oxford and Cambridge was open to English Dissenters. He stayed on through November probably to check up on investments and interests he had established in various Scottish newspapers. It is ironic perhaps that interests in the business of Scottish public opinion caused England’s premier journalist to miss the beginning of one of the greatest causes célèbres to captivate English public opinion – the trial of Dr Sacheverell.



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Correspondence, Credit, and Commerce: Defoe and the Instability of Meaning, 1709–1713

i. Introduction The fifth of November has proved to be a momentous date in the history of Britain. For English Protestants the date commemorated the foiling of a Catholic plot to blow up Parliament in 1605. For Whigs it became the anniversary of William of Orange’s landing in 1688 and the commencement of the Glorious Revolution. For Tories and High Churchmen it became a day of deliverance thanks to Henry Sacheverell’s celebrated sermon, The Perils of False Brethren, preached in St Paul’s Cathedral on 5 November 1709. The printed text quickly became a bestseller. Sacheverell’s sermon, show trial, minimal sentence, and subsequent celebratory tour did not just serve as a rallying point and electoral bonanza for a political party – it transformed the political climate of a nation.1 For Defoe, the affair was a bitter reminder of the far harsher experiences of prison, pillory, and ruin he had endured in 1703 for ridiculing by parody the very sentiments which Sacheverell fulminated from the pulpit and then disavowed at his trial.2 Sacheverell’s apostasy before the bar and the subsequent flood of insincere addresses to Parliament and Queen Anne seeking to capitalize on the whole Sacheverell spectacle provided Defoe with additional evidence that various forms of speech associated with ‘the most Solemn Actions in the World’ were becoming debased. The corruption of language once again became a central theme in his writings. Oaths, addresses, promises, common speech, the very ‘Meaning of Words’ and ‘visible Construction of Mens Actions’ were being devalued to the point of ‘NON-SIGNIFICATION’.3 Defoe now contemplated a world in which signifiers might start to lose their meaning. It was a disturbing insight and pessimistic comment for one who saw the exchange of ideas, signified by words, as part of God’s providential plan for man’s improvement. In once again raising the ‘Bloody Flag and Banner of Defiance’ against religious toleration, Sacheverell had repudiated Defoe’s innovative hope that interactions between churches in an Erastian polity could constitute 95



5

an additional realm of exchange and improvement. This prospect was introduced during the occasional conformity controversy when Defoe reiterated his acceptance of the established Church of England as long as Dissenters were granted toleration, thereby enabling them to compete as religious bodies. He expressed his belief that amicable competition would encourage all ministers and their congregations to prove and improve their moral worth. In trying to quell English and Scottish fears during the union debate, Defoe employed the same logic by suggesting that the maintenance of both Church and Kirk as established ecclesiastical bodies would encourage Christian charity and improvement while simultaneously preventing the growth of theological heterodoxy. Defoe’s hopes proved illusory when the hysteria Sacheverell generated incited the Tories to declare open season on Dissenters, Whigs, and those segments of society impugned as ‘the monied interest’. All three of these categories were associated with the most obvious realms of exchange, trade, and credit. By 1710, a decade of war and the revolutionary steps taken to pay for it had brought into being a world of financial speculation which only confirmed those cultural anxieties first expressed by the anti-army writers of the 1690s.4 During Queen Anne’s reign, the mechanisms of both public and private credit had become increasingly more sophisticated and indispensable.5 Since its inception, when the government authorized the newly chartered Bank of England to sell £1,200,000 worth of stock on the security of future tax revenues, the National Debt had swollen from £6.1 million in 1694 to £21.4 million by 1710.6 Through public credit, the state had discovered the means by which exponentially to increase military expenditure, enabling it to wage a protracted war and secure a favourable peace, the terms of which would be crucial to Britain’s future colonial expansion and commercial strength. Domestically, however, unprecedented levels of taxation, inflation, and massive public debt also increased party strife, exacerbated religious divisions, and stimulated passions, fantasies, and opinions at every level of society. Although barter and cash transactions occurred, both inland and foreign trade were largely conducted by credit – through the exchange of various commercial documents like promissory notes and bills of exchange. Government securities were also traded, their value fluctuating according to the public’s confidence in the state. The signs or tokens of this credit economy were various forms of scrip – tickets, tallies, bills, bonds, and shares – and they too were subject to discounting and devaluation. Numerous prints and cartoons from the period depict a society awash in meaningless paper.7 In 1720–1 South Sea Company stock ballooned beyond shareholders’ imaginations only to be rendered practically worthless when the bubble burst. In Colin Nicholson’s words, ‘the seemingly perverse and unpredictable relationship between opinion and fantasy and business confidence began to assume the dimensions of a social power’.8



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Defoe’s concern about signs losing their meaning was at its most intense at times of instability in the Stock Exchange, as in 1710 and 1720 when politicians sought to manipulate the national debt for partisan purposes. For Defoe, this had an epistemological significance beyond political tactics. He fervently believed in the idea of the exchange of goods, material, moral, and mental, as a route to improvement. The inherent danger in this scheme was that the tokens which made exchange possible might lose their meaning. In a world increasingly dependent upon representations, religious and political toleration became necessary in new ways: to prevent factionalism from devising oaths which people could not keep and making addresses they did not believe (so emptying words of their meaning) or manipulating credit for party reasons (so emptying money of its meaning). Just as he had sought to defend the innovations of a standing army and the formation of a single polity with two established churches, Defoe justified the rise of commerce and credit as historical developments using the discourses of Providence, the New Science, and natural law as well as a variety of rhetorical, affective, and functionalist strategies which, as a seasoned journalist, he continued to develop.

ii. ‘What all people are busy about, but not one in forty understands’: the decline of meaning and the rise of credit Because he was in Edinburgh during the autumn of 1709, it was a month before Defoe’s first published responses to the uproar over Sacheverell’s sermon appeared. As Mr. Review, he apologized for departing from his usual stance as a man of moderation, explaining that because of Sacheverell and the High Church party, ‘I suffer’d the Overthrow of my Fortune and Family, and under the Weight of which I remain as a banish’d Man to this Day’. Nevertheless, Defoe was grateful that ‘the Wonders of Retaliating Providence’ would bring the doctor and his faction to justice and that his portrayal of them in his Shortest Way had been vindicated.9 However much abuse he received for accusing ‘High-Flyers … [of] bloody Designs’, he felt the world could not fail to believe him now that ‘they have it from the Pulpit, from the very Mouth of the Oracle of that Party’. He was also grateful for such transparent, if evil, enemies in an ‘Age of Plot and Deceit, of Contradiction and Paradox … [in which] it is very hard, under all these masks, to see the true Countenance of any Man’, who willingly ‘throw off their Disguises, and tell us what they are, and what they mean’. The greatest danger to Dissent, he argued, had always been posed by more circumspect opponents.10 Once again he expressed his distaste for hypocrisy, the confusion of categories, and the ‘ambo-dexters’ of religion and politics – occasional conformists, juring Jacobites, intolerant tolerationists, and all others whose actions contradicted their professed beliefs.



Defoe and the Instability of Meaning, 1709–1713 97

Most people read The Perils of False Brethren as an attack on the Revolution settlement and an affront to the Queen and her ministers for failing to defend the Church adequately, and this view was the basis for the articles of impeachment. Defoe returned to London in late January 1710, confident that the High Church had ‘effectually pull[ed] Vengeance, both human and Divine, upon their own heads’ but his assumptions were premature.11 As the prosecution began presenting its case on 27 February, pro-Sacheverell demonstrations and riots broke out in the City. On 1 March, mobs attacked Dissenting homes, sacked meeting houses, and threatened the Bank of England. High Church tracts proliferated, some of them directly attacking Defoe. Sacheverell, proving himself more of an ‘ambo-dexter’ than Defoe had thought, denied the charges and, in his speech before the Lords, reversed himself on many of the positions he had taken in his sermon. A divided Whig leadership found Sacheverell guilty but lost its resolve in the face of declining national support and gave him the lightest of sentences. No propagandizing by Defoe or anyone else could make this into a Whig victory, even a hollow one; it was a disaster. Sacheverell was soon ‘enveloped … in an atmosphere of popular delirium which today would be the envy of any pop idol’s public relations team’.12 In April the Tory party began an orchestrated campaign to inundate Queen Anne and Parliament with anti-Whig, anti-Dissent addresses which called for a new ministry led by true supporters of the Church and crown. Ignoring insinuations made by Whig directors of the Bank of England that a change in government would damage public credit, the Queen sacked her Whig ministers and prorogued Parliament. In the autumn Sacheverell’s apotheosis delivered an electoral landslide for the Tories who would dominate the last four years of Anne’s reign. Troubled by Sacheverell’s insincere acceptance of Revolution Principles at his trial and by the extreme royalism of recent Tory propaganda (which on the surface seemed to compliment the Queen but hinted at Jacobitism) Defoe wrote A New Test of the Sence of the Nation (1710). This tract has been interpreted as an optimistic, bantering pamphlet, ‘full of fun’,13 but this misses the point. The burden of this 91-page denunciation is Defoe’s preoccupation with the betrayal of meaning itself and the way in which language, from common conversation to the most sacred oaths, was being emptied of any correspondence with people’s actions. In contrast to his analysis of language in the Essay upon Projects (1697) in which he declared that custom was the ‘best Authority for Words … but Reason must be the Judge of Sense in Language, and Custom can never prevail over it’, A New Test of the Sence of the Nation warned readers of ‘a new Tyranny of Custom, which is now invading us with Exotick Significations of Words’ and was rendering all ‘Oaths, Abjurations, [and] Associations’ meaningless.14 In 1697, Defoe had argued that ‘Words … like Ceremonies in Religion’ were subject to the ‘Magistrate’ of Custom, but ‘Sense, like the Essentials’ of reli-



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gion was ‘Truth … sullen and the same, ever was and ever will be’.15 Now, it seemed, custom had established an ‘indefeizible Title’ to be ‘The Sence of the Nation’ and ‘by her absolute Authority in the Kingdom of Speech, has full Power to cause what Constructions she pleases to be put upon Words, and to cause them to be understood as best may serve to her Royal Ends and Purposes’.16 Defoe proceeded ironically to recommend that the people of Britain accept the tyranny of custom which made words meaningless because it was the only way to understand the politics and manners of the day. The ‘Great Usefulness and Convenience … Reasonableness, and indeed, Necessity of Submitting’ to the new tyranny of meaningless words, he argued, was best explained by comparing it to ‘the Copernican System of Philosophy’. Like the heliocentric model, it too contained anomalies, defied common sense, and could not be proved, but one accepted it because it explained so many other things. By employing this new model, premised on the idea that words were meaningless, Defoe promised his readers they would be able to understand ‘all the strange Phenomena in our Politicks’. It would help explain, for example, the contradiction of ‘Abjuring the Pretender, and yet Acting for his interest’ and help to reconcile the ‘Doctrine of Hereditary Right, and Non-resistance, with the Act of Succession and the Revolution’. In fact, many contradictory words and behaviours could be understood, thereby implicitly exculpating people from a whole range of charges – profanity, prevarication, perjury, even treason. By accepting the fact that custom had rendered words meaningless, one might even absolve High Churchmen from the charge that they had purposely set out to deceive James II by their flattering addresses; rather, James had mistakenly read their ‘customary Piece[s] of Extravagance’ as a true indication of his power and their devotion.17 Oaths of political allegiance, abjurations, and political addresses provided the ‘best illustration’ that language had been overrun with non-signification. The oath of God had been hijacked ‘to serve Parties and publick Interests, and therefore, contrary to its Institution, [had been] plac’d as a Test of Civil Distinction, a Key … to Civil Preferments, and Introduction to publick Employment, a Support to Parties, and a Property to Hypocrits’; but because ‘it is received without Thinking [and] administered without Meaning’, it too now ‘signifies Nothing … and stands for a Cypher’. Custom had left ‘the Good People of England … [with] no other Testimony of their Sincerity and Honesty, either to God, their Sovereign, or themselves, than that they had no Meaning at all in what they said’. Even the ‘Common Conversation of Men’, Defoe lamented, had become like ‘Froth upon your Drink’ or ‘meer Vapour, without any Signification’. A man who would not dare perjure himself in court might, nevertheless, ‘swear a Thousand StreetOaths in an Hour, to the Truth of a Thing which he knows nothing of, or to do something he never intends, or that he did something he never




thought of, and yet remain a Man of Honour’. Meaning might still cling to words in a court of law, notwithstanding Sacheverell’s recent performance, but it had disappeared from everyday speech. People, Defoe explained, had come to rely upon these ‘Non-Entities of Speech … to fill up the Vacancies of Elocution … assist the Passions’, and take the place of ‘Sincerity’. These non-signifying words once considered the ‘Excrement of the Passions’, custom and the new ‘sence of the nation’ now dictated be accepted as passions’ harmless replacements.18 In a postscript, Defoe admitted to being completely ‘Ironical’ in recommending that people accept custom’s tyranny over language. His intention was to show that the present ‘tumultuous Way of Mobbing our Government by Addresses, has no Manner of Good in it, but a great deal of Evil’. It was his aim, he declared, ‘to exhort the People of Britain, to leave off this simple, nothing-meaning Way’ of conducting public affairs. By flattering the queen with false professions of loyalty, the Tories were ‘playing Bo-peep with their Sovereign’. It was imperative, he concluded, to restore ‘Vertue and Signification’ to political speech and to elect ‘Men of Meaning, [and] Men of Sence’ to Parliament.19 The forthcoming general election of 1710 was indeed the immediate context in which this text was written but Defoe could have chosen a number of strategies to counter the Tory campaign which had saturated the public realm with addresses in order to force the Whigs out of office. The pamphlet instead reflected Defoe’s growing perception that it was not just common vice and the increasing jargon of the professional classes which was corrupting language, as he had hypothesized in the 1690s, but the ferocity of party politics and religious factionalism of the last decade in particular. In the midst of the summer ministerial reshuffle, Harley was made Chancellor of the Exchequer and the next year, Earl of Oxford and Lord Treasurer. After the general election, Harley’s primary political objectives were to negotiate a lasting and favourable peace with France and to keep his more high-flying colleagues in check. By employing two of the greatest writers of the age, Defoe and Swift, as his star propagandists, Harley used the press to an even greater extent than he had when last in power and certainly more effectively than any other politician of the day. 20 Defoe’s first assignment from the queen’s new leading minister was to restore public confidence in credit. Even though the Bank’s implied threat to the queen had failed to save the government and a Tory landslide had swept the Whigs out of office, party magnates went ahead and ‘manipulated the stocks to create a credit crisis which would, at the very least, embarrass the new administration, at worst, emasculate it’.21 That summer and autumn Defoe used the Review to address the Whigs, primarily to chastise them, and wrote his Essay upon Public Credit and Essay upon Loans to convince the public at large that credit was beyond the power of any one party or minister, including the recently dismissed Whig, Godolphin, to control.22



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As Mr. Review, Defoe had written about credit at length in the past and had been addressing the recent slump in stocks since June, most notably in his depictions of credit as money’s coy younger sister, potentially powerful but often fickle and fearful, courted by all yet beholden to none.23 From John Pocock’s reading of credit as a reincarnation of the goddess Fortuna, to feminist arguments that she typifies the problematic portrayal of the transgressive female body, the allegory of Lady Credit has become something of an eighteenth-century locus classicus for scholars. In recent years, however, an interpretive divide seems to have developed between historians and literary scholars as to whether Defoe wished to ground credit in the realm of probability and experience or in that of fiction and imagination.24 There is no reason why Lady Credit could not have her feet in both camps or move between the two, but Defoe certainly sought to ground her in the realm of experience and he did this by appealing to history and to natural philosophy. Credit in itself, Defoe argued, was based upon an established material history and was a necessary feature in a world designed for trade by God’s providential wisdom. It was stock-jobbers who injected and inflated materiality to the point of unreality, turned soap into soap bubbles. By bubbling the price of a stock they turned it into ‘Air … and the worst sort of Air too, for it is ten times a more convectible Element than that we breath in. ’Tis an Element GOD never made, and ’tis a Trade he never bless’d.’25 Credit was natural and divinely sanctioned; what stockjobbers did was not. Lady Credit did not make an appearance in either of Defoe’s 1710 essays but this did not prevent Defoe from addressing the fascinating and perplexing nature of the issue, a subject ‘all people are busy about, but not one in forty understands’. ‘Like the soul in the body’, he began in the Essay upon Public Credit, ‘it acts all substance, yet it is itself immaterial; it gives motion, yet itself cannot be said to exist; it creates forms yet has itself no form’.26 In fact, Defoe admitted, revealing his predilection for New Science methods, it was easier ‘to describe its operations, rather than define its nature’. This approach yielded a number of analogies to the natural world: Credit is a consequence, not a cause; the effect of a substance, not a substance; ’tis the sunshine, not the sun; the quickening something, call it what you will, that gives life to trade, gives being to the branches and moisture to the root; it is the oil of the wheel, the marrow in the bones, the blood in the veins, and the spirits in the heart of all the negoce, trade, cash, and commerce in the world.27 Credit was also an important development in the history of trade which began in that crucial age of conjectural history when the population of the ancient world had expanded to the point at which nations or tribes encountered neighbouring peoples and discovered the benefits of mutual




exchange or barter. From this period of its infancy, Defoe explained, commerce ‘extend[ed] every way into all the corners of the world’ including the British Isles whose ancient inhabitants ‘exchange[d] their block-tin with the Phoenician merchants for spices, wines, and oils, even long before Julius Caesar set his foot upon this island’. As trade increased, however, it ‘found itself unsufferably streightened and perplexed for want of … a medium to supply the defect of exchanging’ when the quality and/or quantities of bartered goods differed. Thus, first money and then credit became ‘the great mediums of universal commerce, the vehicle in which trade is preserved or administered through the world’. Gold and silver became the most convenient forms of specie increasing commerce to such a degree that ‘all the specie in the world could not answer the demand, or be ready just at the time trade called for it’ and thus the world came to rely upon credit.28 The history of public credit, or ‘Lending Money to the present Government’, Defoe left to his Essay upon Loans. With the exception of ‘a small Interval of an unsetled and Impolitick Peace’, he stated, the nation had been at war for almost twenty-two years. In this most remarkable military engagement, Britain had spent more years, more money, more blood, and had more ‘Famous … Successes and unheard of Victories’ against ‘the most Powerful Enemies’ than since Roman times.29 When the war first began, the normal forms of taxation – land tax, polls, excise, and customs duties – kept pace with expenses. Occasionally ‘borrowing Clauses were added to the Bills of Aid’ but these were paid off within a few months and ‘the Year generally supported its own Demands’. As the burden of the war became too great for annual revenues, new methods were devised for meeting its costs – the establishment of government funds and annuities. Unfortunately, as taxable income declined more government securities were issued, creating a problem when those holding annuities demanded payment. The heart of the problem lay not in the idea of public funds or their mismanagement by Treasury officials but with Parliament for failing to supplement the funds at crucial moments causing ‘intolerable unheard-of discounts’ of those funds ‘to the ruin of all that we called credit’.30 These developments, Defoe explained, coinciding with the great recoinage which had already reduced the supply of ready cash, encouraged the discounting of exchequer bills and promoted ‘the Art and Mystery of Stock Jobbing’.31 This situation was remedied when the government took steps which ‘secure[d] the Loan of Money, and yet lower[ed] the Advantages given to the Lenders’ and Parliament erected a ‘punctual, just, and fair Management of the Payments’. Public debt had become a fact of national life but as long as the government preserved its credit through punctual payments, no party, whether Whigs, Tories, City, court, banks, or East India Company, could pose a real threat, and this was Defoe’s central message.32 As long as the government was willing to pay interest no one party could prevent



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men from wishing to make money. Men’s ‘Zeal to their Families’ would always prevail over their ‘Zeal to Party’. What difference did it make ‘if there is either Whig or Tory in a good Bargain; Churchman or Dissenter in a good Freight; high Church or Low Church in a Good Adventure; if a Shopkeeper sees a good Penny-worth, a Scrivener a good Mortgage, a Money’d Man a good Purchase; Do they ever ask what Party he is of that parts with it?’ Business was and should be conducted ‘in spight of Party Aversions’ and it was foolish and potentially dangerous to suggest otherwise.33 Credit did not rest upon intelligent management in the Treasury but ultimately upon ‘the care, conduct, and vigilance’ of Parliament and the queen; it was, in short, not just ‘the effect of this or that wheel in the government, moving regular and just to its proper work; but of the whole movement, acting by the force of its true original motion, according to the exquisite design of the director of the whole frame’.34 While this system enabled the country to persevere against France, it was also a great advantage to certain individuals and institutions who, some had charged, had acquired wealth and power sufficient to influence public affairs. What bothered Defoe was that because the hazards of war discouraged foreign commerce, ‘the high Premios … and Interests’ of government securities turned previously constructively engaged men of trade ‘to dr[a]w home their Effects’ and ‘embrace the Advantage’ of stocks. ‘This’, Defoe complained, ‘turn’d the whole City into a Corporation of Usury, and they appear’d not as a Bank, but rather one general Society of Bankers.’35 To remove one’s self from the productive exchange of things merely to invest in stocks was, in effect, to wind down the springs of God’s great design; to engage in stock-jobbing or manipulate credit for party purposes was to throw a spanner in his works.

iii. Trading rudeness for refinement: the scenario of Defoe’s A General History of Trade Defoe’s view of the divine nature of commerce was most forcefully expressed in his General History of Trade, published in four monthly instalments from June to September 1713 during a heated debate over commercial agreements relating to the Treaty of Utrecht.36 Anglican zealotry had been one reason the Tories had swept into office in 1710; growing rancour about the protracted war against France also contributed to their landslide. Landowners increasingly felt their taxes were no longer funding a struggle to preserve the balance of power in Europe but underwriting Whig exploitation of war finance and the vainglory and greed of the Duke of Marlborough, the Allies’ captain-general, and his family. Whig opposition, ministerial intrigue, and an attempt on his life, did not prevent Harley from delivering peace. After months of secret negotiations the Congress opened at Utrecht in January 1712 and by April 1713 the main treaties were signed.




Controversy, however, erupted over the eighth and ninth articles which would have established most-favoured-nation relations between Britain and France. Opposition to this agreement arose because it would have contradicted England’s trade agreements with Portugal and because the Whigs saw an opportunity to attack the ministry for what many considered a Tory trade bill. It is generally agreed that Bolingbroke was the driving force behind these agreements and that Harley’s ‘attitude to the proposed treaty was equivocal’.37 Defoe’s own equivocal views about the peace have prompted contemporaries and modern scholars to charge that in supporting the agreements, he was acting as nothing more than a hired hack. We must separate his views about the peace itself from the commercial articles of the treaty which followed. It is possible to read Defoe’s writings on the latter as a principled, if qualified, defence of commercial agreements needing some modification. Defoe discussed the issue at length in the Review and in another newsletter, the Mercator, which he established, with government support, as his and the reading public’s interest in the Review waned.38 He also wrote several pamphlets explaining the pros and cons of the treaties as written. Importing wines had been one of the many trades in which Defoe had been involved, and in Considerations Upon the Eighth and Ninth Articles of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation he outlined the ramifications that the importation of French wines would have upon the wine trade with Portugal, which under the Methuen Treaty of 1703 had enjoyed a reduced rate of tariff. Defoe also explained how granting most-favoured-nation status to France might affect the wool trade and domestic production of silk cloth. France was a populous, wealthy state and a potentially valuable trading partner. If amendments to the treaties were to address British concerns, he concluded, it was in the nation’s best interest to trade with both Portugal and France, indeed with any and all countries if it was advantageous.39 Defoe’s Considerations was not his most exciting pamphlet but its technical nature and frankly expressed concerns are not necessarily indicative of any hypocrisy on Defoe’s part.40 Although the bill was defeated in the House of Commons on 18 June, the controversy continued to rage, confirming Defoe’s statement to Harley that those who opposed the treaty had ‘fallen into This Clamour about Trade Not from Their Zeal for our Commerce but for a Handle, and to Raise a Party Against the Ministry’.41 It seems that Defoe’s failure to win support for or amendments to the articles of commerce by examining them in detail inspired him to undertake a more theoretical justification for the expansion of British commerce. Although Defoe claimed that his purpose in writing the General History of Trade was to investigate ‘Trade, abstracted from all the separate Interest of Politicks, and the Concerns of Nation’ (II, p. 40) it is clear that debate over the commercial treaties with France was the polemical context for his serialized text; the fourth and final instalment specifically addressed the issue.



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to Trade with every Part of the World, where our Manufactures, or the Growth and Production of our Land or Labour can be receiv’d; if there be any Objections to be raised against their over ballancing us by Returns, that is our Business to prevent; but to prevent it by stopping the Exportation of our own Growth, that is all Ruin and Destruction to Commerce, and putting out our own two Eyes, to put out one of our Neighbours. (III, p. 44) The context reminds us that Defoe was putting together historical material to advance a specific cause but the kinds of information he selected, the ways in which it was assimilated, and the discourses he used to historicize the question of trade shed light on the relationship between polemical argument and developing eighteenth-century historical sensibilities. In many ways Defoe’s General History of Trade fits squarely in the seventeenth-century tradition of Baconian trade histories produced by exponents of the New Science, Hartlib, Petty, and Boyle, to name a few.42 Baconian histories were not narrative explanations of past events so much as comprehensive catalogues of nature and nature wrought by human arts and manufactures. Such compendia, it was believed, advanced the state of knowledge, empowered the kingdom, and improved the well-being of its subjects. A General History of Trade was premised upon the Baconian belief that through systematic investigation, experimentation, and classification of the material world, human beings can uncover nature’s secrets, discover the natural order, and make use of these findings to better the human condition. Echoing Bacon’s dictum that what human beings could know or do depended entirely on nature, Defoe believed a ‘necessary Consequence’ of his work would be ‘to restore the just Veneration due to Original Nature, on whom all of that mighty thing called Art depends, and without which, Improvement and Manufacturing’ would have been ‘impossible’ (I, p. 8). Throughout the work Defoe employed a Baconian system of classification, dividing commodities into two basic categories of nature and nature wrought: raw materials, or items which are ‘compleated by Nature for the immediate use of Mankind’, and those goods which required human beings to ‘transform them into other shapes … by the help of Labour, Industry, Art, and the Application of other Materials … which we call Manufacturing’ (III, p. 4). The physical frame of the globe as well as the multiplicity and irregular dispersal of commodities throughout it were a clear indication of the natural order revealing God’s purpose. ‘The wise Creator has most evidently shewn to us, that [he] had design’d the World for Commerce’, as every part of the globe, Defoe reflected, had resources useful to its denizens



The immediate purpose of the text as a whole was to convince readers that it was in the nation’s best interest

and/or desirable to inhabitants of other regions (I, p. 10). In his Sacred Theory of the Earth, Thomas Burnet had theorized that the earth, a divinely perfect sphere at its creation, had been disfigured by the Deluge, leaving an irregular surface characterized by fissures and protuberances and divided by bodies of water large and small43 – a theory Defoe was eager to correct: the uneven Shore here, the high and projected Promontories there; low and flat Shores here, Shoals and sand lying off there; Inlets, Gulphs, Bays, Firths, deep Channels of Rivers, and the like, they seem to present a Kind of Confusion, distort the Figure of the Earth, and look like a Deformity of Parts, making the Earth look, as Dr. Burnet observes in his Theory, like a great Ruin … Yet has all this Confusion and appearing Dislocation the greatest Beauty and Harmony imaginable in it, if we consider how all these are directed before hand, by the secret Power who foreknew the Occasion: how without these, Navigation, which was to be the great medium of Commerce, in the World, would be impracticable. (II, pp. 31–2) This argument from design was not uncommon, but no one expressed it more frequently or fervently, or applied it more imaginatively, than Defoe.44 It is certainly consistent with Baconian philosophy, but Defoe’s passion for providential explanation owed something to his Nonconforming inheritance. By dispersing the necessary and valuable products of nature throughout the world, the ‘Wise Disposer’ had left it to the ‘Industry of Men’ to navigate, propagate, plant, and correspond in order to retrieve them (II, pp. 25–6). It was also ‘Labour and Industry [which] … we call Manufacturing’ which ‘set so many Nations to Work’ to transform the materials of nature into useful objects thereby making ‘the Rich … beholden to the Poor’ and ‘the Poor … behold[en] to the Rich’, or as it was often put, each useful in his station. The ‘Harmony’ between rich and poor, ‘and their Dependance [sic] upon one another’, Defoe moralized, ‘makes up the Beauty and Glory of God’s Creation’ (I, p. 29). As trade had fostered an increase in consumption it may have encouraged new levels of vice and luxury but the same trade ‘raises Families, lifts the Poor up from the low and necessitous way of living, to subsisting comfortably and plentifully on their Labour; this again prompts and encourages Diligence, Application, and Adventure on the one hand, and encreases the Consumption of those Imports which Commerce supplies on the other’ (II, p. 27). Thus commerce enabled the truly industrious to improve their station. Although the New Science was predicated on advancement, in these passages the language of industry and improvement has a rather pious ring to it. In keeping with Defoe’s belief in religious exchange, he remarked ‘How even Religion itself has been propagated by Trade, and the Common business of the World



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made Subservient to the Glorious Design of God, in spreading the Knowledge of the Truth into the Darkest Corners of the Earth’ (I, p. 24). As each instalment’s subtitle indicated, Defoe’s General History of Trade was more British (and, at times, more English) than general in scope. As we have seen, Defoe conceptualized the British nation-state primarily in Baconian, providential, Protestant, and commercial terms and, in this respect, this text was no exception.45 ‘No Nation in the World’, Defoe declared, ‘has been equally furnished by Nature with the Principles of Manufacture, and the Advantages of Commerce, as this Island of Britain, in which we live, is furnish’d’ (III, p. 7). Enhancing the power of the state and the welfare of its people through the advancement of learning had been one of Bacon’s primary goals and Defoe sought to make the connection as well. By examining the history of Britain’s advancement through trade, Defoe declared his intention ‘To move you to farther Improvements then, and to farther Discoveries in Trade, is to move you to do your Country good, and yourselves also; to move you to make your selves Rich, and the Nation Great, Populous and Strong in it self, and terrible to its Neighbours’ (III, p. 10). Britons owed it ‘to themselves and to their Posterity’ to ‘Improve the Advantages God and Nature’ had given them that they ‘may, nay they MUST Encrease to such a Degree as to be Superior in Wealth and strength to all the Nations of the World’ (III, p. 7). In order to drive this point home, in all likelihood to those who opposed trade with France, he added, ‘this, I hope will be an acceptable Doctrine to all Parties among us, to move, perswade, and instruct us, with Diligence and Application, to make use of the Advantages, which, it is manifest we enjoy, beyond any particular part of the World’ (III, p. 8). Throughout his career Defoe had warned his countrymen not to take the blessings of Providence, in revolution, in war, and in trade, for granted.46 He once again expressed his belief that due Observations of the Wisdom, Foreknowledge, and Omnipotence of God, should run through all our Discourses of Civil Affairs, and be the Constant Application of every Branch, as well of our Writings as Conversation. This is not only our Debt to the Glory of the Creator, and a natural duty in all People to do; but it is the most profitable and useful way of conveying Sacred Knowledge and improving both our selves and others. (I, pp. 24–5) In making these sorts of arguments Defoe was employing several discourses he had used in the past but A General History of Trade also shows Defoe developing modes of argument associated with philosophical history and enlightened theories of progress. In tracing the history of commerce in the British Isles from its earliest beginnings to his own time, he intended to prove that trade had been the driving force behind Britain’s transformation




from a ‘Rude and Barbarous Nation’ to its present state of ‘Greatness and Opulency’ (III, pp. 13, 7). Like some later historians of the Scottish Enlightenment who viewed the process of history as one of ‘birth, infancy, maturity, and decline’,47 Defoe analogized the growth of trade to human maturation, emphasizing the natural and gradual qualities of the process. Trade did not ‘grow up’ all at once ‘any more than a Man is born at his full Stature, and his Faculties and Intellectuals compleat and fitted for Exercise’ but had its period of ‘Infancy’. The nation’s economic potential was there but required ‘the work of Ages’ to develop. As it learned to tap into its natural wealth ‘so the nation grew more and more considerable’ and consequently its ‘Fame, Power and Figure in the World, encreased’ (III, pp. 9–10). In the transition from rudeness to refinement, material enrichment was the first step in the development of a nation’s capacity to exercise its will in the world and in the acculturation of its people. Defoe’s description of the initial conditions of Britain’s earliest inhabitants concurred with other Enlightenment depictions of the savage state. The people were ‘wild and barbarous’ and lived in ‘desperate circumstances’. They did not live in a Hobbesian or Rousseauan state of nature as individuals, either aloof and self-sufficient or at each other’s throats, but in social groups. They were, however ‘unacquainted with the World’, knew nothing of urban or even village life, and ‘lived like Wild Beasts in Woods, Bogs, Dens and Caves’ (I, p. 14). Before commerce, ancient Britons ‘had no Art, no Improvement, no Application to … make a due use of the Materials Nature had furnished them with, for enriching them and making them great; but all these lay hid as a Treasure, which nature had laid up for Ages of more Knowledge, and for Wise and Industrious nations that were to come after them’ (III, pp. 15–16). Because nature had generously endowed the region, Britain eventually attracted the attention of merchants from more advanced societies, first and most notably, the Phoenicians. Phoenicia had been the centre of commerce in the ancient world and most early-modern historical accounts credited its merchants as the first to establish trade with Britain before the arrival of Julius Caesar. Landing in Cornwall, they were the first to discover tin mining but, according to Defoe, these merchants ‘could not cultivate or improve the manners and way of living of the Britains [sc. Britons], because they were not powerful enough to Settle and Plant among them’ (III, p. 11). Without regular commerce, the British remained a ‘Savage People, not conversible, or capable to receive impressions of Civility and Good Manners from the knowing part of the World’ (III, p. 17). Defoe drew a number of comparisons between Phoenicia and eighteenthcentury Britain. Both nations were the leading trading powers of their day. Both peoples were intrepid: in the ancient world sailing around the British Isles was considered as distant and dangerous as British voyages to the New World or South Seas. It was true, Defoe conceded, that ‘the Phoenicians used our Britains as we lately used the poor Indians in Africa and America,



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they brought Feathers and Baubles, Brass Wares, Toys and Trinkets, and sold them to the Britains, for their more substantial Blocks of Tin’ (III, p. 11). Just as ancient Britons coined Phoenician brass in exchange for their more valuable tin, the Africans traded their gold with Britain for ‘Cowries and Glass Beads’ to use as currency (III, p. 18). Defoe did not view Phoenician and modern British practices as exploitation so much as sharp dealing. Over time, he surmised, the Africans, like the ancient Britons, would grow wiser through commerce. As commerce advanced wisdom, wisdom would further advance commerce, the ‘only Foundation of the Power and Wealth of this Kingdom, and by which it has arrived with the length of time, and in just Degrees to the Posture and Figure in the World which we make at this time’ (III, p. 11). The intellectual process by which nations grew wiser through commerce was outlined in an important passage, cited below, in which Defoe compared the ancient Britons to contemporary Africans, whom Defoe characterized as the eighteenth-century’s least commercial people, and therefore ‘entirely unconversible and incapable of being Civilized’ (II, p. 7). The lack of a diverse array of material goods rendered ancient Britons and Africans of his own day incapable of significant advancement in the civilizing process. Because all manufactured goods derived from raw materials, the key step in the process of diversifying one’s material world was ‘the Growth and Produce of the Land’. Agriculture provided the raw materials necessary for manufacturing and trade. Both of these activities increased the goods people were able to enjoy and consequently the impressions they received and the ideas they formed. Without advances in the variety of material stimuli all the Wit and Invention of men had been nothing; no, not so much as a meer Speculation. Man’s utmost extended Capacity does not allow him to Conceive of any thing which is not, but by something that is; He can form no Ideas of what he has not seen, but upon the foundation, and by the Form of something which he has seen, or which has been described to him: This is manifest in the Amusement which we give ourselves concerning the state of our Souls after death; concerning which we can form no Conceptions either of Happiness or Misery, but what agree with, not our Sences only, but even with the Shape and Texture of Human Body, as if the Spirit of a Man in his exalted glorified State, was tied down to Human Form; nay even the Heavenly Angels are imagined of by us as we describe them here, with Wings, Bodies, Hands and Feet, tho’ we have no Foundation in matter of Fact for that Conception, and might as well take upon us to distinguish them into Sexes, and to represent them as Young or Old, suitable to the Occasion of our Fancy … all the Power of man’s Invention and Understanding, could not have conceiv’d any thing of what we call Manufacturing, had not the




Materials been furnished by the Author of Nature, which, as it were, led our Forefathers by the Hand to the Improvements of those Materials … But nature having laid down these first Principles for the Wit and Invention of men to work upon, Art has carried on so many Wonders of Improvement from them, that the Necessity of those first Principles seems to appear less to us than it did before. (I, pp. 6–8) Because people’s material and mental worlds were now so richly varied, they had forgotten the obvious fact that without material objects, human beings were not only incapable of manufacturing new things, they were incapable of imagining new things. Through the multiplication of goods, human beings multiplied their ideas. Without the material prerequisites, first brought about by agriculture and then by trade, societies would not generate new ideas. Without increasing trade, advanced societies might stagnate. By designing the world for commerce, God had designed it for enlightenment. The discovery of materials in nature and the generation of new things and ideas might still take place without trade but it was a painstakingly slow process, accelerated in Britain’s case by Roman colonization.48 Contact with the Phoenicians had been too limited to effect any great changes among the ancient Britons but during the Romans’ long dominion, ‘the civilized State of the nation was established, Christianity was planted, the barbarities of the Savage Britains quite worn out, and the Nation became an Improved Trading Country’. The Britons followed examples set by the Romans in the colonies and cities. They no longer went naked or lived in the woods but ‘built Houses and Towns, as the Romans did’ (III, p. 20). This new way of living increased the trade of certain necessities for clothing and furnishing. With the adoption of some of the civilized habits of Roman dress, furnishing, and accommodation, material comfort and overall trade advanced but these did not increase exponentially, Defoe argued, until the Britons embraced agriculture: the great Improvement and addition of Wealth, which the Romans brought to this Island, consisted in the teaching the Natives the Arts of Husbandry, and Cultivation of Land, Economy and Family Government, Industry and Application to business; which by Planting themselves among the Britains, became natural to them … By this means the Lands became Improv’d and Enclosed, Towns to be regularly built; the Fruitfulness of the Soil encouraged the Husbandman, the numbers of people consumed the Produce, and as Food encreased, the Mouths of those encreased that eat it; and here began the Inland Commerce, which we see now arriv’d to so great a Head. (III, pp. 20–1) It is interesting to note that in his account of this civilizing process, Defoe, the Londoner and former tradesman, seemed to reverse the tradi-



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tional sequence of events in which agriculture emancipated a certain portion of the population from searching for food, enabling it to focus on other crafts. The Roman establishment of large colonies ‘like so many Capital Cities’ demanded greater food production so that cities begat agriculture, at least in Roman Britain. During the several hundred years of barbarian invasions which followed the period of Roman occupation, ‘these Improvements suffer’d Great Destruction and Loss’ but eventually ‘after those Saxons becoming Christians, and by consequence of being civilized by a long Series of quiet possession, they fell naturally into the very same methods of Living and Trading, which the Romans, who were the first Instructors of the People, had left behind them’ (III, p. 23). Progress in Anglo-Saxon England, it seems, resumed a far more gradual and normal pace than the precipitous rate of change experienced in Roman times through the tutelage of a more advanced civilization. If the Roman period was key to establishing inland trade, foreign trade was much increased during the later Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods, especially the wool trade with Flanders. In this text Defoe credited Edward III for prohibiting the export of raw wool which allowed the English instead of the Flemish to grow rich turning English wool into cloth. Importantly, as we shall see in Chapter 8, by the 1720s Defoe would be crediting Henry VII for instituting this policy. By dating this change from the Tudor rather than Plantagenet period, Defoe was able to argue that the growth of trade and manufactures had freed the English people from the feudal miseries of vassalage and villeinage.

iv. Conclusion Defoe’s immediate concern in writing A General History of Trade was to justify new trading agreements with France in the wake of peace talks at Utrecht. Because it supplied the inborn everyday needs and desires of human beings, Defoe described commerce as a ‘Natural Principle’. In his historical overview, commerce was also presented as the necessary condition for the growth of civility. Given the large role played by the Romans and Edward III in establishing agriculture and trade, at least in England, it is clear that Defoe’s historical explanation depended heavily upon the intervention of lawgivers which Scottish Enlightenment historians, in their search for the natural and typical mechanisms of progress, sought to avoid. Still, Defoe was able to make the case that Britain’s material, mental, and even moral wealth depended upon commerce. In earlier works, he had argued that trade created the opportunity for various kinds of exchanges. People coming into contact with one another shared information and ideas as well as a desire to profit materially. In A General History of Trade, Defoe was able to extend this belief by arguing that the process of civilization, the growth and learning of manners, and the exercise of human intervention




and imagination were all dependent upon the increase and exchange of material goods. In the wake of the Sacheverell trial, the Whigs’ failed attempt to use credit as a political weapon, and his own increasingly awkward position as a propagandist for the Tory government, Defoe was also more aware than ever of the distortions that party politics could inflict upon money and meaning.



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6

i. Introduction: Robinson Crusoe and Defoe’s orthodox agenda While many of Defoe’s works are now largely forgotten by all but specialists, the story of his resourceful, penitent, shipwrecked mariner, Robinson Crusoe, is still read or at least recognized by the general public and continues to generate a great volume of scholarly explication.1 Crusoe’s material advancement, as hunter and gatherer, pastoralist and planter, manufacturer and merchant, capitalist and colonizer, has invited many socio-economic interpretations. Crusoe’s transformation from spiritual rudeness to refinement has also generated important scholarly comment. By imposing his own will on the natural world and by learning to submit to God’s overarching will within it, Crusoe becomes Everyman. He learns, as Defoe wished his readers to do, that the natural world, and one’s place within it, can make no sense without acceptance of the supernatural in the shape of revelation and redemption. In recognizing the importance of religion in Robinson Crusoe, however, scholars have most often dealt with the general theme of Providence, or explained the text, in relation to the Puritan genres of spiritual autobiography, pilgrim allegory, and guide literature.2 These approaches are valuable but they have tended to emphasize the internal, subjective, and emotional aspects of redemption as personal pilgrimage, which, in turn, has formed a major part of a generation of scholarship that linked the rise of the individual with the rise of the novel.3 We need to see redemption as Defoe would have seen it, in the context of fierce polemical debates and as a consequence of what he regarded as the objective doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine increasingly under attack in the early eighteenth century. This doctrine he vigorously sought to defend, not only in pamphlets but also in Robinson Crusoe and its two sequels.4 Whatever else the Crusoe myth may have communicated, Defoe’s central concern was to defend an eschatological order dependent upon revelation and redemption, breaking a few false idols and attempting to restore his own island’s culture in the process. 113



Robinson Crusoe: Orthodox Penitent

Within the Church of England and among Dissenting sects, a minority of Socinian, Arian, and Deist voices had been heard for some decades. In the first years of George I’s reign, however, major theological disputes erupted in which men publicly questioned the legitimacy and power of ecclesiastical structures, the authority of revealed religion, the existence of miracles, and the divinity of Christ. The so-called Bangorian controversy consumed Anglican public debate in and after 17175 while the Salters’ Hall dispute of 1719 permanently damaged the cause of English Presbyterianism, Defoe’s own religious community.6 During the reigns of William III and Anne, Deist publications had created the occasional public furore, but by the 1720s these had escalated into what Maximillian Novak has called a ‘great deistic offensive’.7 In their search for a rational, natural religion of mankind, Deists dismissed much orthodox Christian teaching as idolatry. Defoe, in turn, used the term ‘idolatry’ to condemn heterodox Christian opinions, non-Christian forms of worship, and many other aspects of English society which he found disturbing or dangerous. As Ronald Paulson has remarked, ‘the first quarter or third of the eighteenth century in England was a period regarded by both Whig and Tory as characterized by the worship of a “false idols”’. Far from being confined to religious dispute, the rhetoric of idolatry betrays a much deeper ‘mentality of iconoclasm’, a cultural response to the Reformation and ‘to the greatest of all English acts of iconoclasm, the beheading of the king’. Seeking to reorient the study of eighteenth-century aesthetics away from the patrons and towards the actual producers of art and literature, Paulson argues that artists and writers responded to the religious and political iconoclasm of the seventeenth century and to contemporaneous instability, transgression, detritus, and doubt within a paradigm of ‘breaking and remaking’. In poetry, prose, and painting, Pope, Hogarth, and Reynolds demolished the hollow idols of their own age, utilizing these shards, along with the broken or abandoned ideals of ages less tarnished than their own, in order to reconstitute those ideals or to transform them into something new.8 Although he purposely excludes the novel from his study, Paulson briefly suggests how both the form and content of Robinson Crusoe exemplify his thesis: The pilgrimage of the hero toward a conversion experience no doubt pleased Defoe’s more pious readers, but what gave him the extraordinarily large public he enjoyed then and has enjoyed ever since, was probably the how-to-do-it plot of building a house with salvaged materials on a remote island … The Adam who is cast out of Eden is for Defoe someone who tries to rebuild this lost world … out of the fragments at hand. The essential part of the myth that Defoe created, it has always been apparent, is not the fall of man but his isolation after the fall and his attempt to bring order out of unfamiliar and minimal materials …



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Robinson Crusoe: Orthodox Penitent 115

Defoe had many opportunities to reflect upon and write about various sorts of instability and doubt in the decade before he published Robinson Crusoe. Paulson’s model is a useful one for understanding religious and political debate as well as cultural production in this period. This chapter accepts that model, but seeks to go further in attempting to show how Defoe’s religious commitments shaped his perceptions of what was broken and what needed to be remade.

ii. Contextualizing Crusoe: Hoadly, Toland, and Defoe’s Turkish Spy After the fall of Harley and the Tories, the accession of George I, and the return of the Whigs to government in 1714–15, Defoe remained loyal to his old patron Harley but his return to the Whig fold was a complicated one. His own journalistic activities gave rise to criticisms of him as a merely mercenary pen and the Whigs themselves became a divided party.10 Increasingly unhappy with George I’s subordination of English interests to Hanoverian ones, Walpole and Townshend went into opposition in 1717. This left control of the ministry to Stanhope and Sunderland until Walpole’s consolidation of power, his own and his party’s, in 1720. In addition to supporting George I’s so-called ‘German’ policies, the Stanhope–Sunderland ministry adopted a platform for major reforms in Church and state, including measures to extend religious toleration. They first sought to expunge the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, those high-water marks of High Church Anglicanism passed in the last years of Anne’s reign; even the Test Act now seemed vulnerable to repeal. Far from being dependable allies of orthodox Dissenters like Defoe, the government was drawn to supporting and being supported by figures like Benjamin Hoadly and John Toland. Toland was commissioned to write what was essentially a manifesto for the new Whig programme, publishing The State Anatomy of Great Britain in January 1717.11 On 31 March, Benjamin Hoadly, who had been placed on the Whig promotional fast-track for his extreme latitudinarian principles and recently consecrated Bishop of Bangor, delivered in the Chapel Royal a sermon on The Nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ. Intending to provide the theological underpinnings for Whig reform, Hoadly’s sermon instead ignited a firestorm, asserting the principle of unlimited private judgement in the place of the corporate authority of the visible Church.12 Over the years Defoe had campaigned for the removal of civil penalties against Protestant Dissenters arguing that the Test Act, originally designed to combat Catholicism in the reign of Charles II, had instead been



The paradigm, as Defoe’s case attests, is most plainly carried out in that makeshift genre, itself a Crusoe’s island of need and reconstitution, the novel.9

employed against Nonconformists by the Tories and even by the Whigs themselves when it had been politically expedient to do so.13 He was also vehemently opposed to the use of sacred oaths for political purposes.14 He did not, however, ever argue for the disestablishment of the Church of England or for unlimited toleration which for important Christological reasons would have meant the same thing. Not only was the Church of England an integral part of the constitution by law established, it was also a visible institution of Christ’s authority on earth, even if, to Dissenters like Defoe, aspects of its ceremonies and episcopal administration were not sanctioned by scripture. To extend toleration to those who denied the doctrine of the Trinity would be to deny Christ’s continuing presence in this world.15 Defoe’s stance towards the Church of England remained that of ‘Old Dissent’: he wanted comprehension within it, not destruction of it. Furthermore, as we have seen in Chapter 3, the doctrine of the Trinity was central to the eschatological order as Defoe understood it. To deny redemption through Christ was to unhinge ‘the whole frame of Nature, Time, and Providence’. This is why Defoe saw great danger in basing any relief for orthodox Dissenters on the heterodox principles articulated by Toland and Hoadly in 1717. Since their initial argument over standing armies in 1698, Defoe and Toland had engaged in many hostile exchanges. Responding to the State Anatomy, Defoe dismissed his old enemy as a man ‘as heterodox in politicks, as he is in religion’ and castigated the Whig ministry for proposing a ‘destructive universal Toleration’ and for attempting to ‘frame a new constitution’. Defoe suggested that if Toland ‘publickly renounced his Socinian and Arian Heresies’ then he could ‘join freely in acknowledging that Conscientious Difference should not destroy Christian Charity’.16 The nature of Christ, however, was not something about which one could have an opinion. Addressing himself to Hoadly in the mask of an honest Quaker, Defoe chided the bishop to abandon his episcopal title, his seat in the ecclesiastical courts, and those ‘prophane Ensigns of Idolatry’, his lawnsleeves. If Hoadly really did believe that civil laws ‘ought not to preserve Men in Opinions’ or ‘be laid upon Mens Consciences, to bind them to or from … Judgement or Practice in Religion’, then it was hypocritical of him to remain in the Church of England. Defoe ended his Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadly by explaining that although ‘Friend Benjamin’ might find a Quaker meeting house a congenial home for his opinions, he would not be welcome in a Presbyterian chapel. Like the Church of England, the Presbyterians subscribed to specific ‘Articles of Faith’ and these doctrines were subject to ‘Humane Authority’ because they believed that Jesus had, in fact, sanctioned a church magistracy.17 The reduction of faith to opinion had concerned Defoe for some time and he feared that party politics had only encouraged the growth of heterodoxy:



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It seemed that politicians were either too busy looking after their own selfinterests or were even willing to exploit religious controversies for mundane party gains. Just before the Whig split in January 1717, he warned the ministry that now was not the time to ‘temporize … with Idolatry’ as divisions between them might still encourage French and Jacobite interests just as factions in the court of Edward VI had jeopardized the Reformation. ‘Court divisions’ were caused by the ‘Avarice and Envy … [of] Great Men engrossing Places of vast Profit’ and he implored ‘if the Eyes that should watch for the publick Safety, are employed in an envious Glancing at one another … what will become of the publick Interest?’19 Part of Defoe’s anger over Toland’s proposal to extend the toleration rested on his understanding that Stanhope and Sunderland were hoping to shore up their support among Dissenters just as James II had tried to woo them through his dispensing powers. In Anne’s reign the High Churchmen did everything they could to ‘preserve their Places, as is usual with Courtiers and Statesmen of all Parties’ and the Whigs were no exception: ‘their own Grandeur, Gain, and unsatiable Desire of Power and Profit is the Pole Star by which they steer; the center of their Designs, and the Point in which all the Lines of their Practice meet’.20 By the summer of 1717, the Bangorian controversy had become so vitriolic that Defoe took refuge behind the mask of a Muslim, Armenian merchant to explain it. In The Conduct of Christians made the Sport of Infidels, Defoe condemned English Christians of every stripe for their blasphemous beliefs and factious behaviour. Clearly, Defoe found the persona of a Muslim who could comment on the follies and faithlessness of Christian Europe a serviceable one for in August 1718 he published A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris, a 300-page work which has received little scholarly attention. Using the format of an earlier eight-volume work attributed to a French writer, Defoe’s version retained the character of the correspondent and spy, Mahmut, and the original setting of late seventeenth-century Paris to address several nagging concerns including French military power, various forms of Christian idolatry, and the political and religious ignorance which allowed these threats to persist. Although Maximillian Novak acknowledges the religious aspects of this work, he has categorized it as another ‘anti-Jacobite tract’, albeit one, he believes, that should be of special interest to literary scholars given Defoe’s portrayal of Mahmut’s ‘alienation and loneliness’ just eight months before the publication of Robinson Crusoe.21 Defoe, however, devotes very little



the Plant, Religion, has been quite rooted up by the Hand of Strife, and meer Opinion planted in its Room: which comes up so thick, and grows so rank, that Religion itself, a nice and tender Plant, is choakt, can take no Root, or have space to spread its Branches; so it withers, hangs it Head, and at last dies.18

space to the theme of Mahmut’s homesickness in contrast to his far more frequent and lengthy attacks on Catholic, Socinian, Deist, and atheist views and practices – religious themes which indicate an even stronger connection to a central message in Robinson Crusoe, namely, the triumph of salvation and redemption over natural religion; a theme found in the first volume and defended more explicitly through the doctrine of the Trinity in the two Crusoe sequels. What made Defoe’s use of the Muslim mask even more timely was the publication in the same month of John Toland’s main contribution to the Bangorian controversy, his tract Nazarenus, an attack on orthodox Christian history which had existed in manuscript for some years. Premised on heterodox histories by men like Spinoza, the Unitarian thinker Henry Stubbe, and Toland’s own polemical use of the medieval forgery, the Gospel of Barnabas, Nazarenus argued for the existence of a natural religion of man, manifested by the early monotheisms of Jews, Muslims, and Gentiles. This natural religion was used for political and social purposes by Moses, Mahomet, and Christ (all temporal leaders and nothing more according to Toland) and thereafter became corrupted as it was mixed with various idolatries and philosophies of the Graeco-Roman world.22 Whether Defoe was responding to these ideas in their published, privately circulated, or more broadly discussed forms, he clearly used his Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy to offer an alternative view of the historical relationship between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the ancient Near East and to attack specifically the rabbinical, Spinozan, and Socinian scholarship upon which Toland relied.23 While preserving the persona of the Muslim correspondent, Mahmut, Defoe presented a decidedly orthodox and Protestant account of the spread of religion and learning in biblical times. Throughout his correspondence, Mahmut made a number of negative comments about Christians in general including the greater incidence of atheism in Christian Europe than in the Muslim world. He blamed this, in part, upon the fact that the ‘Nazareens’, as he called them (implying Toland and his kin), had ‘phylosophyz’d so long about their God … that they have quite lost him, and are daily questioning among one another whether there really is any such thing or no in the World’.24 Defoe’s Protestant prejudices were further revealed in Mahmut’s observations about the ‘Idolatrous Practices’ of the Catholics, especially their worship of ‘a Piece of Bread as a God, suggesting that a few Words of a Common Dervice [sic; sc. Service] can effectually transmutate the Species of Bread into the Substance of their crucified Messiah; an idolatry horrible and detestable!’25 In addition to several attacks on the doctrine of transubstantiation, Mahmut condemned the Catholic idolatry of Mary, the use of sacred relics, and other ‘miraculous Fripperies’. He castigated the Pope as a great imposter and ‘religious … PickPocket’, cited Huguenot descriptions of the papal throne as ‘the Seat of the Beast’, and dismissed ‘the whole System of the Papacy a meer Piece of politi-



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cal Pageantry, carried on to support the Pride and Luxury of the Clergy, and which is in it self nothing at all but a Bubble of Air and Emptiness’.26 Toland would have relished this colourful indictment of Catholicism but not Defoe’s even more effective deployment of a Muslim voice to criticize the Socinian scholarship that dealt with Islam. In having Mahmut adopt an amused tone when describing the Nazareens’ love of fictions, forged histories, and fables about Mahomet, Defoe was specifically criticizing Toland’s use of the Gospel of Barnabas. In Nazarenus, Toland expounded a view put forth by a number of Socinian thinkers that the Nazarenes, an early Judaeo-Christian sect, had retained the natural religion of monotheism, accepting Christ as a temporal Messiah only, not as the Son of God. Once, however, Christ’s divinity and the doctrine of the Trinity were established as orthodoxy by the Council of Nicea in 325, the pure faith of the Nazarenes survived only in the ‘Turkish’ or Islamic regions of the Near East. Toland and his circle of Socinian friends emphasized this Islamic connection, saw themselves as the heirs in the West of ‘pristine’ monotheism, and condemned the doctrine of the Trinity as ‘the historical font of all Christian corruption’.27 Defoe accepted the unified human history set out in biblical chronology, explaining Islamic monotheism as part of the Noachic inheritance of the Semitic peoples. In several letters, Mahmut complained to various correspondents that Western literati were quite ignorant about Arabic history. If one wanted information on ‘the Classicks’ of Greece and Rome, then ‘this is the fittest Place’ but as ‘for the Eastern Learning … Enquiry after it is as good as dropt’.28 Christians were especially ignorant in thinking that only the Hebrews received divine knowledge. In having Mahmut repeatedly assert the close genealogical and intellectual links between Jews and Arabs as the sons of Shem and offering a different account from Toland’s of the transmission of sacred and profane knowledge in the Islamic world,29 Defoe achieved two objectives. He enhanced the realism of the text by endowing Mahmut with the cultural pride his readers would expect from such a figure; more importantly, he sought to undermine Toland’s use of Islam as a vehicle for attacking orthodox Christianity. Defoe’s Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy also reveals how he and Toland fundamentally differed in their treatment of the role of Moses, the origins of Jewish laws and practices, and the status of rabbinical scholarship. Influenced by Spinoza’s biblical historical criticism, Toland viewed Moses as a civil legislator who developed a moral code for the new Hebrew nation, a code merely couched in divine language and comforting rituals for a people who had become accustomed to various sorts of idolatry during their Egyptian bondage. Yet if Moses were merely a secular legislator, so, by implication, would be all recent law. Defoe, in contrast, fiercely defended the orthodox position that the laws of Moses were the divine commands of God and that they were given to Moses in written form.




In several letters, Mahmut attacked the kind of rabbinical or Talmudic scholarship which Toland had used, accusing ‘Dogmatick rabbis’ and the chaotic conditions of the Jewish diaspora with corrupting ‘the pure Law deliver’d to them by Moses’ by introducing various ‘Innovations’.30 Defoe also suggested several other explanations for the continued degeneration of divine knowledge as it spread through the Mediterranean world. In a letter addressed to an Arabian student interested in the Graeco-Roman pantheon, Mahmut proposed that evil, the euhemeristic tendencies of the ancient Greeks, and the passage of time had turned the creation and the real history of mankind into ‘Romance’ and ‘Heathen Fiction’, heroic men into gods, and ‘Knowledge of the true One God’ into ‘Idols and Images’. It was easy to see, for example, how Adam became Saturn, Cain became Jupiter, and biblical events were transformed into mythic tales.31 It was not the revival of Greek mythology, however, which Defoe and other orthodox writers felt compelled to address but the revival of aspects of ancient philosophy in heterodox thought, often via the influence of Spinoza. In one letter, Mahmut recounted hearing in his youth a debate between a learned Jew and learned Arabian on the issue of ‘a first Cause in Nature’. When the discussion turned to the ‘Being of Man, the Jew urged an Argument which I now find much in Use in this Nation of Atheists and Deists, among whom I live (viz.) Of Man being his own Maker’, which the Arab scholar vigorously refuted by arguing that any being capable of creating life must also be capable of preserving it and therefore eternal, an attribute of God but not of mankind. As man was mortal, so too was nature itself. It was not an emanation of God but a ‘Machine’ put in motion by ‘the first great Cause’, destined to run only ‘as long as the Hand which first put it together appointed it to go’. Those philosophers who ‘follow the old Notion of Epicurus, that the World was made, or rather made it self by meer chance’ failed to extend their analysis to ask ‘who first gave Being to those Atoms’, an omission, Defoe wished to emphasize, fatal to their system. This debate reminded Mahmut of the myth of Prometheus; he ended his letter with a recent English poem which challenged this ‘ancient Principle of Atheism’, a verse Defoe would quote again in his Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe: The great Promethean Artist, Poets say, First made the Model of a Man in Clay; Contriv’d the Form, of Parts, and when he had done, Stole vital heat from the Prolifick Sun: But not a Poet tells us to this Day, Who made Prometheus first, and who the Clay; Who gave the great Prolifick to the Sun, And where the first Productive Work begun.



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Wondering how people as learned as these Nazareens could entertain the ‘brutish Notion … of ‘denying the Being of a God, and all the subsequent Notions of the World’s Eternity, Man’s self-existent Power, and the like’, Mahmut was only able to conclude that the proliferation of priestly absurdities and ‘all the false Glosses of the Clergy’ caused too many Christians to dismiss all their teachings as a ‘meer Bundle of Nonsense … and then not being enlightened from Heaven with the sacred Knowledge of the true ONE God, it leads them into a Contempt of all principles, and their Religion dwindles away to nothing; they begin in ridiculing their own Profession, and then go on to the great Extream of denying even God himself’.32 The orthodox defence of God as the ‘first cause’ was, as Margaret Jacob has shown, aided by Newtonian science and Baconian experimental philosophy which encouraged investigation of the world of ‘second causes’ and their laws and properties while denying that human reason could fully understand the nature of the universe or perceive God’s essence.33 Defoe’s acceptance of these limits is perfectly illustrated in one of Mahmut’s laments about the loneliness of foreign exile. In describing the difficulty of life without a friend to confide in, Mahmut considered the enormous burden of passions imprisoned in ‘the narrow Bounds of his own Thoughts’. These might overwhelm a man to the point where ‘Life it self must sink under the[ir] Weight, and the Soul would hasten the nearest way thro’ that Abyss to pass to the Regions of Light, of which she her self is a Native’. Mahmut then turned to consider the heavens filled with ‘celestial Constellations of Light. Planets … Millions of Miles from this lower Planet the Earth, and … the Commets … moving in Parabolas’ beyond which the soul would travel after death. What disturbed him were those philosophers who, having accepted the vastness of space, now doubted the ability of a departed soul to make such a huge journey, and sought to know exactly how the soul was conveyed, in what direction, and at what speed. ‘All these Enquiries and suggested measurings of Space, Motion, and Time’, he stated, ‘have a Tincture of those horrid Crimes of Atheism and Scepticism, for which these Nazareens are as eminent as infamous, and in which they encrease every Day.’34 Writing in the masks of a learned Muslim, pious Quaker, or in his own voice, Defoe may have scored polemical points against Toland, Hoadly, and the radical Whig regime which had hoped to pass legislation extending liberty of conscience to those who would not subscribe to the Athanasian Creed or the doctrine of the Trinity. The Test and Corporation Acts, defended by a militant Church of England, were to survive, though the government was able to repeal the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in the autumn of 1719. For the general cause of orthodox Dissent in England, however, this relief may have been too little too late. Earlier that year, English Presbyterianism found itself permanently divided and diminished in a bitter debate over these same issues. At Salters’ Hall that spring,




Presbyterian ministers had met to discuss, among other things, recent cases in which parishes had contested the ordination of one minister and ejected others from livings because of their unorthodox views on the doctrine of the Trinity. Defoe’s own parish of Stoke Newington had recently felt it necessary to eject a minister for his Socinian views. By a slim majority, the ministers at Salters’ Hall voted to rely on scripture alone, abandoning subscription to specific articles of faith such as the Trinity as a test of orthodoxy. Siding with the Trinitarian minority, Defoe surely realized that this split between the so-called Subscribers and Nonsubscribers meant that his own theological views were now profoundly challenged even within the ranks of his co-religionists and that the viability of his religious community itself was therefore in doubt.35 While the Presbyterians quarrelled, Defoe was busy creating his most famous mask, Robinson Crusoe, whose life’s story would illustrate that ignoring the providential power of the Lord and the redemptive power of his Son led to peril; proper faith in them would guide one to a rewarding life in this world and an everlasting one in the next.

iii. Trinitarianism and the Crusoe trilogy In some ways, the Salters’ Hall controversy is now acknowledged as an important context for understanding Defoe’s preoccupations as he wrote the first volume of Robinson Crusoe, published in April 1719. Yet the full significance of that controversy has not been grasped. Despite Defoe’s probable authorship of a pamphlet, published in May, denouncing the Dissenters for casting doubt on the ‘very first and principal Article of Faith, viz. The Union of the Godhead’, scholars have variously argued that ‘what principally annoyed Defoe was not the heresy so much as the political indiscretion of the controversialists’, and that ‘hav[ing] lost much of his respect for the Dissenting clergy’ Defoe displayed an increasing ‘ecumenicalism’ which left him ‘searching for a Christianity purified from the controversies among the clergy’.36 The conclusion of recent scholarship seems to be that the controversy’s most important legacies for Defoe were, first, the author’s growing disgust at a bickering clergy and, second, the anti-clerical message of his text which ‘dramatizes the conversion of two persons – Robinson Crusoe and Friday – to Christianity by Scripture alone, without the aid of any creeds, dogmas, or priests’.37 Clearly Crusoe’s observations that ‘there is Priestcraft, even amongst the most blinded ignorant Pagans in the World’ and that the true meaning of God’s word was available to all through the reading of scripture without the need for human intercession convey mainstream Protestant thinking: the bare reading the Scripture made me capable of understanding enough of my Duty, to carry me directly on to the great Work of sincere



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These observations may even reflect an exasperation with current Presbyterian conflicts. The heart of the matter at Salters’ Hall, however, was the doctrine of the Trinity and, as we have seen, the standoff between Subscribers and Nonsubscribers was only the most recent in a spectacular series of challenges to that doctrine which had consumed public debate. Few readers today can be unaware that Robinson Crusoe has a religious message but its Christological core is often marginalized or ignored. Defoe’s preoccupation with the defence of the Trinity becomes even more clear if one considers the three Crusoe volumes as a whole. This has seldom been done,39 but as Maximillian Novak has suggested, Defoe probably began writing the sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, before the first volume was even printed. He rightly advised that the Serious Reflections ‘ha[s] to be regarded as part of the Crusoe fiction’ even though this third volume consists of a series of essays in which Defoe had Crusoe opine on a number of religious and moral questions.40 A distinction between the first two Crusoe ‘novels’ and the third volume of essays is even harder to sustain if one accepts the recent and important scholarship of Ilse Vickers, Robert Mayer, and Geoffrey Sill.41 Each makes a strong case, along similar but far from identical lines, for reading Robinson Crusoe and other fictionalized works of Defoe’s as histories rather than trying to shoehorn them into the genre of the novel which for various formalist reasons has always been something of an uncomfortable fit.42 Ronald Paulson’s aesthetic model of breaking and remaking applies to Robinson Crusoe regardless of whether we consider it a novel or a history: in either case, Defoe was manipulating various literary conventions to suit his own purposes. Centuries of tradition had allowed the incorporation of fictional material in historical discourse, and although the accepted norms of historiography were changing in the early-modern period Defoe was happy to borrow and bend any literary forms at hand. Most of Defoe’s contemporaries accepted Crusoe’s story as a history – that is, as a structured narrative of particular events, purporting to have taken place in the past, which imparted general lessons, practical, moral, or both. Charles Gildon, one of the earliest critics of Robinson Crusoe, attacked the veracity of the story but Gildon had flirted with Deism and his objections probably had more to do with the book’s content than its form;43 in other words, with the doctrinal implications of Defoe’s portrayal of a providential world and the superiority of revealed over natural religion.44 Defoe responded in the Preface to the Serious Reflections by having Crusoe urge his critics to consider the three volumes as a unified whole and his story as a history:



Repentance for my Sins, and laying hold of a Saviour for Life and Salvation, to a stated Reformation in Practice, and Obedience to all God’s Commands, and this without any Teacher or Instructer; I mean, humane.38

As the design of every Thing is said to be first in the Intention, and last in the Execution; so I come now to acknowledge to my Reader, That the present Work is not merely the Product of the two first Volumes, but the two first Volumes may rather be called the Product of this: The Fable is always made for the Moral, not the Moral for the Fable … I Robinson Crusoe … do hereby declare, their Objection is an Invention scandalous in Design, and false in Fact; and do affirm, that the Story, though Allegorical, is also Historical; and that it is the beautiful Representation of a Life of unexampled Misfortunes … sincerely adapted to, and intended for the common Good of Mankind, and designed at first, as it is now farther apply’d, to the most serious Uses possible … Besides all this, here is the just and only good End of all Parable or Allegorick History brought to pass, viz., for moral and religious Improvement.45 From its first design to its farthest application, then, Crusoe’s ‘Allegorick History’ was intended to perform ‘the most serious uses possible’ and in the wake of recent religious disputes, nothing was more serious to Defoe than the defence of orthodox Christianity. Two of the most important tenets being challenged by heterodox writers were the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of special providence which asserted God’s direct and continuing role in human history. As Crusoe’s story illustrates, the central aim of special providence was not to demonstrate God’s controlling powers over the physical universe but to urge mankind towards repentance and salvation.46 God’s role in creating the world, governing it, and guiding human beings through it towards eternal salvation meant that the doctrines of special providence and the divinity of Christ were inextricably linked. In one of his clearest affirmations of a scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, Defoe has Crusoe explain the connection between them: Listening to the Voice of Providence, is my Subject … I am writing to those who acknowledge the two grand Principles upon which all Religion depends. 1. That there is a God, a first great moving Cause of all things, an eternal Power, Prior, and consequently Superior to all Power and Being. 2. That this eternal Power, which I call God, is the Creator and Governour of all things, viz., of Heaven and Earth. To avoid needless Distinctions concerning which of the Persons in the God-head, are exercised in the creating Power, and which in the governing Power, I offer that glorious Text, Psalm xxxiii. 6, as a Repulse to all such cavilling Enquiries, where the whole Trinity is plainly entitled to the whole creating Work, by the WORD (God the Son) of the LORD (God the Father) were the Heavens made, and all the Host of them, by the BREATH (God the Holy Ghost) of his Mouth.47



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Given Defoe’s belief in scriptural justification of the Trinity, he must have found the Salters’ Hall dispute especially galling because, to his mind, it was predicated upon a false distinction between belief in the Trinity and belief in scriptural authority alone. In Defoe these beliefs were one and the same. The providential theme of the Crusoe story is undeniable and much has been written about it, including its function as a riposte to Deists who had questioned God’s continuing intervention in the daily operations of his creation. As the above quotation shows, Defoe also wished to make it clear to Socinians and Arians that Christ was no junior partner in the providential ordering of the universe. Four other aspects of the Crusoe trilogy further demonstrate Defoe’s Trinitarian commitments. Like the providential theme, the first two – the conversion episodes and Crusoe’s association of Christianity with civilization – have been widely commented upon but not with respect to Defoe’s Trinitarianism. The last two – Crusoe’s physical and verbal attacks against idolatry and his lengthy diatribe against varieties of blasphemy – make no sense outside the context of Defoe’s Trinitarian beliefs and therefore have received little scholarly attention.

iv. Conversions: orthodoxy and redemption for Crusoe, Friday, Will and Mary Crusoe’s own conversion, of course, provides the primary theme and structure for the first volume.48 In highlighting the necessity of scripture for conversion, after several years in which we see Crusoe merely following his instincts and rationalizing his actions and beliefs, Defoe sought to dramatize the supremacy of revealed over natural religion and refute claims made by Deist writers that human beings, either intuitively or through the use of reason, may achieve true spiritual knowledge. Restless and dissatisfied with his lot in life, the nineteen-year-old Crusoe leaves home and quickly discovers the truth of the adage that worse things happen at sea. Deliverance from storms, enslavement, even shipwreck leads to only the most temporary repentance and superficial appreciation of God’s mercy. After nine months on the island, however, a fevered dream induces a period of serious soul-searching and a proper realization of both God’s omnipotence and his own sinfulness. Through prayer, scripture reading, and a concoction of rum and tobacco, Crusoe begins to recover physically but the end of his spiritual crisis only occurs when a biblical passage leads him to embrace Christ as his Saviour and thereby to understand the true depths of God’s mercy: ‘I threw down the Book, and with my Heart as well as my Hands lifted up to Heaven, in a Kind of Extasy of Joy, I cry’d out aloud, Jesus, thou Son of David, Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me Repentance!’ Only through revelation does Crusoe redirect his focus from God the omnipotent Father to God the merciful Son, from asking, as the children of




Israel did, for deliverance from the wilderness to begging for forgiveness, as he finally realizes that ‘Deliverance from Sin [is] a much greater Blessing, that [sc. than] Deliverance from Affliction’.49 For the first time in his life he experiences true peace of mind and the island ceases to be his prison.50 Defoe deliberately reinforced the Christocentrality of Crusoe’s newfound faith and the doctrine of the Trinity by having Crusoe reiterate his desire for ‘Mercy … through Jesus Christ’ on his first anniversary on the island and express thanks for the offices of the Holy Spirit on his second: I gave humble and hearty Thanks that God … could fully make up to me, the Deficiencies of my Solitary State, and the want of Humane Society by His Presence, and the Communications of his Grace to my Soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his Providence here, and hope for his Eternal Presence hereafter.51 Crusoe continues to suffer the occasional spiritual setback, notably upon his discovery of the footprint and again in the Farther Adventures, but his days of spiritual bankruptcy are over. Defoe also used Friday’s conversion as an opportunity to denounce natural religion and defend Christian orthodoxy.52 Prompted by Crusoe’s questioning and instruction, Friday is only too happy to surrender his native beliefs in a deity named Benemuckee and his priestly caste of elderly communicants in order to worship an obviously much more powerful, inclusive, and benevolent Christian God. Crusoe reports that Friday ‘receiv’d with Pleasure the Notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us’, and listened to his explanations of the Devil’s battle with God for control over human souls, but that at this point his evangelizing efforts hit a snag. Friday cannot understand why an omnipotent God does not kill the Devil to end his wickedness or, failing that scenario, why the Devil should not repent and be pardoned like everyone else. Crusoe’s frustrated response to Friday’s questions neatly encapsulates Defoe’s views on the limits of natural religion, the necessity of revelation, and the tripartite nature of God, as the Father or ‘supreme Being’, as the Son or ‘Mediator of the new Covenant’, and as the Holy Ghost or ‘Guide and Sanctifier’: Here I was run down again by him to the last Degree, and it was a Testimony to me, how the meer Notions of Nature, though they will guide reasonable Creatures to the Knowledge of a God, and of a Worship or Homage due to the supreme Being, of God as the Consequence of our Nature; yet nothing but divine Revelation can from [sc. form] the Knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of a Redemption purchas’d for us, of a Mediator of the new Covenant, and of an Intercessor, at the Foot-stool



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of God’s Throne; I say, nothing but a Revelation from Heaven, can form these in the Soul, and that therefore the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; I mean, the Word of God, and the Spirit of God promis’d for the Guide and Sanctifier of his People, are the absolutely necessary Instructors of the Souls of Men, in the saving Knowledge of God, and the Means of Salvation. After praying to God to assist him in instructing Friday, Crusoe finds the wisdom to explain that because Christ had taken upon himself the nature of mankind but not the nature of angels, fallen angels like the Devil could not share in his redemption. Like Augustine, Crusoe’s prayers to God for guidance make him both a better teacher and a better Christian himself. Reflecting upon his role in helping Friday ‘know Christ Jesus’, Crusoe begins to see himself as God’s instrument. His soul is infused with ‘a secret Joy’, and from this moment on he ‘frequently rejoyc’d that ever I was brought to this Place, which I had so often thought the most dreadful of all Afflictions that could possibly have befallen me. In this thankful Frame I continu’d all the Remainder of my Time.’53 Although Crusoe apologizes for his lack of theological expertise, Defoe makes him unerringly identify Trinitarianism as the basis of soteriology and of an understanding of God’s providential care of the world. Less well known but equally pointed as a defence of orthodoxy was the conversion episode of Will Atkins and his wife in the Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Returning to his island, Crusoe lays the foundations for a tolerant but decidedly Christian commonwealth with its growing number of inhabitants. Atkins, one of the reprobate mutineers left on Crusoe’s island at the end of the first volume, becomes the model penitent in the second. Fearing that his own wicked past has put him beyond redemption, Atkins must be convinced that no sins are beyond the reach of ‘Christ and the Merit of his Passion’. This deep sense of his own sinfulness, we are told, makes his repentance all the more genuine.54 Atkins then aids in the conversion of his native concubine who, like Friday, abandons her faith in Benemuckee to become a Christian. Crusoe is so moved by the conversions of Will and Mary Atkins that he makes a written record of them and describes the day of their marriage as ‘the most pleasant, agreeable Day to me that ever I passed in my whole Life’.55 Significantly, Mary’s baptism and the Atkins’ conversions and Christian marriage are carried out by a French Catholic priest whose truly pious and tolerant nature inspires Crusoe to think that ‘if such a Temper was universal, we might be all Catholick Christians, whatever Church or particular Profession we join’d to, or join’d in’.56 By 1719, Defoe, who was no friend of popery, was nevertheless finding atheism, heterodoxy, paganism, and idolatry more worrisome than Catholicism.57 Catholics were, at least, Trinitarians.




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It is true that the paganism of Friday and Will’s wife seems relatively benign but the reader can infer that Benemuckee is both an amoral and a distant deity. In the first volume Defoe certainly utilized the trope of newworld cannibalism to invoke old-world revulsion at the native society that worshipped him. In the second and third volumes, however, Crusoe’s abhorrence for idolatry becomes far more vitriolic and obsessive as he recounts and then reflects upon his voyages to Brazil, Madagascar, the Middle and Far East, and his overland journey through China and Muscovy before his eventual return to England. The rhetoric of idolatry was pervasive: it infused religious and political debate in the early eighteenth century. This rhetoric, it has been argued, was not only polemically useful, it was symptomatic of a deeper mentality of iconoclasm in which artists and writers sought to revive or reshape various ideals from the hollow and broken forms which littered their cultural landscape. In the Crusoe trilogy, idols of natural religion litter the globe and often assume the most heinous shapes. Crusoe describes one idol he sees worshipped in Peking and Nanking as ‘an incongruous Monster’ and a ‘mangled, promiscuous-gendered Creature’. He views Confucian maxims as nothing but ‘a Rhapsody of Moral Conclusions’ which fail to reach even the theological sophistication of that found in the Americas. Whereas the learning of the ancient Greeks and Romans at least led them to make heaven the seat of their gods and to worship celestial objects as ‘Representations of superiour Virtues’, Crusoe sees the Chinese ‘groveling in the very Sink and Filth of Idolatry; their idols are the most frightful monstrous Shapes, not the Form of any real Creature, much less the Images of Virtue, of Chastity, of Literature; but horrid Shapes of their Priests Invention’. The people of Japan too worship the ugliest manmade objects, proving themselves to be ‘overwhelmed in an Idolatry repugnant to Common-Sense, even to Nature’.58 Joining a caravan of Polish merchants travelling from Peking to Moscow, Crusoe traverses the land of the Tartars ‘whose Idols are almost as hideous as the Chineses, and whose Religion is all Nature; and not only so, but Nature under the greatest Degeneracy, and next to Brutal’. Again, he is struck by the fact that ‘none of the People look Up for their Gods, but Down; by which it came into my Mind, that even in Idolatry itself, the World was something degenerated, and their Reason was more hoodwink’d than their Ancestors’. At least the Romans, he reiterates, ‘look[ed] up among the Stars for their Idols’ and worshipped ‘like Men’, a far more rational idolatry to adopt when one is ‘without the Helps of Revelation’. Disgusted, Crusoe instead finds himself among people who ‘look down among the Brutes, form Idols to themselves out of the Beasts, and figure things like Monsters, to adore them for their Ugliness and horrible Deformity’.59 Contrary to Deistic assumptions about



v. Iconoclasm: Crusoe’s campaign against idolatry

natural religion, Defoe was asserting that, at best, reason and nature might have led Confucian and Roman literati to construct a system of political and educational precepts or a pantheon of sky gods. At worst, reason and nature kept the vast majority of humanity in the grip of superstitious and often degrading idolatries. After years of travelling outside Christendom Crusoe is at first relieved to reach Muscovy, a land at least nominally ruled by Christians, and he is reminded how blessed he is to have been born in a country ‘where the Name of God, and of a Redeemer is known, worship’d and ador’d’. Christianity, however, is thin on the ground at the Czarist frontier. Discovering a group of people sacrificing before a huge wooden idol, Crusoe bewails the sight of ‘God’s most glorious and best Creature … vested with a reasonable Soul … adapted both to honour his Maker, and be honoured by him, sunk and degenerated to a Degree so more than stupid, as to prostrate it self to a frightful Nothing’. Enraged, he blames the Devil for deluding these peasants ‘into such gross, surfeiting, sordid and brutish things, as one would think should shock Nature it self’.60 Crusoe attacks the idol with his sword and then devises an elaborate plan to blow it up after capturing all the villagers, an escapade which both delays and endangers the entire caravan. This lengthy and seemingly peculiar episode makes no sense in relation to the usual priorities of Defoe scholarship and it seems to have escaped comment altogether. However, read in the context of a cultural paradigm in which opponents were conceptualized as idolaters and the creative process as one of breaking and remaking, and read in the context of the debate over natural religion, Crusoe’s battle with the giant wooden idol must be seen as a set piece in Defoe’s war against heterodoxy.61 As the caravan proceeds west, Crusoe hopes to find more evidence of Christian civilization but is dismayed to discover ‘the same Tokens of Paganism and Barbarity … Rudeness of Manners, Idolatry, and Multitheism’. Instead of whole villages or regions worshipping one giant idol, he reports seeing ‘Idols in every Hutt and in every Cave’ and peasant understanding of the natural world so limited that ‘almost every Element, every uncommon thing, sets them a sacrificing’.62 Even at the edge of Europe, countryside ‘Houses and towns [are] full of Idols’ and the lives of the people ‘barbarous’ and ‘little better than the Savages of America’. Here the cities are full of Greek Orthodox Christians but Crusoe deems ‘their Religion mingled with so many Reliques of Superstition’ that it is hard to distinguish it ‘from meer Sorcery and Witchcraft’.63 Russian Orthodox Christians, he later reflects, may be ‘wonderfully devout’ but ‘our Lord Jesus Christ [is] made so much a meaner Figure among them than St. Nicholas, that I concluded Religion was swallow’d up of Superstition’.64 When Crusoe at last returns to England to begin the more retiring and reflective phase of his life, he recounts a conversation with an elderly gentlewoman about the ‘proper Business of old Age’. She begins the




discussion by asking Crusoe what his travels around the world had taught him about the principal business of mankind in general. Crusoe answers that after fulfilling their basic needs, human beings busied themselves by preying on each other, citing only the various forms of ‘Speech and Idolatry’ as the chief differences among them. When the gentlewoman expresses her hope that surely religion was ‘the principal apparent End of Life and the Employment of Mankind’, Crusoe admits that almost all nations acknowledged some sort of supreme power but ultimately he found ‘much more Adoration than Supplication’ in the world.65 In the end, even nations blessed by the revealed word needed to be vigilant against new forms of idolatry which presented themselves as sophisticated concepts rather than crude wooden statues. Disturbed by the increasing use of the concept of chance which threatened the providential paradigm as an explanatory model of the universe, Defoe felt compelled to discredit it.66 Attributing something to luck or chance, Crusoe argues, is like attributing it to ‘an empty Idol of Air, or rather an imaginary nonsensical Nothing, an Image more inconsistent than those I mention’d among the Chineses’. Chance was ‘a Name without being a miscall’d, unborn, nothing … that is to say, a Name put upon the Medium, which [people] set up in their Imagination, for Want of a Will to acknowledge their Maker’.67 Whatever the ‘critical Annotators’ might argue, ‘Natural Religion’ might lead one to accept the providential creation and guidance of the physical world but only ‘reveal’d Religion proves … beyond Contradiction’ that ‘Providence manifests a particular Care over, and Concern in the governing and directing [of] Man, the best and last created Creature on Earth’. Crusoe’s allegoric history was predicated upon the need for human beings to accept the wisdom and superintendency of Providence, ‘observe its Motions, obey its Dictates, and listen to its Voice’ for their own practical and spiritual benefit.68

vi. Christianity and the civilizing process In addition to discrediting natural religion, Defoe used Crusoe’s encounters with various peoples to establish a link between Christianity and the civilizing process. As the examples above demonstrate, wherever idolatry dominates a society, Crusoe finds barbarism, rudeness, and an absence of learning, technology, and commerce. One might expect Defoe to characterize the nomadic peoples of Eurasia as primitive but he also took great pains in both the Farther Adventures and Serious Reflections to denigrate the commercial and technological achievements of the Chinese whose exports were so sought after by eighteenth-century English men and women. Whatever praise his countrymen had for ‘the Power, Riches, Glory, Magnificence, and Trade of the Chinese’, Crusoe had seen for himself that ‘they were a contemptible Herd … of ignorant, sordid Slaves, subjected to a Government qualified only to rule such a People’.69 Boasting that ‘Our City of London



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has more Trade than all their mighty Empire’ and ‘A million of their Foot [soldiers] could not stand before one embattled Body of our Infantry’, Crusoe dismisses China’s buildings and cities, commerce and science as inferior to Europe’s.70 Even their prized porcelain, he claims, owes more to the quality of their clay than their craftsmanship. Chinese technology may be superior to that of other pagan nations, Crusoe admits, but only because their ‘first Ideas of Mechanic Arts were probably receiv’d by them from the Persians, Assyrians, and the banish’d transplanted Israelites’.71 Just as he had linked Arab learning to a Noachic inheritance in the Continuation of Letters of a Turkish Spy, Defoe asserted Chinese dependency upon Near Eastern knowledge to defend the unitary scheme of human history found in scripture against pluralist historical schemes proposed by many Deists. Though the Chinese may have acquired technical knowledge, they appear to have forsaken or failed altogether to adopt any form of Near Eastern monotheism and this explained their cultural inferiority: where-ever Christianity has been planted or profess’d nationally in the World, even where it has not had a Saving Influence, it has yet had a Civilizing Influence: It has operated upon the Manners, the Morals, the Politics, and even the Tempers and Dispositions of the People: It has reduc’d them to the Practice of Virtue, and to the true Methods of Living, has wean’d them from the Barbarous Customs they had been used to, infusing a Kind of Humanity and Softness of Disposition into their very Natures; civilizing and softning them, teaching them to love a Regularity of Life, and filling them with Principles of generous Kindness and Beneficence one to another; in a Word, it has taught them to live like Men, and act upon the Foundations of Clemency, Humanity, Love, and and [sic] good Neighborhood, suitable to the Nature and Dignity of God’s Image, and to the Rules of Justice and Equity, which it instructs them in.72 Admirers of classical antiquity might argue that the Greeks and Romans ‘were fill’d with Notions of Virtue and Honour’ but Crusoe protests that only Christianity eradicated their barbarous and cruel customs and sports.73 Monotheism was a crucial step in the advance of any society and, needless to say, Defoe believed that Christianity, especially orthodox Protestantism, ran far ahead of its competitor creeds in the civilizing stakes. Unlike the ‘haughty, imperious, insolent’ Chinese or the ‘false, cruel, and treacherous’ Japanese, whose main Christian contacts had been the Jesuits, Crusoe finds the people of Formosa, for example, to be ‘very courteous and civil … [and] dealt very fairly and punctually with us’. He attributes their politeness to the ‘Remains of Christianity, which was once planted here by a Dutch Missionary of Protestants’.74 Catholic priests had achieved some success in the New World, even on his own island, but ‘History and Experience’




taught Crusoe that the development of a ‘meek [and] merciful Disposition extends more among Protestants, than among the Papists’.75 That was not to say that Protestants and Catholics could not cooperate with each other and ‘subdue the barbarous and idolatrous Nations of the World; in Order to suppress the[ir] Worshipping the Devil’. Whereas the use of force against Christians for sectarian purposes was never justified, Crusoe accepts that the use of force to convert heathens constituted a ‘lawful and just War’.76 He explains that while individual European nations wielded an extraordinary influence around the globe by virtue of their military and commercial powers, this had not translated into ‘the Gospel be[ing] heard to the End of the Earth’. Such a day will come, Crusoe believes, but the exaltation of Christ’s kingdom above all nations might be ‘a little too apocalyptical, or visionary for the[se] Times’.77 In the meantime, if the nations of Europe would put as much effort into spreading Christianity as they did into projecting their commerce around the world, ‘the savage Part of Mankind would in one Age, be brought to bow their Knees to the God of Truth, and would bless the Enterprise … as the best Thing that ever befel them’. Imagine the good that would be achieved, he suggests, if a European joint venture raised the necessary funds, fleets, foot soldiers, and missionaries ‘to conquer Heathenism and Idolatry’ and thereby enable the revealed word to reach millions of people.78 Converting and civilizing the rest of the world did not, however, translate into salvation at home and the Serious Reflections also includes Crusoe’s impressions of places which though blessed by the ‘clear Light of Gospel Revelation’ were still bedevilled by superstition and enthusiasm. In Portugal, Italy, and the German principalities, people suffered under the cruelties of inquisition and the ‘Pomp and Glory’ of clerical and courtly elites who feared religious reform because it threatened the power and luxury they enjoyed. Protestant communities had their problems too. Conversation with ‘a Quietist’ who professed that ‘all Religion was internal’ leads Crusoe to quip that this man was ‘so wrapp’d up in his Internals’ that his religion was nothing more than ‘Meditation without Worship, Doctrine without Practice, Reflection without Reformation, and Zeal without Knowledge’. Protestants in Poland had been so infected by Socinianism that ‘our Lord Jesus Christ was reduc’d here to little more than a good Man sent from Heaven to instruct the World, and far from capable of effecting by the Influence of his Spirit, and Grace, the glorious Work of redeeming the World’. Lutherans embraced ‘Popery and no Popery’. They supported consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation and their services are so full of ‘Trumpets, Kettle-Drums, Fiddles, Hautboys, & all the merry Part of the Popish Devotion’ that superstition seems to exceed their piety. Crusoe hears that many French Huguenots, fearing persecution, ‘go to Mass with Protestant Hearts’ in much the same vein as his occasional conforming coreligionists attended Anglican services. Thus ‘even where there are right



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Principles at Bottom, and where there is a Profession of the Orthodox Faith’, religious practices seldom measured up.79 Crusoe realizes that the best religion was still to be found at home in England but piety and practice there too are far from perfect. In a masterful vignette, Defoe has Crusoe attend the Te Deum in celebration of England’s victory at Ramillies, held at St Paul’s in December 1706.80 Crusoe is heartened to see the London crowds throng to the service but soon realizes that nine-tenths of them ‘came there only to see the Queen, and the Show, and the other tenth Part, I think, might be said to make the Show’. At first sight the clergy are grave and impressive but in the intervals between their liturgical duties, they seem more interested in ‘taking Snuff, adjusting their Perukes, [and] looking about at the fair Ladies’ who also have more on their minds than the solemnities of church and state. ‘The Star and Garter of a fine young Nobleman’, Crusoe observes, ‘drew the Eyes of so many Women off of their Prayer Books’ that it would have been better if he had simply left the cathedral. After the service, ‘the Thanksgiving was adjourned from the Church to the Tavern … and instead of the Decency of religious Triumph, there was indeed a Triumph of religious indecency, and the anthems Te Deum and Thanksgiving of the Day ended in Drunkenness, the Bonefires, and the Squibs and Crackers of the Street’. Crusoe is left wondering why his fellow English men and women, at such an important moment and in such a solemn space, should profanely jostle each other for a better royal view and ‘make the Queen an Idol’.81 Even with the blessing of Revelation, it seems, human beings were too often drawn from supplication to sanctimony and spectacle.

vii. Crusoe’s condemnation of heterodoxy Whether one is inclined to regard the Crusoe trilogy as a fictionalized history or as a multi-volume novel, this account of the Ramillies Te Deum illustrates Defoe’s genius for creating, or recreating, a telling scene but it was not the only strategy he employed to convey his central message. While maintaining the Crusoe mask throughout the final volume, Defoe wrote the Serious Reflections in the form of six essays on religious topics with a concluding account of Crusoe’s visions of an angelic world. As previous chapters of this study have shown, Defoe’s political and religious worries often manifested themselves as anxiety about the corruption of language and the third essay of the Serious Reflections is another good example. Entitled ‘Immorality of Conversation and Vulgar Errors in Behavior’, the essay focuses almost solely upon blasphemy, especially the wickedness and dangers associated with sceptical views of the Trinity. The essay begins with Crusoe’s observations on the trend towards indecent and blasphemous conversation in contemporary society. The problem of lewd language is briefly discussed but it is the growing fashion for




heterodox opinions that Defoe was really seeking to condemn. When ‘the beaux talk blasphemy’, Crusoe complains, ‘the rest will set up for atheists, and deny their Maker’. In an effort to appear equally witty and learned, ‘tradesmen’ mimic their social superiors by questioning and doubting things beyond not only ‘their affected capacities’ but beyond the power of human reason itself: Hence come Heresies and Delusions. Men affecting to search into what is impossible they should clearly discover, learn to doubt, because they cannot describe, and deny the Existence because they cannot explain the Manner of what they enquire after; as if a thorow impossibility of their acting by their Sense upon Objects beyond its Reach, was an Evidence against their Being. Thus because the Trinity cannot appear to their Reasoning, they oppose their Reasoning to its Reality; they will divest the Son of God of his Divinity, and of the hypostatick Union of the Godhead in the Person of Christ, because they cannot distinguish between the Actions done by him in his Mediatorial Capacity, in Virtue of his Office, and those Actions, which he did in Virtue of his Omnipotence and Godhead.82 Just as little children tell ‘feigned Stories’ and then begin to believe them, men who banter about the fundamentals of religion begin to believe their own blasphemous jests ‘till they by Custom learn to espouse and defend them’. It would be one thing, Crusoe states, if our ‘Town Fopperies’ were confined to ‘little Excursions of Dress and Behaviour’ because one could dismiss them with ‘pity or laugh[ter]’ but the problem of blasphemy was far more serious: when Wit is set on work, and Invention rack’d to find out Methods, how they may be more than superlatively wicked, when all the Endowments of the Mind and Helps of Art, with the Accomplishments of Education are rang’d in Battel against Heaven, and joyn’d in Confederacy to make Mankind more wicked, than ever the Devil had the Impudence to desire of them; This calls out aloud for the Help of all the Powers of Government, and all the Strength of Wit and Virtue to detect and expose it.83 Crusoe plays his part in exposing this wickedness by delineating the various strains of heterodoxy infecting the English body politic. At the top of his list was atheism, not because it was the most prevalent but because it was the most pernicious. By refusing to acknowledge any superior power, atheists revealed a level of hubris and folly previously unimaginable. Few groups in human history, not even the Devil himself, failed to acknowledge ‘a first Cause of all Things’. Second on Crusoe’s list came the Deists who ‘acknowledge a God, but he must be such a one as they please to make



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him; a fine well bred, good natur’d, Gentleman like Deity, that cannot have the Heart to damn any of his Creatures to an Eternal Punishment, nor could not be so weak as to let the Jews crucify his own Son’. The Deists accepted the Bible as ‘a good History in most Parts, but the Story of our Saviour they look upon as a meer Novel, and the Miracles of the New Testament as a Legend of Priestcraft’. Lastly, Crusoe identifies ‘the Arians and Socinians, the disciples of an ancient Heretick’ who disowned ‘the Godhead of Jesus Christ’. Defoe seems to have been especially annoyed by the atheists’ and Deists’ use of ridicule, one of the favourite rhetorical tools of eighteenth-century sceptics, because Crusoe repeatedly lashes out at their ‘ridiculous shifts’, their constant ‘banter or foolish pun[s] upon religion’, and the way they ‘expose religion, and all the doctrines of repentance, and faith in Christ … as a matter of banter and ridicule’.84 The problem of blasphemy – and by extension, heresy – was now so widespread that it extended from ‘the Court to the Plough-tail’ and Crusoe urges the court and the gentry to set better examples for the rest of society. Realizing that arguments from ‘Scripture or Providence’ will not suffice because ‘I am supposed to be talking to Men that doubt or deny them both’, he appeals instead to his readers’ pretensions to politeness and learning.85 It was irrational to think that ‘a Man can’t be bright, unless he is wicked’.86 Vices and ‘vicious habits of Conversation’, Crusoe argues, dishonour and can even destroy a man’s ‘Senses, Estate, and Reputation’. Language and behaviour ‘so Unnatural, so Unruly, so Ingenteel, so Foolish and Foppish’ could never be justified to either a man’s ‘own Reason, or the Memory of his Ancestors’.87 An active supporter of societies for the reformation of manners during the reigns of William III and Queen Anne, by 1720 Defoe began at least to consider more forceful means of stifling heterodox opinions. In the beginning of his essay, Crusoe states that ‘Laws and Proclamations are weak and useless Things’ unless coupled with social pressures because they failed to affect ‘those whom no Laws can reach’, echoing populist sentiments Defoe had expressed early in his writing career. Later in the essay, however, Crusoe doubts that any reform is possible so long as ‘the debauching the religious Principles of the Nation, goes on with an unrestrain’d Liberty’. How could the government rationalize putting people in the stocks for drunkenness or swearing while allowing them to dispute and ridicule ‘the very Sum and Substance of the Christian Doctrine’? It seemed insupportable that If a Man talk against the Government, or speak scurrilously of the King, he is had to the Old Bayly, and from thence to the Pillory, or WhippingPost, and ’tis fit it should be so: But he may speak Treason against the Majesty of Heaven, deny the Godhead of his Redeemer, and make a Jest of the Holy Ghost, and thus affront the Power we all adore, and yet pass with Impunity.88




Crusoe condemns society for failing to ‘show our Resentment when we hear the Honour and Essence of God slighted and denied’,89 but the essay clearly shows Defoe’s increasing pessimism about the power of social pressure to contain heterodox opinion. If anything, fashion, aided by the policies of the Whig regime of Stanhope and Sunderland, seemed to be encouraging religious scepticism. Like many of his contemporaries, Defoe worried that his age was one of general moral decline.90 If left unchecked, he feared that the proliferation of heresy and vice would enervate the moral energies of each individual and endanger the very soul of the nation. Atheism, Deism, Arianism and Socinianism are, Crusoe states, citing Job, ‘Iniquities … to be punished by the Judges’. They were the cause of ‘the Ruin of the Nation’s Morals’ because ‘no Method can be so direct to prepare People for all Sorts of Wickedness, as to perswade them out of a Belief of any supreme Power to restrain them; make a Man once cease to believe a God, and he has nothing left to limit his Appetite but meer Philosophy’.91

viii. Conclusion: ‘a religious Application’ Robinson Crusoe was the first of Defoe’s books among those clearly identified to us as ‘novels’, and this poses particular problems in interpreting its central purposes. The apparent absence of earlier such works from Defoe’s pen leads later scholars to assimilate Robinson Crusoe to what they hold to be the genre – the novel – that the book seemingly did so much to found. At one extreme, one modern editor of this work was tempted to explain the whole of Defoe’s life up to 1719 as ‘a preparation for writing the works of imagination, produced in the last twelve years of his life, which gave him lasting fame’.92 In this view, his Nonconformist education at Newington Green is reduced to a par with his commercial experience: both were important for yielding the knowledge of mankind on which Defoe could draw in his novels. Indeed, as this editor explained, ‘Defoe’s views on religion, tolerant and more or less rational, had an economic basis’.93 For many such scholars, the point of Defoe’s religion for his fiction was at most the Puritan impetus it gave him to minute introspection about human actions. Yet to read Robinson Crusoe as a tale of nascent capitalism, as a sketch of stadial development, or as an anticipation of the novel of sentiment and character is to read it timelessly, taken out of its specific setting. In the late 1710s Defoe was not chiefly concerned by the dynamism of economic life, the possibility of recreating it from first principles, or the privileged position of the emotions. As we have seen, Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe at a time when his overriding preoccupations were the threats posed to Trinitarian religion. For Defoe, Crusoe’s survival of shipwreck and his success in establishing himself as a farmer, manufacturer, and master were not com-



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placent economic allegories. The material circumstances of Crusoe’s life mattered to the story because they were integral props and scenery in a sacred drama that involved the redemption of Crusoe and Friday alike; the extension of this scenario for mankind from a desert island to the island of Britain; and the extrapolation of it to provide a framework for human history that Defoe explicitly and didactically applied to China, Muscovy, and continental Europe. The interpretation offered here, then, shows the point of Defoe’s own account of the purpose of the book in the Preface to Robinson Crusoe. Recent students, preoccupied with the nature of fictionality, notice Defoe’s implausible disclaimer: ‘The Editor [i.e. Defoe] believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it.’ But this disclaimer was only to shield from scepticism the manifesto with which the author immediately preceded it: The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses which wise Men always apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honour the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of Circumstances, let them happen how they will.94




The Perils of Consumption and the Decline of Family Government

i. Introduction In August 1719 Defoe published the second volume of his Crusoe trilogy, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. As explained in the previous chapter, all three volumes must primarily be understood as part of Defoe’s energetic response to a series of challenges to orthodox Christianity but they also reveal his views on a host of social and economic issues. Crusoe’s experiences had led him to become a devout, even militant Christian, one who fully embraced the providential power of God and the redemptive powers of his Son. They had also made him rich enough to buy a farm on his return to England and become a ‘meer country gentleman’, one finally capable of appreciating that ‘middle station of life’ which his father had recommended all those years ago. Defoe thus began the Farther Adventures by having to explain why, after thirty-five years of misadventure Crusoe should want to leave the prosperous, happy, and settled life he had enjoyed for the last seven years. ‘One blow from unforeseen Providence’, the death of his wife, Crusoe grieved, had ‘unhing’d’ him. Without her steadying influence, a restless passion for adventure once again compelled him to sea, but not before Defoe afforded his protagonist the opportunity for a little social commentary: I saw the World busy round me, one Part labouring for Bread, and the other Part squandring in vile Excesses or empty Pleasures, equally miserable, because the End they propos’d still fled from them; for the Man of Pleasure every Day surfeited of his Vice, and heap’d up Work for Sorrow and Repentance; and the Man of Labour spent their [sic] Strength in daily Strugglings for Bread to maintain the vital Strength they labour’d with, so living in a daily Circulation of Sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live.1 These observations led Crusoe to remember and decide to revisit his other island kingdom – a place, he noted by contrast, in which human material 138



7

needs were generously met but not exceeded, a place which had thus given him the time to contemplate the true meaning and purpose of life. This narrative device accomplished several things: it reinforced the central theme of repentance and redemption, reminded readers of the positive aspects of Crusoe’s life on the island, and gave Defoe the excuse to take him back there. As a socio-economic snapshot of contemporary England, it captured the taxonomy of early Hanoverian moral debate: the turpitude of the luxury-loving haves, the plight of the labouring have-nots, and a growing preoccupation with the have-some but want-mores. During the roughly two-year period in which Defoe wrote and published the Crusoe trilogy, the problems and failings of the poor, the rich, and the aspiring were thrown into high relief by two critical economic episodes. The South Sea Bubble has long been recognized by historians as ‘a defining moment of early financial capitalism’ and by literary scholars as an event which profoundly shaped both the form and content of literature in the early Hanoverian period.2 A subject of more parliamentary debate in its day than the South Sea crisis (if less scholarly attention today), however, was the controversy surrounding the importation of printed Indian calicoes and chintz. In 1719 silk and wool weavers in London and other cities rioted in the streets and campaigned in the press for relief from this growing fashion and perceived threat to their livelihoods. If the South Sea crisis epitomized the problem of credit, the calico conflict highlighted questions about consumption. It was understood that both consumption and credit stimulated commerce but, associated as they were with emulation and avarice, they generated much anxiety and negative commentary. Parliament responded to both the South Sea and calico crises with protective legislation which did something to satisfy particular interest groups but nothing to quell growing fears that political corruption as well as the forces of consumption and credit were damaging the nation’s moral and social fabric. In his earliest and most journalistic responses to the South Sea and calico controversies, Defoe examined the problems of consumption and credit in much the same way that other moralists of the period did. Condemning greedy stock-jobbers, fashion-conscious women, and others for their selfish and irresponsible behaviour in the marketplace, he identified avarice, emulation, social mobility, political corruption, and the growth of heterodox opinions as hallmarks of the age. Defoe, however, moved beyond moral outrage as a thinker and beyond the confines of the pamphlet and periodical as a writer. Experimenting with various generic forms, he began to examine social institutions such as domestic servitude, marriage, the household economy, and gentility to see how new sources of commercial wealth and the ever-expanding nexus of cash and credit had influenced attitudes and behaviours in England during his lifetime. His two most famous female protagonists, Moll Flanders and Roxana, may be said to embody the economic and moral issues raised in these debates.3



The Perils of Consumption 139

South Sea Company speculation and East India Company importations represented two of the last controversies in which Defoe would immerse himself in the quotidian world of journalism and reflect these polemics in the creation of full-length fictions. He continued to write the occasional pamphlet on a variety of matters in the 1720s but increasingly concentrated his efforts within other genres which gave him more scope for historical reflection. Perhaps the daily grind of grub-street was less enticing to a man in his sixties whose writing had finally given him some financial success. It is possible that Defoe was encouraged by changes in the publishing industry and by a growing market of readers to produce longer works.4 One could also argue that the consolidation of Whig power during this decade allowed Defoe to turn his attention away from party conflicts and political change towards socio-economic conflicts and structural change. What is certain is that these two economic controversies helped to stimulate in Defoe an increasingly sophisticated analysis of the role of commerce in his own society and throughout the wider world. He chose to address both the positive and negative aspects of commercial culture through the writing of conduct manuals, Baconian histories of trade, and book-length essays examining the history of religion and what we might call the supernatural realm.5 Within these various genres, Defoe operated within several chronological frameworks which led him to grasp even more fully that long-term socio-economic forces were at work in the world and that human values and political arrangements were not impervious to them. Commerce had made England strong as a nation but it had also made its people more inclined to neglect their duties towards family, nation, and God. This did not shake Defoe’s belief that trade was part of God’s providential design. It did, however, cause him to think about when and why men and women had become more susceptible to corrupting vices and opinions. Defoe’s initial interventions in the South Sea and calico debates reveal some interesting similarities. In response to each of these controversies, he wrote three substantial pamphlets and launched a new periodical between the years 1719 and 1721.6 In their castigation of the pernicious relationship between stock-jobbing and parliamentary politics and in their attacks on the gentry for their failure to act as moral exemplars, these works echo, sometimes verbatim, Defoe’s contributions to the 1701 ‘paper war’ and the campaign for the reformation of manners during William’s reign.7 Then and now, be they projectors, brokers, jobbers, company directors, or politicians, Defoe criticized anyone promoting shares in schemes that were, at best, unrealistic and, at worst, fraudulent. Then and now he railed against vice and the sins of avarice and pride. What seems to have changed in the intervening period was Defoe’s willingness to entertain the idea that the growth of sin and vice were not just the function of man’s fallen nature but were partially the consequence of the growth of commerce and the progres-



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ii. The Calico and South Sea crises: Defoe’s journalistic response In defending the wool and silk weavers’ cause against the importation of East India Company calicoes, Defoe voiced some of his own conservative economic attitudes. His first foray into the debate in August 1719, The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers, was a response to a pamphlet, The Weavers’ Pretences Examined, which championed free-market theories and the ability of the marketplace to support a range of goods at a range of prices.8 Its author asserted the right of companies to import goods and export specie, attacked the government for enacting prohibitive duties in efforts to protect domestic manufacturers and support the public debt, and blamed the weavers for selling more apprenticeships than their trade could support. Although Defoe condemned the mobbish behaviour of the rioting weavers, he argued that their cause was just because the nation had a duty to support those home industries which consumed more domestic raw material, employed more people, and exported manufactured goods either for specie or for those goods which could not be obtained at home. It was perfectly appropriate, he argued, for the state to attempt to regulate commerce which enriched East India Company shareholders at the expense of English workers. He also pointed to the success of measures enacted in 1701 against calicoes and to other consumption laws against French wine and brandy.9 It was vital that Britain defend not just the Spitalfields weavers but ‘all the Manufacturers of Wool and Silk in the Kingdom upon whose Trade not only some Millions of People depend, but in whose Prosperity in short all the Nation is concern’d’.10 The Just Complaint’s mercantilist arguments are perhaps less interesting than the moral and social comments interspersed between them for these observations were the ones which would stimulate Defoe’s historical thinking about commerce. Defoe reasoned that quality and price alone were not wholly responsible for the calico craze. He blamed ‘the Folly of our Women’ for creating a ‘Trade-Plague among us’, causing ‘the HomeConsumption of our own Manufactures [to] languish and decay in such a manner, as bids fair to starve our Poor, and put the whole Woollen Trade of this Nation … into the utmost Confusion’.11 Although they could afford the finest silk damasks and wool broadcloths, ladies of quality were choosing to wear imported chintz and painted calicoes and this encouraged servant girls to do the same. If the better sorts of children in boarding schools were all wearing calicoes then the meaner children in the streets



sive availability of luxury at every level of the social hierarchy. Through consumption men and women could pretend or aspire to be what they were not, thus blurring social boundaries which had seemed more rigid only two decades before. Consumption was creating illusions of substance in the social realm just as credit was creating them in the financial realm.

followed suit. It was therefore critical that gentlewomen set the right example by wearing English cloth ‘for as there is an invincible Pride in the ordinary People, of being counted what they are not, they are almost led into all their Fashions in Imitation of the Gentry’.12 Both Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724) often used clothing to feign levels of solvency and status they did not possess. Whether it was true or not that it had become ‘a hard Matter to know the Mistress from the Maid by their Dress’, as Defoe would assert in a pamphlet of 1725 on servants, calicoes represented a social and moral as well as an economic threat.13 They obscured social markers and boundaries by enabling servant women especially to dress and therefore potentially to act above their station. Defoe was not against all social mobility and much of his writing in the 1720s attempted to distinguish between reckless social emulation and welldeserved advance in rank. In A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, for example, he described the Somerset region’s ‘truly noble Manufacture’ of broadcloth which employed many poor people and raised numerous manufacturing families into the ranks of the gentry. By creating ‘a vast Magazine of Wool for the rest of the Nation’, employing ‘Multitudes’ in the stocking-weaving industry, he exclaimed, Leicestershire’s ‘Grasiers are so rich, that they grow Gentlemen’.14 Because these clothiers and sheep farmers had risen through their own industry and encouraged the industry of others, their success was to be celebrated. Although the manufacture of wool cloth had been central to Britain’s economic growth in the earlymodern period, by the eighteenth century its dominance was on the wane. Defoe nevertheless retained an anachronistic reverence for the English wool industry, and as we shall see in Chapter 8, it was central to Defoe’s analysis of England’s transformation from a feudal to a commercial society. In all his works Defoe praised both the communal and industrious nature of those who engaged in woollen manufactures. It provided work for men, their wives, children, and neighbours and so he was especially incensed when the anonymous author of The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d challenged this image of a wholesome household economy. The ‘grand Cause of the Weavers wanting Work’, that pamphlet asserted, was not competition from East India Company goods but ‘Covetousness of both Masters and Journeymen’ for lucrative apprentice fees and the ‘easier Work, and greater Wages’ which London offered vis-à-vis the rest of the country. Moreover, during their seasonal flush of work in the spring, weavers spent as much time in ‘Ale-houses, drinking and gaming away their Money’ leaving their families in need when business ebbed.15 Defoe condemned all of these charges as false. Devoting some attention to the weavers’ practices regarding employment, he explained that if a master weaver took on any apprentices or journeymen at all, it was a ‘Son or near Relation’ involved in the trade since boyhood and paying little or no fee.16 Six years later, Defoe would examine the relationship between tradesmen, rather than manufacturers,



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and their apprentices, concluding that ever-increasing apprentice fees had damaged the moral economy of the household.17 One last aspect of the debate over the importation of East India Company calicoes deserves attention and it too contributed to Defoe’s historicization of commercial society. The author of The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d began his pamphlet with a brief tribute to Britain’s happy geographic and climatic situation and to the ‘Liberty and Property that we so justly boast of’ which he defined as ‘the liberty of eating and drinking, or wearing what we please, and thinking or believing what we please’.18 This was an unconventional definition to say the least and it raised Defoe’s suspicions. It was clear to Defoe that his adversary in print was not only a ‘true Libertine’ but ‘a Free-Thinker too’ for why else would he comment about ‘thinking or believing what we please’ in a ‘Dispute about Weavers wanting Work, Women wearing Callicoes, and the Like’?19 It is unclear whether Defoe knew the precise identity of the author but he concluded by saying his own tract was directed less towards the author than towards the ‘worthy Persons that employ’d him, who are better known than he is; and … seem to join with his Scandals’.20 Defoe may indeed have known who the author was, since the publisher of this pamphlet, John Roberts of Warwick Lane, published Defoe also. Defoe cannot have been unaware that Roberts published a gallery of the leading Deist, Arian and Socinian authors, including John Asgill, Thomas Chubb, Thomas Gordon, Thomas Morgan, Matthew Tindal, John Toland, John Trenchard, William Whiston, and Thomas Woolston.21 Appropriately, the anonymous author of A Further Examination of the Weavers’ Pretences (also published by Roberts) accused Defoe of using the labels ‘Libertine and Free-thinker’ to ‘prejudice his Readers against me’ and ‘swell … his Pamphlet to a Sixpenny Bulk’. In an attempt to clarify his position, the author stated his ‘Meaning was nothing else than the Liberty that every man has, or ought to have, of enjoying his own Opinion, in speculative Matters in General’, and blamed Defoe for attaching a religious meaning to this claim.22 This was hardly a disavowal of Defoe’s charge and perhaps a tacit admission of its accuracy. Defoe had no doubts about the heterodoxy of his next opponent in print when his second pamphlet in defence of the weavers, A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes, was answered by the notorious John Asgill, expelled from both the Irish and English Houses of Commons for financial misconduct and for his blasphemous beliefs which Defoe had condemned in 1704.23 In a fifteen-page appendix to the third edition of his A Brief State of the Question, Defoe dismissed as ‘trifling and unfair’ the arguments of ‘Mr. Asgill, a Pen’ he sneered, ‘so often employ’d in sublimer Matters’.24 Defoe never had positive views of the East India Company and certainly realized the propaganda value of discrediting its supporters as heretical libertines. More importantly, though, he took Asgill’s participation in the debate and the position taken in The Weavers’




Pretences Examined that people should eat, drink, wear, and believe what they please as instances of a comprehensive and growing challenge to the idea that moral rectitude should restrain individual liberty. The freedom of believing what one liked was acted out by society to an alarming extreme over the next few months of 1719–20 when men and women, through their own credulity and avarice, and encouraged by the deceit of others, deluded themselves into thinking that rapidly inflating shares of South Sea stock were really a solid investment. Defoe understood that systems of both private and public credit were essential to the prosperity of individuals and the nation at large and, on the whole, the English economy benefited enormously from them. When these systems worked properly, Defoe grounded his explanations of them in experience. He celebrated, for example, the way in which credit facilitated the prodigious volume of trade at the annual Sturbridge fair. Here, he observed in the first volume of the Tour, chapman, retailers, and wholesalers, ‘transact their Business wholly in their Pocket-Books’, receive payments and take orders ‘chiefly in Bills … exceed[ing] by far the Sales of Goods actually brought to the Fair’. When credit systems succumbed to periodic crises, as they were prone to do in the eighteenth century,25 he explained their malfunction in terms of fiction and fantasy, as he did in the speculative frenzy of 1719–20. For Defoe, the major problem with credit lay in the commodification of money and shares themselves. In his Complete English Tradesman of 1725, Defoe admitted that ‘the force of credit is not to be describ’d by words’.26 Of course this never stopped him from trying to do so and it was essential that his target audience for this work, the young tradesman, understand that credit was ‘next to real stock … the foundation, the life and soul of business’, a ‘tradesman’s blessing’ and ‘choicest jewel’, and ‘an impregnable fortification, either for a nation, or for a single man in business’.27 It was, however, next to real stock, not real stock itself. Credit could act as both a conduit for or stimulus to real commerce but it could not replace it. Defoe’s vain hope that paper credit remain a medium of exchange rather than one of speculation was also reflected in the contrasting investment styles of Roxana and her virtuous husband, the Dutch merchant. By casting Sir Robert Clayton, the radical Whig politician and Restoration wheelerdealer as her financial adviser, Defoe condemned Roxana, not only for making her fortune through prostitution but also for seeking to augment her ill-gotten gains through avaricious investing. Clayton had also been a friend of John Toland’s and was a reputed freemason.28 In contrast, the scene in which Roxana and her virtuous husband review their assets emphasized the fact that his stocks and bills of exchange were kept with jewels and gold in lock boxes which took some effort to retrieve from a goldsmith’s office.29 They were certificates to be stored, paying respectable dividends as they matured, creating wealth through the quiet magic of compound interest. They were not speculative slips of paper kept close at



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hand to be discounted, puffed, or jobbed in frequent and fevered exchanges in hopes of ever higher rates of return.30 If the marketing of shares seemed to overshadow the purpose of the shares themselves as accurate representations of profits based on real trade or tax revenues which were already extant or reasonable to expect, then Defoe became uneasy. Regular dividends were fine but if shares were grossly inflated or deflated, then he lashed out, accusing investors of avarice and jobbers and brokers of tampering, not just with the economy, but with the political and social order as well. When the South Sea Company was first proposed in 1711 as a Tory alternative to the Whig-dominated Bank of England, Defoe had proposed that part of the funds it generated be invested in real trading and colonizing initiatives in South America. Instead the Company became a corrupt, speculative venture which enriched an inner circle of the few and the lucky at the expense and ruin of many naive investors. In the summer of 1719, a full year before South Sea stock mania reached its height, Defoe published, anonymously, The Anatomy of Exchange Alley, his most comprehensive attack on stock-jobbing. The trade itself was a ‘compleat System of Knavery … founded in Fraud, born of Deceit, and nourished by Trick, Cheat, Wheedle, Forgeries, Falshoods, and all sorts of Delusions’. Its leading practitioners may have been ‘Friends to the Government’ and ‘hearty Whigs’ but Defoe did not shrink from calling them ‘hearty Knaves’ who stopped at nothing in their ‘vehement Pursuit of … Profits’.31 He also denounced three wealthy financiers who had been instrumental in orchestrating the South Sea scheme as the ‘true Triumverate of modern Thieving’, each of them ‘resolving to be rich at the Price of every Man they can bubble’. Exchange Alley itself, that tiny parcel of the City easily encompassed in a ‘Minute and a half’[s] walk, ‘throngs with Jews, Jobbers, and Brokers, their Names are needless, their Characters dirty as their Employment’.32 Their tactics included ‘Coining false News, this way good, that way bad; whispering imaginary Terrors, Frights, Hopes, Expectations, and then preying upon the Weakness of those, whose Imaginations they have wrought upon’.33 Defoe even recommended his readers not to pay brokers who had led them by deception into disadvantageous transactions, ‘and as the Devil’s Broker, Whiston, said to Parson Giffard, tell them you are all of a Trade’.34 Even in Exchange Alley, Defoe could not forget the threat to religion posed by William Whiston and the freethinking tradition that he personified.35 Defoe had condemned this same game as it unfolded in France under John Law’s Mississippi Company which assumed public debt and then falsely promised real colonial investment financed by hyper-inflationary and ultimately worthless shares. It was in fact the Mississippi and not the South Sea Company which stimulated Defoe’s most vivid indictment of the illusion of substance upon which so many projects and schemes seemed to be based. In a pamphlet of 1719 entitled The Chimera, Defoe predicted that




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rais’d an inconceivable Species of meer Air and Shadow, realizing the Fancies and Imaginations, Visions and Apparitions, and making the meer Speculation of Things, act all the Parts, and perform all the Offices of the Things themselves; and thus in [a] moment their Debts are all vanish’d the Substance is answer’d by the Shadow; and the People of France are made the Instruments of putting the Cheat upon themselves, the name of the thing is made an Equivalent to the Thing it self. Early investors who had to be repaid in order to boost public confidence in the scheme and bubble the price of the stock scarcely believed the reality of their returns. Defoe claimed that one such investor, anxious to safeguard his windfall, procured an Iron Chest … and put the Money into it, then drove Posts into the Ground in his Cellar, and chain’d the Iron Chest down to the Stakes, then chain’d it also to the Wall, and Barricaded the Doors and Window of the Cellar with Iron, and all for fear, not of Thieves to Steal the Money, but for fear the Money, Chest and all should fly away into the Air; For he said he could never believe it was Money.36 The most disturbing aspect of France’s financial experiments for Defoe was the fact that they seemed to nullify ‘the Great and perhaps the only Advantage that England had over them in the War’, namely a viable system of public credit. Because Louis XIV had ‘the property of every Man … intirely at his Dispose’ and could cancel debts at will, he had been unsuccessful in wooing ‘this Coy Mistress, call’d Credit’, and thus, ‘Arbitrary Government … destroyed the very Reason and Nature of Public Credit’. Conversely, the British government had always paid its creditors, proving that the ‘Limited Power of Great Britains Crown, [with] the Strings of the Purse being in the hands of Parliament … has been the Reason and Foundation of such an immense, boundless Credit’. Law’s scheme, however, had been so ingenious that ‘for once in the World, Tyranny has the whip hand of Liberty’, at least temporarily. Defoe assured his readers that no such scheme could work in Britain unless Parliament decided to ‘take into their hands the same Absolute Power which it is their business to Restrain … and injure … the People whom they Represent’.37 It was little wonder then that Defoe should be so exercised about the incestuous relationship between Westminster politicians and Exchange Alley financiers. It was now quite common, he reported, to see statesmen ‘at the Offices in the Morning, at the P[arliament] House about Noon, at



Law’s scheme would end in a spectacular collapse ‘since there is no Foundation equal to the Structure that now stands upon it’. With Law’s guidance, the French government had, at least temporarily,

the Cabinet at Night, and at Exchange-Alley’ at all the intervals in between, warning his readers that ‘when Statesmen turn Jobbers the State [itself] may be Jobb’d’. A decade before, Defoe had relied on the vigilance of Parliament and Queen Anne to keep the Whigs from using their control of the Bank of England to advance their party’s interests; a decade before that, he had warned freeholders about the corrupting influence of the rivalry of the two East India Companies on the election of 1701. Now, however, stock-jobbers had a ‘new acquir’d Capacity of intermeddling with the Publick’, one which might threaten not just the party in power but the nation itself, as the Whigs especially had repeatedly proved willing to exploit any opportunity for profiteering, including threats of either a Jacobite or Spanish invasion, by running up or down shares in public credit for their own private advantage. ‘Stock-jobbing, as it is now practis’d’, he concluded, ‘is neither less or more than High-Treason in its very Nature, and in its Consequences.’38 Although The Anatomy of Exchange Alley presented political corruption as the greatest danger posed by the stock market, it also called attention to its corrupting effects on the social hierarchy. Warning the middling ranks against the stock-jobber’s snare, Defoe suggested ‘when a forward young Tradesman steps out of his Shop into Exchange-Alley, I say ’tis ten Thousand to one but he is undone’ but even more advice was offered to young men of higher rank. The pamphlet included a cautionary tale about a young gentleman enticed by a jobber into buying South Sea stock at a vastly inflated price which ended with the jobber getting the estate, the broker two or three hundred guineas, while ‘the Esquire remains at Leisure to sell his Coach and Horses, his fine Seat and rich Furniture’, unable even then to discharge his debts completely.39 Five years later, the effects of the South Sea Bubble on the social fabric were clearly visible in Defoe’s Tour. The scandal had touched, and in some cases bankrupted, ‘many, if not most of the Great and Flourishing Families in England’ and ruined ‘innumerable Wealthy City Families’ as well. Having ‘once bewitched the Nation almost to its Ruin’, the stock-jobbing trade had recently diminished but it was ‘still a Negotiation, which is so vast in its Extent, that almost all the Men of Substance in England are more or less concerned in it’. The increasing importance of the stock market to family fortunes and the ‘Knavery of Brokers and others’, Defoe argued, obliged the nobility and gentry to spend most if not all of the year in London, swelling the metropolis and its nearby villages and towns to monstrous proportions. He predicted, wrongly of course, that eventually peace would reduce the national debt and the volume of trade in stocks, allowing the nobility and gentry to ‘return again to their Country Seats’ and ‘this overgrown City’ to resume more natural proportions.40 As the introduction to this chapter has suggested, by the time Defoe had published the first volume of his Tour in 1724, he was moving away from




committing himself to frequent pamphlets, periodicals, and full-length fictions, gravitating instead towards genres which allowed greater scope for historical analysis. Such a distinction is hard to draw given the fluid nature of generic categories in this period – recent scholarship’s reclassification of Defoe’s novels as histories is just one example of this difficulty.41 To illuminate the ways in which Defoe’s views about commercial society developed in the wake of the calico and South Seas crises, we may analyse the works written in the last years of his life in terms of a steadily expanding historical framework of decades, centuries, and millennia. This categorization was not present in Defoe’s mind at the outset of the 1720s and it is wrong to think of the various chronological schemes he worked within as a set of Russian dolls or as a premeditated move from journalism to universal history. However, as the implications of an increasingly commercial society became clearer to him, Defoe sought to anchor his views about both the positive and negative aspects of commerce within the wider contexts of European and world history. Before examining his contributions to these historiographies, it seems best to start with Defoe’s comments about consumption, credit, exchange, and the effects he believed they had on important social institutions within his own lifetime.

iii. Commerce and the decline of family government: Defoe’s historical analysis Given the overall positive tone of many of Defoe’s well-known works of the 1720s – the celebration of Britain’s greatness in the Tour, the Baconian optimism of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, the happy endings of Moll Flanders and Colonel Jacque – it is important to recognize that most of his writings in this period reveal a man frequently despairing over the depravity of his age. They betray an endemic use of the phrases ‘this age’ and ‘these times’ which he routinely described as extravagant, luxury-loving, vicious to the point of having ‘engrossed the vices of all previous ages’ and irreligious to the point of outsinning the Devil himself.42 This begs the question as to what time frame Defoe meant by ‘this age’ and although he was often vague on this point, his most specific remarks suggest he meant roughly the previous half-century, beginning a few years after the Restoration. Contemporaries often blamed the debauched court of Charles II for setting the nation a bad example and it is no accident that Defoe situated Roxana in that context. He made this argument himself earlier in his career, but by the 1720s he had developed altogether more sophisticated reasons for England’s moral decline.43 While Defoe continued to believe that God had designed the world for trade and in Britain’s identity as a trading nation, the growth of commerce had presented a fundamental challenge to some of society’s basic structures as the effects of greater national wealth percolated down the social hierarchy. As will be dis-



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cussed in the next chapter, Defoe had much to say about the role of commerce in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and indeed over the course of human history but he believed that one of the most important changes wrought by commercial expansion had been the decline of ‘family government’ within his own lifetime. By ‘family government’ Defoe meant the household economy of an extended family in which the male head of the house or master, supported by his wife, assumed the responsibility for both the material and moral care of their children, servants, and any apprentices or journeymen under his care. This understanding of the ‘family’ as including all resident under one roof, including servants and living-in labourers, was conventional at the time Defoe wrote.44 Equally accepted was collective family religious practice as a locus for evangelical piety from the early seventeenth century to the late eighteenth.45 Although proper relations between masters and their dependants was an important theme in contemporary moral literature, Defoe was one of the first authors working within the traditional genre of the religious advice manual who, while exhorting his readers to preserve the moral economy of family government, was beginning to analyse its decline from a socio-economic perspective. In 1715 Defoe published the first of three volumes of The Family Instructor, each of them a series of dialogues designed to highlight the importance of religious instruction in the home. Initially written as a response to the Schism Act of 1714 which outlawed Dissenting schools, Defoe also found the format useful for outlining the basic tenets of faith, repentance, and Trinitarian theology in the face of growing heterodoxy. Mined by social and economic historians for the intimate if fictionalized picture they present of the early-modern family,46 they have perhaps been less appreciated for the insights they provide into Defoe’s own developing sense of historical enquiry. Defoe introduced his first volume of The Family Instructor with the verdict that he and his readers lived in age which knew its duties but failed to practise them. One dialogue, however, between the father of an apprentice and his decent but religiously inattentive master, suggested that perhaps these duties were no longer so well understood. In response to the father’s reproof that when ‘I put him Apprentice to you, I committed him to your Government entirely, Soul and Body’ and that he expected his son to receive moral as well as professional training, the tradesman replied, ‘Those things are out of Doors long ago; prithee do you think I’ll trouble myself with my Apprentices at that rate? … Apprentices now-a-days, are not like what they were when you and I were Apprentices; now we get a hundred Pound, or two or three hundred Pound a piece with them; they are too high for Reproof and Correction.’ Custom, the father argued, may have made such allowances but ‘I am sure the Rule is not alter’d’ and he warned his son’s master that he would have to ‘answer to God for the Souls committed to your Charge’.47 Eventually, guided by the example of a truly religious




neighbouring tradesmen and by his wife who provided him with support and scriptural evidence of the duties of the heads of households, the negligent master instituted family worship and religious instruction for both his children and servants and thus became a model example for his town. By 1718, with George I on the throne and the Whigs in power, the Dissenters had fair hopes for the repeal of the Schism Act but Defoe seems to have regarded the decline of family government as a matter in even greater need of public attention. In the Preface to his second Family Instructor he remarked that ‘it must be own’d by all … that as on the one hand there are great Mistakes committed in the Government of themselves and their Families, by Parents and Masters, so there is perhaps less said upon these necessary Heads in publick than upon any other; even the best Writers … have seemed to be wholly silent upon this Subject’.48 Like the first volume, the second schooled its readers on the importance of establishing good family government and the difficulties for both spouses, children, and servants when this was not done from the outset. The first volume emphasized the difficulties experienced by older children who had been ‘bred up with Gayety and Gallantry’ and were used to greater degrees of liberty and luxury, when religious practices were introduced into the household.49 The second volume made the same point about parents themselves who, having begun their married life in the gay, luxurious, and irreligious home of a relative, failed to institute good family government once they moved into their own house and thus condemned themselves to lives of quarrel and recrimination. In his Religious Courtship of 1722, another advice manual on the importance of choosing spouses who are both devout and compatible in their religious beliefs, Defoe added an appendix recommending that families seek or encourage these same qualities in their servants. Servants, he explained, were ‘less apt to submit to Family Regulations, and good Household Government than ever’.50 In one dialogue between two maids, one devout and the other not, the latter complained of her employer’s enquiries about her absence from church: ‘I won’t be tied up to her religious Trumpery, not I; if I do her Work, what has she to do with what Religion I am of, or whether I have any Religion, or no? ’tis no Business of hers.’ She especially resented seeing young ladies of the house ‘all asleep at Prayers many a time, when I am sure they had not so much more need to be sleepy than I had that work hard, nor so much neither’.51 Eventually, the complaining maid was dismissed, with the mistress of the house admitting that it was hard to maintain a religious household when ‘Religion is so much made a Jest among Masters’.52 Families could not expect religious servants unless they set a proper example themselves. There is no doubt that Defoe’s primary motivations for writing these advice manuals were religious ones but the comments they contain about the lure of frivolity and luxury and about the changing expectations of masters, apprentices, and servants would become a



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more developed analysis of excessive consumption, social emulation, and the monetization of relations within the traditional family economy in his Complete English Tradesman published in 1725. There has been in recent years some debate as to how one should ‘read’ Defoe’s Complete English Tradesman: whether and how it might be categorized in terms of genre, and what, if any, relevance it may have to the meaning and production of fictional literature.53 In terms of genre, one would certainly not label the text a history and yet it is a valuable indicator of the emergence of a new kind of historical thinking in the eighteenth century. Whatever other meanings and didactic merit the text may have had, it was the product of a thinker who was deciding there was such a thing as social and economic history and it was read by contemporaries coming to the same conclusion. Defoe’s prefatory remark that this age was witnessing ‘something different and more dangerous and fatal in the common road of trading, and Tradesmen’s management now, than ever was before’ was no mere device to promote sales of his book, but an historical assessment. As he explained, if tradesmen and their families were failing at a greater rate than ever before while the opportunities for commercial success were never more promising, then ‘Something extraordinary must be the case’. That something, he concluded, was to be found in the ‘temper of the times’ which made it impossible for tradesmen to ‘live as Tradesmen in the same class [as they] used to live’. Family expenses were much greater than they used to be primarily because custom now commanded that the young tradesman ‘live as others do, or lose the credit of living, and be run down as if he was broke: In a word, he must spend more than he can afford to spend, and so be undone, or not spend it, and so be undone’.54 These emulative pressures also made it easier for tradesmen to neglect the duties of family government, leaving apprentices and servants without the moral instruction they needed and deserved. Had Defoe’s analysis ended here, then his voice would not have been very different from other moralists of the day who preached against avarice and luxury, the irresponsibility of young men, and the aspirational spending of the lower and middling ranks.55 Defoe too complained about these phenomena but he also explained them as the direct consequence of several socio-economic factors: the increasing cost of goods, wages, and taxation, the monetization of relations within the household economy and its consequent decline as a institution of frugality and restraint, and the relatively fluid social boundaries (vis-à-vis other European countries) between England’s landed and mercantile elites which encouraged conspicuous spending on the part of both as a means of demonstrating their social position. Although it was not the most significant part of his analysis, Defoe acknowledged that leaving aside the problem of growing extravagance, ordinary household expenses had increased. Since 1689 the nation’s tax




burden had ballooned as a result of the wars with France and although complaints against the rise in land taxes ring loudest in the historical record, Defoe and his readers keenly felt ‘a weight of taxes upon almost all the necessaries of life’ thanks to greater customs duties and excise taxes. While inflation was not a significant problem in the early eighteenth century, Defoe also cited the higher cost of basic provisions, rents, and servants’ wages.56 Of all these price increases, Defoe paid the most attention to the last for the changing relationship between masters and servants, like that between masters and apprentices, indicated a shift in traditional social arrangements and values brought on by commercial forces. Servants, Defoe argued, were not only demanding much higher wages, they were doing less work for them, necessitating the hire of even more servants, if one could afford to do so. He blamed the problem on growing pride, especially among maids. In a pamphlet published three months before the Complete English Tradesman, Defoe inveighed against their pride, insolence, and extravagance, paying particular attention to their clothing. These days one’s kitchen maid eschewed ‘her poor scanty Linsey-Wolsey Petticoat’ for ‘a good silk one … in short, plain Country-Joan is now turn’d into a fine London-Madam’.57 Such emulative consumption by female servants damaged both the woollen industry and the social hierarchy for it encouraged even greater extravagance at each successive rung on the social ladder. Reluctant to spoil their silk finery with housework, maids turned their attention to seducing sons and male guests instead. However, the ‘greatest Abuse of all’, according to Defoe, was that ‘these Creatures are become their own Lawgivers’. The custom of having to pay a month’s severance upon notice, the fear of having one’s family affairs gossiped about, and servant loyalty to co-workers rather than to the master or mistress of the house meant that servants had now ‘united themselves into a formidable Body, and got the whip Hand of their Betters’.58 Defoe’s proposed solutions to this problem suggested that as far as lesser servants were concerned, the household economy might well be beyond repair as the mistress/servant relationship was now better understood as that of employer/employee. While not giving up on the rule of family government and the importance of religious uniformity in the household, Defoe suggested a number of market-oriented recommendations. If male servants wore liveries, perhaps female servants should wear some kind of uniform as well. Instead of relying on servant loyalty and the paternalistic custom of severance pay, employers should reward longstanding servants with higher wages instead. They should also draw up proper contracts with expiration dates. Servants who fulfilled their contractual obligations could be given certificates as proof of their professionalism and anyone without this kind of authentication should be considered a vagrant. 59 Because mistresses especially were reluctant to give bad references and deprive servants of a living, Defoe also looked favourably upon a proposal to create two



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kinds of certificates, one which would attest the servant’s entire behaviour and performance, and the other, a kind of second-class certificate, which would vouch for his or her honesty and sobriety only.60 Even more important than the relationship between master and servant in a tradesman’s household was the relationship between master and apprentice, that aspect of family government which Defoe had touched upon in The Family Instructor of 1715 but now formed a central part of the analysis in his Complete English Tradesman. Apprenticeship, Defoe argued, had changed in recent years so that it was no longer a state of ‘servitude’ or even ‘subjection’ but one in which apprentices behaved ‘more like gentlemen than tradesmen; more like companions to their masters, than like servants’. He attributed this change to masters themselves who ‘seem to have made over their authority to their apprentices’ in the wake of ever increasing apprenticeship fees.61 Originally, Defoe explained, these premiums were not ‘a condition of indenture’ but a ‘customary present to the tradesman’s wife’ to encourage her to show special kindness and ‘motherly care’ to young men apprenticed in her household. Over time, however, ‘this compliment or present became so customary as to be made a debt’, or requirement. Even then the charge ‘was kept within bounds, and thirty or forty pounds was sufficient to a very good merchant, which now is run up to five hundred, nay to a thousand pounds with an apprentice; a thing which formerly would been thought monstrous, and not to be named’.62 Once apprentices began to pay ‘exorbitant sums of money … as the present or condition of their apprenticeship’, it made them ‘a kind of a different figure in the family … above the ordinary class of servants hired for wages’; it ‘exempts him from all the laws of family-government’, and of interest to the master only as they related to his business. This monetization of the household relationships, Defoe lamented, was ‘all to the disadvantage of the present age, viz. in the last age, that is to say, fifty or sixty years ago, for it is not less, servants’, and by this he meant apprentices as well as waged servants, ‘were infinitely more under subjection than they are now, and the subordination of mankind extended effectually to them; they were content to submit to family-government and family-religion also had some sway upon them’. As part of the family, apprentices heeded household rules, attended household prayers, and even stepped in to read the prayers for a master indisposed or ill. Nowadays though, apprentices entering households upon payment of large premiums scorned these practices, regarding themselves as the master’s equal if not superior.63 It was not only the haughty assumptions of servants and apprentices who deemed themselves ‘above the government of their masters’ and beneath their dignity to submit to family government and the moral and religious guidance of their masters. Defoe argued that masters themselves ‘seem to have given up all family-government, and all care or concern for the morals and manners … [or] religion’ of their servants. Like the master




portrayed in The Family Instructor, as long as ‘their business be but done, and their shop or warehouse duly look’d after’, they thought themselves ‘under no obligation to meddle with those things’. Defoe now went a step further: such was the self-regard of today’s tradesmen that many of them thought that the duties of family government ‘to be a low step, and beneath the character of a man in business, as if worshipping God were a disgrace, and not an honour to a family, or to the master of a family’. Indeed, Defoe claimed to have heard that the practice ‘keep[ing] Chaplains, as other persons of quality do … is already begun in the city’ where some superior tradesmen hired parish readers to conduct evening prayers in the household for them, thereby extending the monetization of household government. Eventually, he feared, the practice of household worship might cease altogether.64 The ‘loose, wild, and ungovernable’ behaviour of too many apprentices and servants in this age demonstrated the potentially disastrous consequences which the decline of family government had for religion and society. A master’s failure in these duties meant the ‘letting loose his apprentices to levity and liberty in that particular critical time of life, when they have the most need of government and restraint’. ‘As a Christian, and as a trustee for his parents’, a master was obligated to give his young apprentice moral and religious as well as vocational training. ‘To leave a youth without government’ was in ‘Scripture words … to lead him into temptation’ and indeed ‘deliver him over to Satan’. With ‘few masters concern[ing] themselves with the souls, nay, scarce with the morals of their servants’ and ‘few servants concern[ing] themselves in a conscientious discharge of their duty to their masters’, Defoe feared, ‘the great law of subordination is destroy’d’.65 Given that servants had been more sober and trustworthy in the past when family government was the norm, Defoe thought it foolhardy that so many tradesmen in his own day should regularly leave their shops in the hands of their apprentices. Tradesmen themselves, he claimed, gave two reasons for this growing practice. Their first explanation, that apprentice contracts provided them with certain ‘securities’, Defoe dismissed because while security against theft, for example, was always part of an apprentice’s contract, security against negligence and idleness was not now and never had been covered in such arrangements. The second reason given, namely ‘greater premiums’, Defoe endorsed as a reality, as we have just seen, but because higher fees contributed to the decline in the reliability of apprentices, he regarded them as a reason for tradesmen to spend more time in their shops, not less.66 There was, he believed, another explanation for the growing negligence of their businesses, and that was the desire on the part of too many people in the middling ranks to emulate the gentry through over-consumption and the pursuit of pleasures inappropriate to their providential station.



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However much higher prices, wages, and taxes had impinged upon ordinary household expenditure in the early eighteenth century, it was concern about extravagant and luxurious spending which saturated contemporary commentary and The Complete English Tradesman was no exception. In one of his favourite expressions, Defoe denounced the present age as a ‘time of gallantry and gaiety’, replete with more temptations for financial and moral ruin than had ever been seen before. Custom had ‘introduced a general … inclination among all sorts of people, to an expensive way of living … an unconquerable aversion to any restraint; so that the poor will be like the rich, and the rich like the great, and the great like the greatest – and thus the world runs on to a kind of distraction at this time: where it will end, time must discover’. Although Defoe believed ‘the whole nation are more or less [caught up] in the crime’ of emulative extravagance, he accepted that ‘this expensive way of living began among the tradesmen first; that is to say, among the citizens of London; and that their eager resolv’d persuit of that empty and meanest kind of pride, call’d imitation, viz. to look like the gentry, and appear above themselves, drew them into it’.67 This ‘city vanity’ first appeared with the ‘sort of tradesmen, who scorning the society of their shops and customers’ began to frequent courts and plays, ‘kept company above themselves’, and happily became accustomed to the lifestyle of the West End, for which, interestingly, Defoe used the term ‘abroad’. Dissatisfied with merely visiting the haunts of men of quality, tradesmen began ‘living like them at home’, adopting the habits of ‘costly furniture, rich clothes, and dainty tables’, whether or not they could afford them. These days, Defoe complained, ‘shopkeepers … are seen with their long wigs and swords, rather than with aprons on’ and even older apprentices were guilty of the same folie de grandeur. So many London shopkeepers and tradesmen now kept footmen, often in blue liveries, Defoe suggested that ‘few gentlemen care to give blue to their servants for that very reason’. Citizens’ tables were ‘now the emblems, not of plenty, but of luxury, not of good housekeeping, but of profusion’. For some merchants, the desire to emulate became a drive to exceed: ‘if men of quality lived like themselves, men of no quality would strive to live not like themselves: if those had plenty, these would have profusion; if those had enough, these would have excess; if those had what was good, these would have what was rare and exotic … and consequently dear. And this is one of the ways that have worn out so many tradesmen before their time.’ As proof of this growing problem, Defoe invited his readers to consider the plethora of announcements for commissions of bankruptcy each week in the Gazette and the increasing number of parliamentary acts for the relief of insolvent debtors. But perhaps he conveyed the problem best in



iv. Trading the shop apron for a wig and sword

the voice of a fictional customer complaining about the new breed of negligent tradesmen. The old owner of a well-located, well-stocked shop had been a ‘true shopkeeper’ who worked long hours, ‘throve accordingly … [and] left a good estate behind him’ but the new owners had succumbed to the temper of the times. While one partner frequented the Mall and court in his wig and sword, the other ‘lies a-bed till eleven … just comes into the shop and shews himself, then stalks about to the tavern … then to Child’s coffee-house to hear the news … then to the tavern’ until too drunk to get home without the help of the night watchman. Consequently, with ‘nobody to serve but a ’prentice-boy or two, and an idle journeyman’, the shop now attracted more ‘thieves and shop-lifters’ than customers and would surely fail. Wives were often crucial to the success of a family business but now too many of them, Defoe complained, ‘scorn to be seen in the compting-house, much less behind the counter; despise the knowledge of their husband’s business, and act as if they were asham’d of being tradesmens wives, and never intended to be tradesmens widows’. In former times, he pointed out, a widow might keep the family business going, at least until a son could take over or its sale could be arranged but ‘now the Ladies are above it’ and would not ‘stoop to the mechanick low step of carrying on a trade’.68 Avoiding the perils of absentee-ownership and idleness, along with other recommendations which Defoe made, may seem like timeless advice but as passage after passage in the Complete English Tradesman made clear, Defoe was concerned not just about a lack of industry but about its cause – an increasing willingness among the middling ranks to sacrifice their economic self-interest, their dignity, and even their souls in an attempt to ape gentry fashions. He warned any would-be ‘Sir Fopping Flutter’ that Trade is not a ball, where people appear in masque, and act a part to make sport; where they strive to seem what they really are not, and to think themselves best drest when they are least known: but ’tis a plain visible scene of honest life, shewn best in its native appearance, without disguise; supported by prudence and frugality; and like strong, stiff, clay land, grows fruitful only by good husbandry, culture, and manuring. A young tradesman might dress up in his long wig and ‘go to the ball’ but he was ‘like a piece of counterfeit money … brass wash’d over with silver, and no [true] tradesman will take him for current’. Cash in hand, he might continue some correspondence, but he could only be regarded by real merchants as a ‘tradesman in masquerade’. ‘When I see’, Defoe confessed, ‘young shop-keepers keep horses ride a hunting, learn dog-language, and keep the sportsmens brogue upon their tongues, I will not say I read their destiny, for I am no fortune-teller; but I do say, I am always afraid for them.’ Very few things in life were evil in themselves, he explained, but many



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things were ‘circumstantially evil’. There were pleasures which were ‘lawful to other men, yet are criminal and unlawful’ to the tradesman. For ‘gentlemen of fortunes and estates, who being born to large possessions … ’tis certainly lawful to spend their spare hours on horseback, with their hounds or hawks’. No one objected to a tradesman ‘taking the air for health, and for a recess to the mind’ but ‘immoderate liberty’ was ‘too much the ruin of the tradesmen of this age’. Pleasures innocent in themselves or appropriate for other men became criminal when they interfered with ‘that which is the due and just employment’ of one’s own life.69 In other words, trade was ‘not a sport or game’ but a ‘calling’ and however important the previous half-century was in terms of Defoe’s analysis of socio-economic change, a second historical time frame, an eschatological one, also underpinned The Complete English Tradesman. It has been rightly suggested that this text, like many of Defoe’s works, belongs to the tradition of guide literature, a genre often directed towards the young and underlining the importance of finding or accepting marriage partners and vocations appropriate to their social station.70 As will be made clear, Defoe did not wish to deny all movement within the social hierarchy but he condemned the kinds of emulative consumption and pursuit of pleasures which stood in defiance of the concept of providential calling. In advising the young tradesman on the best way to structure his life, Defoe urged him to see his daily choices as part of the wider framework of nature, time, and Providence: The life of man is or should be a measure of allotted time; as his time is measured out to him, so the measure is limited, must end, and the end of it is appointed. The purposes, for which time is given, and life bestow’d, are very momentous; no time is given useless, and for nothing; time is no more to be unemploy’d, than it is to be ill employ’d. Three things are chiefly before us in the appointment of our time, 1. Necessaries of nature. 2. Duties of religion, or things relating to a future life. 3. Duties of the present life viz. business and calling. None of these duties, Defoe warned, should interfere with one another. The man who pursued relaxation at the expense of business, or business at the expense of prayer, or even prayer at the expense of business, ‘turns nature bottom upwards, inverts the appointment of providence, and must account to himself, and afterwards to a higher judge for the neglect’.71 Occasionally Providence did call men and women out of the station in which they were born and he cited several tradesmen who had risen to positions of wealth, political prominence, and honour. He was quick to add though that these were ‘instances of men call’d out of their lower sphere for their eminent usefulness, and their known capacities, being first known




to be diligent and industrious men in their private and lower spheres; such advancements make good the words of the wise man, Seest thou a man diligent in business, he shall stand before princes; he shall not stand before mean men.’ This age provided the tradesman with many opportunities to succeed but until he had proved himself, his ‘proper business is in his shop or warehouse, and among his own class or rank of people’. Unmindful of the wisdom of Providence, the young man in a hurry who found his chief pleasure in the consumption of luxuries and company of men above his own station, robbed his business, family, and creditors of time and capital and himself of that ‘peace’ and ‘calm of soul’ which a more honest and industrious man could call upon in times of distress. Instead of building an estate, he would accumulate a storehouse of reasons to repent.72 Defoe was keenly aware that avenues of social mobility were not one-way streets: The Complete English Tradesman addressed the issue of gentry families intermarrying with the mercantile classes and their practice of sending younger sons into trade. Insensitive perhaps to the greater dependence of a woman’s status upon her husband’s, he chastised those ‘Ladies of good families … but of mean fortune’ who dismissed merchants as ‘Mechanicks’ and scorned marriage with even the wealthiest of them, while ‘Gentlemen of quality’, rich in honours but poor in fortune, enthusiastically sought to marry daughters of successful merchants and tradesmen. Even worse were the ladies who did marry tradesmen but continued ‘carrying themselves above that station, in which Providence has [now] placed them’ by refusing to assume the duties and demeanour appropriate to their new circumstances.73 Defoe’s concern stemmed in part from his advocacy for companionate marriage and the crucial role he believed wives played in the household economy but it also reflected his resentment of the gentry’s prejudice against trade and his belief in their continuing failure to provide leadership in critical areas of British life.

v. Conclusion In one of the last letters, or chapters, of the Complete English Tradesman, Defoe defended England’s identity as a trading nation, the dignity of trade as a calling, and the contributions which commerce had made to individual prosperity and to the aggregate wealth and power of the nation. He denounced the ‘understandings’ of ‘those refin’d heads’74 who refused to accept Britain’s commercial sector as the chief reason for the nation’s economic success at home and growing stature abroad and who continued to insist upon the gentry’s separate and superior nature to the ‘mechanic’ classes. The connections between the landed and mercantile classes, Defoe believed, went far deeper than securing apprenticeships for younger sons or wealthy brides from the City for impecunious gentlemen in order to revive a few flagging estates. Commerce, he argued, had been the means by which



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many English landed families had established their fortunes in the first place. In focusing upon gentry prejudice, the origins of landed wealth in England, and the role of commerce as a source of national power and greatness, this letter anticipated many of the themes which preoccupied Defoe in the last four years of his life – years which were to see a flowering of his historical vision. It thus makes sense to examine this latter part of the Complete English Tradesman in the company of works which were to follow it and in the widening historical contexts in which Defoe sought to justify trade and tradesmen as the inheritors of the earth and the purveyors of God’s providential plan.




Defoe’s Historical Vision: Commerce and Gentility in the 1720s

i. Introduction: social polemic and the development of historical analysis However much Defoe disapproved of improvident spending on luxuries and any premature pretence to gentility on the part of tradesmen, he did not wish to deny the historical reality of social mobility. Families and nations might be swept to greatness by the tides of commerce but they might also be waylaid in its concomitant pools and eddies of luxury. When decline was apparent, he sought to understand its causes and correct them. If emulative consumption could ruin a young tradesman, self-justifying extravagance might sink an ancient family into debt and obscurity. When, however, pre-eminence or advance were deserved, he celebrated them. Defoe’s highly successful, three-volume Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain reveals the delight he took in surveying the economic and social success achieved by early-modern captains of finance and industry – the handsome villas they built along the Thames, the estates they rescued from decay, the social, political, and marital alliances they made with the gentry and nobility. Social mobility, however, did not mean social revolution. Although Defoe believed that merit should be recognized and even rewarded, he was not trying to eliminate the gradation of rank. Too often, readers of the Tour fail to acknowledge Defoe’s deferential praise of virtuous ancient and noble families, their houses and parks, collections and connoisseurship, even their ‘Patriarchal’ care of estates and local communities, themes which appear throughout the text.1 Some recent commentators have read Defoe’s Tour to establish an image of him as egalitarian and modernist.2 This chapter offers an alternative vision. It is tempting, perhaps, to speculate on the extent to which Defoe’s own trading background and aspirations to gentility animated those works which address questions concerning social mobility, gentility, and the behaviour, good and bad, of Britain’s elite. By the 1720s, he had achieved a measure of commercial success through his writings, occupied a gracious 160



8

house in Stoke Newington, and purchased a long lease on a farm in Colchester. The polite and learned literati though never let him forget that he was a former hosier without a classical education, a low man but one with friends in high places able to extricate him from legal and political difficulties when his writings got him into trouble. Certainly, Defoe’s most famous protagonists aspired to improve their social position. This may help to explain the verve of texts like Moll Flanders and Colonel Jacque as well as the occasionally bitter tone of works like The Compleat English Gentleman, Defoe’s most trenchant critique of gentry attitudes and behaviours. It does not explain how and why Defoe developed a sophisticated historical vision through which he might understand the origins and evolutionary nature of the social structure in which he lived. In articulating this vision, some part of Defoe may have hoped to ameliorate those prejudices which begrudged his talents and social aspirations but his real objectives were far more ambitious. By situating his society in secular and sacred time frames, he sought nothing less than a reformation of attitudes and behaviours which he believed deleterious to the prosperity of society as a whole and to the salvation of its members. Defoe’s historical analysis was never systematic but his writings in the 1720s, taken together, suggest that as England’s wealth as a nation continued to expand, various ranks of society had not always risen to the occasion as new freedoms and luxuries, large and small, came within their reach. As explained in the previous chapter, inklings of Defoe’s concern that commercial forces were undermining family government and religious instruction in the home appeared in the didactic dialogues of his Family Instructor and Religious Courtship manuals. This suspicion that some of the effects of doux commerce might be less than sweet was reinforced by the violence and frenzy of the calico controversy and South Sea Bubble in 1719–20. Although these crises did not shake Defoe’s fundamental belief that, on the whole, commerce was a good thing, its capacity to distract people from the proper business of life with material luxuries and the false hope of easy advancement underpinned almost every aspect of practical advice he offered in the Complete English Tradesman of 1725. History had shown, however, that those tradesmen who resisted these distractions, honoured their calling through industry and honesty, and took their religious duties seriously, might indeed achieve levels of prosperity, experience, and expertise to qualify them for a different sort of life. Sufficient wealth and a lifetime of practical knowledge could give one both the leisure and the capacity to serve the public good, in other words, to be a gentleman. Unfortunately, Defoe believed, far too many members of the landed gentry had sought to deny this historical reality and had redefined what it meant to be a gentleman. Their actions and discourse suggested their definition of a gentleman was no longer that of a man fit for responsibility but that of a man free from any. They had embraced as well the



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spurious belief that gentility was a sanguinous property, that ‘gallantry of spirit, greatness of soul, and … generous principles’ were inherited qualities, not to be found in ‘the low mixtures of a mechanick race’ like tradesmen.3 In one of the last letters of his Complete English Tradesman, Defoe addressed the central role that commerce had played in shaping England’s social hierarchy and attacked the gentry’s resistance to the idea that the boundary between the mercantile and landed orders was a permeable one. In other ages, in other nations, he argued, families had ‘rais’d themselves by the sword’ but in England ‘Trade and Learning have been the two chief steps, by which our gentlemen have rais’d their relations, and have built their fortunes’. The last war was a prime example: it was true that some men had raised their families by ‘great actions abroad’ but many more had raised theirs and amassed great estates ‘by the attending circumstances of the war’– clothing, paying, and victualling the army and navy, supplying loans, and investing in the banks and companies which funded the public debt. He cited the names of several men with mercantile backgrounds who had acquired noble estates and social prominence within his own lifetime while pointing out that many ancient families had been worn out by the current ‘disease’ of ‘excessive high living’, ‘time and family misfortunes’ and debt.4 Trade could keep estates from stagnating by creating a virtuous cycle of better wages, population growth, an increase in the consumption of necessities, and therefore higher rents and land values, all of which Defoe summed up in his favourite metaphor, ‘an Estate’s a pond, but a Trade’s a spring … an inexhausted current, which not only fills the pond, and keeps it full, but is continually running over, and fills all the lower ponds and places about it’.5 Commerce, not war, had ‘peopled this nation with gentlemen’ and enabled Britain to cut a greater figure on the world stage than ever before. Britain had neither diminished other nations nor increased her own possessions militarily. If anything, past wars had torn the nation to pieces, ruined its richest families, and temporarily destroyed the monarchy. ‘These things’, Defoe asserted, ‘prove abundantly that the rising greatness of the British nation is not owing to war and conquests, to enlarging its dominion by the sword, or subjecting the people of other countries to our power; but it is all owing to trade, to the encrease of our commerce at home, and the extending it abroad.’ He predicted that just as England’s military men were now esteemed around the world, its tradesmen would ‘in a few years be allow’d to rank with the best gentlemen in Europe; and as the Prophet Isaiah said of the merchants of Tyre … her traffickers were the Honourable of the earth’. The book of Ezekiel too had shown that trade had made Tyre the emporium and envy of the ancient world and had noted that ‘her Merchants were Princes’.6 All of these arguments, Defoe realized, would need to be made at greater length and with greater force in order to convince the landed ranks that



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their own glory as well as the nation’s rested on commerce rather than conquest and the acquisition and application of learning and experience rather than birth or bloodline. Within a month of the publication of the Complete English Tradesman, Defoe published the first of four monthly instalments of his General History of Discoveries and Improvements, a work, like his General History of Trade of 1713, in which he was drawn to write a history of trade and technological advance in the widest chronological setting in order to understand it for polemical purposes.7 Scripture and the principles of Baconian science informed Defoe that God had spread the gifts of nature throughout his creation in order to foster human discovery, exchange, and improvement of them. As people of commerce, the Phoenicians had embraced this divine mandate; as people of conquest, the Romans had ignored it. After Rome’s decline, Defoe asserted, the spread of Christianity throughout Europe had encouraged the virtues of probity and honesty on which commerce would once again thrive. The re-establishment of commercial networks on the scale once achieved by the Phoenicians, whose reach had extended to Africa and even to the Americas, was greatly encouraged in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by that classic Baconian triad of discoveries, the compass, gunpowder, and printing press. In the third instalment of the text Defoe touched upon England’s own infancy as a trading nation in this period but this subject was more fully explored in other works, primarily in his Plan of the English Commerce published in 1728. Despite its title, Defoe’s Plan of the English Commerce was as much a history of the subject as it was a list of proposals for its present and future encouragement. Tracing the origins of commercial society in England back to the early sixteenth century, Defoe credited Henry VII with unleashing England’s trading potential and those forces which led to the monetization of feudal relations and the eventual end of the era of baronial conflict. He did so in part, as this chapter will explain, for different reasons than Bacon, Harrington, and later Hume and Millar did, and with different objectives in mind; but Defoe’s name deserves to be placed alongside theirs for he too contributed to a growing historiography which postulated that the transition from feudal to commercial society had been a Europe-wide phenomenon and thus constituted a new epoch in its history. This ‘Revolution of Trade, brought about a Revolution in the very Nature of Things’, Defoe argued, including the transformation of dependent vassals into an independent gentry and servile villeins into independent labourers, craftsmen, and tradesmen.8 But whereas many of the gentry used their greater measure of economic independence to indulge lives of leisure and luxury in imitation of the great baronial lords, the commoners improved their lesser measure through industry and good husbandry with predictable results. Over time, profligate families had to sell their estates to more prudent ones who, in turn, became the new squirearchy, a process, Defoe argued, which




continued to his own day but one which had begun generations before present complaints about the new monied interest. The same year that Defoe published his Plan of the English Commerce, he was almost certainly at work on his most sustained exploration of the relationship between commerce, social mobility, and the concept of gentility, The Compleat English Gentleman, though this unfinished text was not published until long after Defoe’s death in 1731. Interleaved in this manuscript was another unfinished work entitled ‘Of Royall Education’. The unifying theme of both manuscripts was the importance of education, for the gentry and for princes respectively. In both texts Defoe made clear his belief that God intended human beings to cultivate their capacities to reason, that parents owed their children what education they could provide them, and that adults owed it to themselves to continue improving their own minds. The purpose of these texts, however, was to demonstrate the importance of a good education for those born to higher stations as their families and the nation derived many benefits from their learning and suffered the consequences of their ignorance. In terms of his historical vision, both works confirmed that Defoe believed that an age of commerce, science, and the arts had superseded an age of military conquest. The pivotal figure in this transition had been Henry VII and from his reign forward the real worth of a gentleman or a prince, after his duty to God, was to be measured by the extent to which he understood and embraced this new world order.

ii. The historical dynamic of conquest and commerce: Defoe’s Tour and General History of Discoveries and Improvements A General History of Discoveries and Improvements of 1725–6 was Defoe’s most thorough exploration and exploitation of the historical dynamic of conquest and commerce but this dynamic was also present, though more elliptically expressed, in his Tour, the first volume of which appeared in 1724. While Defoe probably conceptualized his Tour as a Baconian history, that is as an objective and useful account of the present state of the kingdom (its natural and manmade components), based upon the most reliable sources and ‘Eye-witness’ testimony,9 another kind of historical understanding emerges from its pages. Two of the most readily apparent characteristics of the Tour were, first, Defoe’s explicit emphasis on accurately recording the flux of the present rather than the past, on the state of things ‘not as they have been, but as they are’,10 and, second, his obvious preoccupation with the nation’s trade over its agricultural and even industrial sectors. The effect of these presentist and commercial themes in tandem over the course of three volumes was to suggest that Britain had entered a new era in which commerce was daily changing the countenance of the kingdom. When the past did surface in Defoe’s narrative, it often appeared as a relic or reminder of more tumultuous times – as the sites of



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old encampments or the ruined remains of a castle, or perhaps as a brief digression into the fate of a family or town in the wake of the late rebellion – suggesting that an age of martial exploit had given way, if only recently, to an age of material improvement. The Tour acknowledged the many natural advantages for commerce which the island kingdom enjoyed but if Britain was to fulfil its providential destiny as a commercial world power, Defoe believed a reconciliation between land and trade was required. Defoe often introduced readers of the Tour to a location with brief remarks about its social structure. Tellingly, he reacted most favourably to those towns and regions with an active and companionable mix of gentry and merchants who engaged each other and the wider world with ‘polite conversation’, ‘good manners’, and ‘Sociableness’.11 His attention to the arts and manners of a given area as well as to its economic activities suggests that his preoccupations were not solely dictated by a Baconian agenda. As explained in Chapter 5, Defoe’s method also had much in common with what was later called ‘philosophical history’, that speculative attention to wider cultural and intellectual developments which came to characterize English and Scottish historiography of the mid and late eighteenth century. Defoe professed to deal only with the ‘Present State of the Country’, with ‘Novelty’ rather than ‘Antiquity’ in his Tour.12 Yet if he was to reinforce his support of commerce and convince the gentry of the truth of his position, he had to show that commerce was a providential historical force and that Britain’s social structure and the gentry’s place within it were the products of historical circumstance. With the exception of the calico controversy, public debate about trade in the first decade of George I’s reign had been largely overshadowed by other issues such as the European balance of power, the threat of Jacobitism in the wake of plots in 1715 and 1722, and the South Sea Bubble. Everyone was certainly in favour of trade. Whatever prejudices he might harbour against the mechanic classes, even the most hidebound squire, at some level, realized that the recovery of land values and agricultural prices, depressed in the early Hanoverian period, depended in part upon the health and vitality of the manufacturing and mercantile sectors to refine his goods and sell them at home and abroad. Not everyone could agree, however, on the best ways to increase trade, not even the merchants themselves who were less a unified lobby than a collection of diverse and often competing interests. By 1725, however, increasing numbers of people believed that the government could be doing more to promote British commerce. In Parliament and the press, complaints were multiplying that nations large and small, allied and adversarial, were violating trade agreements, erecting protectionist legislation, and engaging in other activities detrimental to British commercial interests. Austrian, French, and Spanish actions especially, it was argued, necessitated government action in order to secure or enhance British trade in the East Indies, Africa, and the




Americas. Government response to these complaints was ambivalent. Inconveniences experienced by British merchants and manufacturers were less important to George I than problems relating to Hanover and the European balance of power. The king’s ministers claimed to support trade and were not averse to helping the commercial sector but they were also not willing to sacrifice other diplomatic and political objectives in order to do so. Commercial and colonial considerations did not always dominate British foreign policy in the eighteenth century as some historians have suggested and as Defoe might have wished.13 Like his General History of Trade published in 1713 in support of commercial articles associated with the Treaty of Utrecht, Defoe’s General History of Discoveries and Improvements was both a political act and an act of historical reflection. As acts of historical reflection, both works may be characterized as hybrids: universal in their attempt to examine human history from its beginnings in a providential framework, Baconian in their focus on unlocking the secrets of nature, improving the lot of mankind, and enhancing the power of the state, and philosophical in trying to draw connections between material change and the civilizing process. The General History of Discoveries and Improvements advocated one basic principle of policy and recommended two specific applications of it. History, Defoe believed, amply demonstrated that new initiatives in trade required not just public neutrality but public support. By corollary, commerce created both private and public wealth which, in turn, encouraged the arts and sciences but here too governments had to be proactive: ‘NOTHING makes Arts and Science thrive more than their working on a public Purse; no private Man can reward as the public can; and Kings therefore are applauded as the encouragers of Learning.’14 By surveying mankind’s past accomplishments, Defoe hoped to encourage this age to rediscover gains once made but now lost and to make new discoveries in commerce, the arts, and sciences. If the British government was serious about promoting trade and the discoveries and improvements it engendered, then two opportunities presented themselves. First, Britain and Europe’s other maritime powers should band together to expel the Moors from North Africa. In living ‘like Beasts of Prey upon the Spoils of their innocent and industrious Neighbours’, the Moors were both ‘Enemies to God and … Enemies to Mankind’ and Defoe lamented that Britain and France had been unwilling to help Spanish forces in their attempt to do something about the problem in 1722. By replacing this den of piratical and murdering thieves with more sober, industrious and Christian colonists, the region might be brought back into the fold of commercial and civilized nations. At the very least, by pushing the Moors fifteen or twenty miles inland, the European powers could reduce their naval and maritime insurance costs by rooting out piracy in the Mediterranean. At best, proper colonization could restore the region to the prosperity it had not enjoyed since the Carthaginians,



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encouraging the spread of commerce and civilization throughout the entire African continent.15 Defoe elaborated upon the civilizing effects of such an endeavour in his Plan of the English Commerce in 1728. His proposal, he believed, could ‘change and alter the very people themselves’. Exposed to Christian beliefs and civilized habits, Africans would ‘with their Manners change the very Nature of their Commerce, and fall in upon the Consumption of the European manufactures’, just as native Americans had.16 A second plan proposed by Defoe in the General History of Discoveries and Improvements was the planting of a British colony along the Patagonian coast. Notwithstanding more than two centuries of European exploration and colonization, the Americas still afforded enormous opportunities. Citing favourable reports of the area, Defoe exclaimed this temperate grassland was ‘singled out for Englishmen’, provided the government was willing to supply the colony with sufficient resources and protection from potential attacks from the natives and Spanish. A thriving colony and civilized natives would establish a new market for British manufactures. Eventually the colony could extend into Chile, enabling Britain to secure a harbour for trade in the South Seas.17 Grandiose and impractical as these schemes might have been, there was nothing simplistic about the historical analysis in which they were embedded. From the Noachic to the Newtonian age, A General History of Discoveries and Improvements surveyed and assessed various nations and empires based upon the extent to which they fulfilled God’s desire that people explore, discover, exchange, and improve the bounties of his creation. This divine mandate was largely ignored until the confusion of tongues when God forced a diaspora and the posterity of Noah’s sons, Ham, Shem, and Japhet, went their separate ways. The history of Ham’s descendants who settled in the Near East proved most instructive for Defoe’s purposes since they were the first race to make discoveries in the arts and sciences. Unfortunately, with the Devil’s connivance, they were also the first race to turn from useful studies like astronomy and mathematics to wicked ones like magic, divination, and other forms of idolatry.18 Thanks to Ham’s grandson, Nimrod, they also discovered ‘the Art of Tyranny … subdued Nations, and began Empire’.19 One branch of Ham’s family, though, followed a different path. Ham’s son, Canaan, and his son, Sidon, had migrated furthest west. Whereas the energies of most peoples in the biblical Near East were becoming absorbed by idolatry and imperial conquest, the Canaanites and Sidonians turned towards the sea, enriching themselves and other peoples through navigation, exploration, and trade. They established the great city of Tyre in Phoenicia whose growing wealth became too tempting for neighbouring tyrants to ignore. ‘Naturally industrious, and addicted to commerce’, the ‘Phoenix-like’ Phoenicians were able to regroup in the wake of Israelite, Assyrian, and Alexandrian onslaughts, by founding or fleeing to colonies,




thus extending trade and learning wherever their navigational skills could take them. The Arabians and Chaldeans may have been the great inventors of the biblical world, Defoe admitted, but ‘the Phoenicians were the Englishmen of that Age … improv[ing] what others invented’ and introducing these improvements to others. They were responsible for the greatest advances in navigation until the discovery of the loadstone. Although knowledge of writing was imparted directly to Moses by God,20 the Phoenician prince Cadmus developed a simplified alphabetical system which he introduced to the Greeks. They were skilled in a host of other arts and technologies. Eliding scriptural explanations as to why Providence saw to their eventual destruction, Defoe merely concluded that the Phoenicians, ‘while they remain’d a people … were patterns of all commendable Virtues’, especially in ‘establishing Nations, encreasing the Felicity of Mankind, peopling desolate Countries, and furnishing the Nations they planted with all things both needful and pleasant for Life’. In these respects, they ‘obey[ed] the Directions their Maker gave them at first, namely, to replenish the Earth’.21 Phoenicia’s most important colony, Carthage, inherited this ‘Genius for Commerce’ creating a global network for the production, consumption, and exchange of both staple and luxury goods and fostering all the employment which these activities generated. When Rome destroyed Carthage in the last Punic War, it eradicated the taproot of a Mediterranean economic system whose trading tendrils extended to the coastal regions of India, Persia, and Africa. Corn, once a notable commodity of Carthaginian trade, was now simply shipped as tribute under Roman rule. A populous and industrious North Africa was made desolate, too weak to resist future inundations of rapacious Vandals, Saracens, and Moors. Regular channels of trade with India and Persia dissipated in the desolation of war. Cut off from Carthage, new settlements and colonies along the west African coast fell into irrecoverable decay and a continent ripe for improvement was left to poverty. The discovery of America, made by Carthaginians sailing from these outposts, though admittedly tenuous, was soon forgotten. By destroying the city of Tyre and the Carthaginian republic, Alexander the Great and Scipio Africanus ruined ‘the only two Governments in the World which were qualified to make all the rest of Mankind great and happy’. These men were not glorious heroes, argued Defoe, but ‘two Furies of the World, that overwhelm’d Commerce in the rubbish of their Conquests; and never concern’d themselves with the loss which all the World felt by their Folly and Rage; nay, which we may say, some of the World feels to this Day’.22 Harvesting the easiest parts of the Carthaginian empire and leaving the rest to die on the vine, the Romans delivered a serious blow to the general progress of mankind. Unlike the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Romans were addicted to military glory but indifferent to ‘the true glories of Peace, the improvement of the industrious, the employment of the Poor, the encrease of Navigation and Commerce or the making new Discoveries,



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in order to the better cultivating abandon’d Countries, or planting unpeopled Kingdoms in the World’.23 Defoe briefly acknowledged Roman achievements. They were skilled orators and poets, architects and builders. Their laws and regular government made property and people more secure, a necessary condition if trade was to flourish. Rome was primarily, however, a civilization based on conquest, not on commerce, and getting his readers to understand the importance of this distinction was one of his primary objectives: it’s worth observing here, and it is one of the Reasons why I have enter’d so far into this particular; I say, ’tis worth observing how War, Tyranny, and Ambition, those Enemies to all peaceable Dispositions have continual[ly] persecuted Trade; and how often the industrious trading part of the World has been beggar’d and impoverish’d by the violence and fury of Arms. As Trade enriches the World, and Industry settles and establishes People and Nations, so War, Victory, and Conquest, have been the destroyers of every good thing; the Soldier has always been the plunderer of the industrious Merchant. Instead of immortalizing men and praising nations for their militarism, Defoe argued that their names should ‘stink in the Nostrils’ of posterity, 24 a rather harsh and contradictory statement for one who championed William III as a warrior king. Almost half of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements was devoted to proving why it was not the conquering Romans but the commercial Phoenicians and Carthaginians who had established the greatest civilization of the ancient world. This half of the text certainly betrays the influence of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, a work which Defoe cited several times and probably owned. Both Raleigh’s and Defoe’s histories were providential at their core, polemical in their praise of Carthage over Rome, and unfinished in their executions.25 Raleigh’s narrative ended before the birth of Christ; Defoe’s extended into the modern age but petered out before the seventeenth century. Both writers were unusual in reversing the value signs traditionally ascribed to Rome and Carthage, ignoring tropes of Roman virtu and Carthaginian greed and perfidy. By juxtaposing his account of an ancient North Africa which had been both rich and urbane with its present reputation as a desolate and lawless lair, Defoe hoped to make the case that the British government had to take action against Mediterranean piracy. At the same time, he was making his strongest claim to date of the superiority of commerce over conquest. It could be argued that taking action against the Moors of North Africa was in fact an act of conquest, one that Christian Europe had no right to take. This objection might have validity, Defoe argued, if the Moors stopped




preying upon their European neighbours; otherwise using military force to suppress piracy constituted a defence of commerce, not an act of conquest. The second half of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements primarily focused on how European trade and learning slowly recovered from the sorry conditions created by Roman apathy towards commerce and ultimately Roman imperial decay, a recovery process aided by the spread of Christian virtues, the principles of liberty, and the discoveries of the compass, gunpowder, and printing press. Though merchants in parts of Europe continued to trade under Roman rule, Defoe claimed that a lack of commerce weakened the empire as a whole. When the Romans planted colonies, as they did in Britain, it was not to encourage trade per se but to supply their armies. The Romans ‘planted for Conquest’, Defoe remarked, adding ‘we [English] planted for Commerce; they planted to extend their Dominion, we to extend our Trade’.26 Here he exaggerated Rome’s commercial backwardness. Roman rule did provide peace and protection but what really stimulated trade, Defoe wished to emphasize, was the spread of Christianity. Early Christianity, Defoe pointedly remarked, did not tolerate all the vices which now infected Christian nations but instead infus’d principles of Honesty and Plain-Dealing; it recommended a general rectitude of the Mind, a known integrity of Principle, a just and upright Conduct under the awe of an invisible Being, who inspected the minutest Actions, and wou’d call to account for the most secret conceal’d Wickedness; so that in short, where the Christians became Traders, or engaged in Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, there, who ever dealt with them were sure to find … a general probity and exact honest procedure govern’d all their Dealings; and this we cannot doubt encourag’d Trade. Roman liberty which preserved property, coupled with the Christian religion which provided people with the ‘Rules of all moral Virtues … the awe and fear of a divine Power, a righteous Judgment, and a futurity of Reward’, became the ‘Foundations [upon which] the World became more habitable than before’.27 Roman liberty protected property but so too did gothic liberty. The Goths who pushed into Spain ‘brought principles of Liberty with them (for Gothic Governments, which are the very same upon which the British Liberties are formed, were all such as establish’d Government on the foundation of Property)’ and these principles, coupled with an early introduction to Christianity, made them ‘a most diligent and industrious people’.28 Outright necessity or particular natural resources were lesser factors in stimulating commerce. Barbarians drove the Venetians to an island refuge and seafaring existence; herring called the Dutch to sea; abundant naval stores encouraged shipbuilding among the Teutonic Germans.



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Despite having the benefits of the Christian religion, the principles of gothic liberty, proximity to the sea, and a wealth in wool, the English were ‘very little acquainted with Commerce’ until the fifteenth century. English kings were perpetually at war while the people were obliged to serve the nobility either as foot soldiers in the field or as labourers on their lands.29 Defoe’s criticism of medieval England echoed his criticism of ancient Rome. When war and conquest preoccupied emperors, kings, and elites then trade could not thrive. England first experienced the kind of leadership necessary to encourage commerce under Henry VII. Because several of Defoe’s works examined Henry VII’s importance more fully, it makes sense to discuss his comments about his reign in this text alongside these other works.30 Henry’s reign, however, coincided with fundamental technological improvements and these received their fullest treatment in A General History of Discoveries and Improvements. The fourth and final instalment of Defoe’s history celebrated the explosion of scientific, technological, and geographical discoveries made during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when the world experienced a ‘general possession or rather Inspiration to spread Knowledge through the Earth, and to search into every thing that it was possible to know’. Asking rhetorically, ‘WHAT was the World before?’, he answered it was an age in which ‘War and the Sword was the great Field of Honour’, an age of Nimrods, not ‘Sir Walter Raleighs, the Verulams, the Boyls, or Newtons’. Defoe praised Copernicus and Brahe but much of his narrative focused on the impact made by the printing press, gunpowder, and compass. Lavishing most of his attention on the last of these, he devoted an entire chapter to the subject of magnetism, summarized the history of modern maritime exploration, and assured his readers that vast regions of the new world awaited discovery as did ‘an Ocean of Commerce, and a Sea of Wealth’.31 If the first two instalments of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements set the historical stage for recovery of what the ancients once had, namely a thriving North Africa, the last two depicted a panorama of new opportunities for modern discoverers to pursue, including a British colony in South America.

iii. The benefits of princely prudence: the pivotal role of King Henry VII The historical figure to receive the most attention in A General History of Discoveries and Improvements was not Scipio Africanus whose actions against Carthage, according to Defoe, represented the most significant setback for human happiness and disregard of God’s divine plan in ancient or modern times. Nor was it any one of the great maritime explorers or new scientists of the modern age who had done so much to extend mankind’s knowledge of the physical world and the natural laws which governed it. Rather, in




that text, and in his Plan of the English Commerce of 1728, another lengthy work which was part historical reflection and part political persuasion, the one actor whose motivations, actions, and impact Defoe thought especially important to record was Henry VII. During his several decades as a writer, Defoe had mentioned Henry VII from time to time but now, at the end of his career, the reign of the first Tudor king captured his historical imagination as never before, both in these two major works and in lesser works of this period.32 Earlier English historians, most notably, Francis Bacon and James Harrington, believed that Henry VII had instigated fundamental historical change by using parliamentary statutes to curtail noble retinues and wealth, policies which resulted in a massive shift of power – economic, political, and military – to the commons. Defoe, no doubt, had read their accounts of Henry’s reign,33 but he developed his own analysis of the decline of feudalism and the catalytic role Henry VII played in that process. Rather than focusing on royal suppression of baronial power, Defoe highlighted the king’s systematic encouragement of English manufacturing and trade which both enriched the kingdom and undermined the old order of vassalage and villeinage, a social system which had kept both the squirearchy and commons at the beck and call of bellicose barons and princes. This interpretation was useful in more than one polemical context. In the late 1720s Defoe’s was one of many voices calling for the government to do more to encourage British commerce and his account of Henry VII’s perspicacity and perseverance regarding the wool industry set the perfect example for king and Parliament to follow. Secondly, by emphasizing the extent to which both land and status had changed hands in Tudor times, Defoe added an historical dimension to his ongoing efforts in the press to show that successful tradesmen did become gentlemen and that the nobility and gentry were not a race apart. Between the Norman conquest and the reign of Henry VII, English kings and their subjects experienced too much war and too little commerce and culture. It was a ‘meerly military’ age in which ‘the drum and the trumpet … drown’d the music of the Muses’ and progress in the arts and sciences was negligible. Absorbed in continual warfare with other princes, the typical medieval king had a helmet on his head rather than a book in his hands.34 The great barons and religious houses had vast lands but these were taxed to pay for various ‘ruinous Wars’ in France, the Holy Land, Flanders, and Brittany, taxes which fell most heavily on the gentry and clergy. When not ‘exhausted by foreign Wars, peel’d and pol’d by their tyrant Princes’, the barons ‘ravag’d and wasted’ each other in ‘civil Dissentions’.35 Royal and baronial warfare ensnared the commoners too. Their ‘whole employ seem’d to be to wait upon the Nobility, and be at their beck, as we call it, to laquy it after them to the War, which took up the first, or to till and plow the Land, and do the drudgery of the Husbandman, and this took up the last’. For



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want of work, they were too often willing to follow ‘Priests and Priest-ridden Princes, ala Santa Terra, to find Graves in the Arabian Desarts’. With the same ‘blind Subjection’, they followed the lord of the manor and ‘at his Command they would rebel against their King, and take up the Bow and Arrow against whomever he commanded them’.36 During these centuries, Defoe lamented, the English knew little about trade and even less about manufacturing. Wool was the chief form of wealth in the kingdom but estates were also sources of lead and tin. Outside the system of feudal obligations, rents were paid in sacks of wool, as were taxes to the king. Vast amounts of English wool were exported annually, filling the coffers of the king and landed magnates and giving both the wherewithal to fight in foreign wars or against each other. But if the export of lead, tin, and raw wool enriched the English baronage and crown, the transportation and manufacturing of these goods, especially wool, made the merchants and citizens of Flanders and the Hanseatic towns far richer. While the people of the Low Countries grew rich and industrious turning English wool into cloth, the export of wool kept most of the English population destitute and trapped within the manorial system: The people were divided into Master and Servant; not Landlord and Tenant, but the Lord and the Vassal; the Tenant paid no Rent, but held his Lands in Vassallage; that is, for Services to be performed … The under People to these Tenants held by Villenage; that is the Labourers, those we now call Husbandmen and Cottagers, these did the Drudgery, were Grooms to look after his Horses, drive his Teams, fell his Woods, Fence, Hedge, Ditch, Thresh, and in a Word, do all servile Labours; and for this they had their Bread; that is, they had a poor Cottage, scarce to good as a tolerable modern Hogstye to live in, they drank at the Pump, and eat at the Kitchen Door, Beggar like … This was the Case, even in this flourishing Nation of England, till Trade came in to make the Difference; and give me leave to assume so much, I insist upon it, that Trade alone made the Difference; and the Climax is very remarkable.37 Henry VII was the first to see the folly of England’s exportation of raw wool and he ‘open’d the Nation’s Eyes to see into it also’.38 According to Defoe, Henry was quite a different prince than ‘the untaught race of kings’ who preceded him. Those monarchs may have been glorious warriors and magnanimous persons but Henry had the learning and experience his predecessors lacked. While in exile, he had educated himself with books at courts in Brittany and France.39 More importantly, having lived as ‘a kind of Refugee in the Court of his Aunt the Dutchess of Burgundy’ and having travelled in Flanders, Henry had both heard about and seen for himself the favourable effects of commerce and manufacturing in these regions. Their




merchants were great, their burghers rich, their cities populous, and their people industrious and prosperous. Furthermore, it could not escape his notice that all these benefits were largely derived from turning English wool into cloth. ‘To a Prince of such Penetration’, Defoe stated, ‘it could not but occur after he came to the Crown, that certainly England was much in the wrong, to let their Wool go out of the Country thus unmanufactur’d, and to let Strangers be made rich by the working of it, while his own People sat idle and unemployed … In short, he resolved, that if he could prevent it, Strangers should no longer eat the Bread out of the Mouths of his own Subjects’.40 Henry understood, as no English king before him had, that ‘the strength of a kingdom consisted in the wealth of the subjects, as well as in their numbers, that a king of beggars was fitt for nothing but to be a king of thiev[e]s and plunderers’ and that ‘a wise king of wealthy cowards would be more potent than a weak king of the most martial nacion in the world’.41 Henry was thus an ‘avaritious tho’ politic Prince’, one who had been deeply affected by the plight of his poorer subjects and soon applied his ‘superior Genius for matters of Improvement’ towards bettering their condition as well as his own.42 If his kingdom was to grow rich then his subjects must stop exporting their raw wool and finish it themselves. This would provide much-needed employment and increase the value of English exports. Realizing the magnitude and diplomatic ramifications of such a policy, Henry acted with prudence and caution. He did not immediately prohibit the export of wool but secretly invited over several master craftsmen from the Low Countries to instruct the English in every aspect of the woollen industry. It was soon apparent that the English could spin wool better and more cheaply than Flemish workers and England began exporting yarn. When the Flemish threatened to prohibit or tax English yarn, Henry got Parliament to temporarily stop the export of English wool, forcing the Flemish to ‘rumage the whole World for Wool to carry on their Business’.43 In the end, the quantity and quality of English wool proved too great for the Flemish to ignore and they accepted the new trading conditions which Henry’s policies had created. As one improvement generally leads to another, Defoe explained, the English soon began to engage in more advanced aspects of the woollen industry. Realizing that it would be some years before his kingdom could acquire the manufacturing capacity to finish all its own wool, Henry willingly allowed trade to continue with the Flemish rather than ‘destroy a Commerce, which he knew would one Time or other be his own’. Within a hundred years, Defoe boasted, England became the centre for woollen manufactures. Elizabeth helped make this happen for she too seized opportunities ‘for opening the Sluices of Trade to her Subjects’ by encouraging manufacturing at home, navigation, and exploration and the planting of colonies. It was, however, Henry VII who had set the nation’s rise to commercial greatness in motion. In being cau-



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tiously proactive about England’s trade, ‘the King acted like a wise and warlike Prince, beseiging a city, who tho’ he attacks the Garrison, and batters the Out-works with the utmost Fury, yet spares the Inhabitants, and forbears as much as he can ruining the City, which he expects to make his own’.44 The reign of Henry VII demonstrated that a king could take effective actions to improve trade and enrich his nation without necessarily ruining commerce or risking war with a trading partner or diplomatic ally. Defoe acknowledged recent ‘loud Complaints among us of the Decay of our Trade’ thanks to various protectionist policies enacted by other European powers. Rather than focus on the consumption of British goods ‘in this or that Petty Province’ or upon ‘Imitations of them’ produced by other European countries, however, Defoe’s Plan called for ‘encreasing our Trade in other Places where those Prohibitions and Imitations cannot reach’, namely in Africa and the Americas. Despite arguments to the contrary, the government could devise policies which would promote British trade and colonization in these areas, policies which might displease Spain or France but fall short of provoking serious reprisals, either commercial or military. The public, it seemed to him, had lost that ‘Trading Genius … and adventuring Temper’ so characteristic of earlier ages and it required political leadership to revive that spirit and to support ventures which might only bear fruit in the long term. His plan was therefore ‘humbly referr’d to the Consideration of the King and Parliament; they are Things worthy of a King, and worth[y] of a powerful Legislature to consider of; no Power less than that of King, Lords and Commons, can put these Wheels of Improvement into due Motion’. Defoe was adamant that the lessons of history not be lost on the present king or his ministers. The example set by Henry VII, he asserted, was ‘perfectly fitted to fire the Breast of any succeeding Monarch, who desires the Good of his Subjects with the same Paternal Warmth for the general Improvement; and for this End I mention it, and for this End these Sheets are thus addressed to the supreme Powers of the British Government’.45 If Defoe intended these lessons of history to engage the minds of policymakers in Whitehall and Westminster, he also hoped they might reform gentry prejudices throughout the country at large. Henry VII’s promotion of the wool industry had resulted in significant changes in the nation’s social structure, changes which Defoe believed contradicted the gentry’s cherished assumptions about the antiquity of their families, the purity of their blood, their role in society, and the true foundation of their wealth. According to Defoe, the decay of feudalism did not result from Henry VII’s legislation regarding the alienation of noble estates and the keeping of armed retainers, as Bacon and Harrington had thought. Rather, Defoe’s argument anticipated the works of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, David Hume and John Millar. Hume argued that the barons jettisoned feuding for the more refined forms of competition and emulation made available by




the growth of commerce and culture. But if Hume’s history highlighted the nobility’s gravitation towards luxury and the arts, Defoe’s focused on production first – on the increased opportunities which trade gave to both villeins and vassals and the monetization of feudal dues and land tenures. Only then did he treat the question of consumption, luxury, and their effects on the economic and moral agency of property owners and upon the redistribution of property itself. Keith Wrightson has argued that ‘with John Millar’s Historical View of the English Government (1787) the established themes of English economic and social development were drawn into a new configuration’ as his analysis focused on woollen cloth production rather than aristocratic consumption.46 It is, in fact, Defoe we must credit for first emphasizing, almost sixty years earlier than Millar, the central importance of woollen manufactures as a catalyst for social change in earlymodern England. In Defoe’s historical scheme, thanks to the prudence of Henry VII, the English ‘tasted the Sweets of Commerce’ and soon supplanted the Flemings and Esterlings by finishing and shipping woollen manufactures themselves. The effects throughout the countryside, he argued, were profound: As to the Country, the Revolution of Trade, brought a Revolution in the very Nature of Things; the Poor began to work, not for Cottages and Liveries, but for Money, and to live, as we say, at their own Hands: The Women and Children learnt to spin and get Money for it, a Thing entirely new to them, and what they had never seen before. The Men left the Hedge and the Ditch, and were set at Work by the Manufacturers to be Wool-Combers, Weavers, Fullers, Clothworkers, Carriers, and innumerable happy Labours they perform’d, which they knew nothing of before. Once the English learned these skills from the Flemish manufacturers brought over by Henry VII, they began to spread this knowledge and employ each other: Villains and Vassals were taken Apprentices to the Manufactures, till coming to be Masters, the Name, nay the very Things themselves call’d Vassalage and Villanage grew out of Use. The Vassals got Money by Trade, and the Villains by Labour; and the Lords found the Sweets of it too, for they soon buy off the Services, and bring the Lords to take Money. Thus the Cottagers growing rich, bought their little Cotts with right of Commonage for their Lives, renewable so and so, as they could agree, and this was called Coppy-hold. On the other hand, the Vassals and Feuholders, as they are call’d to this Day in the North, growing rich, lump’d it with the Lords, and for a Sum of Money bought off their slavish Tenures, and got their Leases turn’d into Free-holds; and to finish



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Thus the domestic manufacture and export of wool cloth also wrought a new social ‘Fabrick’ no longer made up of dependent vassals and villeins but of independent freeholders and copyholders, rentiers and tenants. Production began these momentous changes but consumption continued to transform English society. Defoe immediately continued: I might enlarge here upon the differing Effects of Luxury and Frugality, which became more than ordinarily visible upon this Change of Affairs: namely, that as the frugal Manufacturers, encourag’d by their Success, doubled their Industry and good Husbandry, they lay’d up Money, and grew rich; and the luxurious and Purse proud Gentry, tickl’d with the happy Encrease of their Revenues, and the rising Value of their Rents, grew vain, gay, luxurious, and expensive: So the first encreas’d daily, and the latter, with all the new encreas’d and advanc’d Revenues, yet grew poor and necessitous, till the former began to buy them out; and have so bought them out, that whereas in those Days, the Lands were all in the Hands of the Barons; that is to say, the Nobility, and even the Knights and Esquires who had Lands, and were call’d the Gentry, held them by servile Tenures, as above: Now we see the Nobility and ancient Gentry have almost every where sold their Estates, and the Commonality and Tradesmen have bought them: So that now the Gentry are richer than the Nobility, and the Tradesmen are richer than them all.47 Thus, according to Defoe, few of the truly ancient class of knights had been prudent enough to hang on to their estates and those that had done so owed both their estates and their emancipation to the forces of commerce. The assimilation of wealthy tradesmen into landed society may have accelerated in recent years but the phenomenon was as old as the landed gentry itself. Defoe’s account of the reign of Henry VII reflected his lifelong faith in the divinity of trade and the blessings he believed a wise and virtuous king could bestow upon his subjects. While acknowledging that his account of the growth of commerce and the consequent demise of vassalage and villeinage had sketched out the process in England only, Defoe asserted that his observations held true for ‘all the trading Nations of Europe’. Wherever commerce had advanced, ‘the Miseries of the People ha[d] abated’ and the value of lands had increased. Moreover, ‘the Climax does not end here’, for as the value of land increased so too did a nation’s tax revenues and military potential. Since it was now a well-known maxim that ‘’tis the longest Purse that conquers now, not the longest Sword’, he argued



the great Fabrick, the Farmers of Lands were now enabled to take them at a Rent certain, and the Gentry got a Revenue in Money, which they understood nothing of before.

that it was foolish to blame other European countries for endeavouring to increase their own manufactures or restrict the import of British goods.48 Even if the longest purse had recently enabled Britain to pay for large armies, it was perhaps wiser to develop new markets than to wage war over old ones. If ‘our Trade is the Envy of the World’ and the Spanish, French, or Austrians were seeking to block or copy it, then it was incumbent upon the British government and people to reawaken that spirit which had once led the likes of Drake, Cavendish, Smith, Raleigh, and others to make new discoveries and ‘raise new Worlds of Commerce’.49

iv. Historical analysis in Defoe’s Compleat English Gentleman Raising new worlds of commerce, Defoe realized, called for the razing of old gentry prejudices against the trading sector of society, a problem he addressed in his Plan of the English Commerce but explored most fully in his unpublished Compleat English Gentleman, the second most probably written in the months following the publication of his Plan in March 1728. Pride and ignorance encouraged the gentry to divide the world into two camps: first, ‘Gentlemen’, whom they distinguished by their descent from the ancient barons though ‘with some Difficulty’ they also included the clergy, the soldiery, and men of learning; and second, ‘Mechanicks’ by which they meant everyone else including tradesmen, whom ‘they divest of all Dignity, as well as of Degree; and blend together under one general, or rather common Denomination’. Gentry contempt for tradesmen offended Defoe on several levels. It was a personal affront to be sure but it also contradicted his deeply held beliefs that Britain was a trading nation and that God’s providential purpose for man involved commerce and exchange. If public opinion was ever going to be rallied to support new and ambitious colonial endeavours then a cultural reconciliation between land and trade was needed. Defoe seemed to take satisfaction in pointing out the frequent interchanges between these two groups, especially the ready willingness of the gentry to restore or augment their economic position ‘by what they call City Fortunes’. Declining gentry families anxious to secure merchant heiresses to marry or apprenticeships for younger sons, he pointed out, conveniently forgot their scruples about mixing with the mechanic race if such alliances held out the prospect of reviving exhausted estates. Trade not only restored flagging ancient families, it also planted new ones. Examples of wealthy citizens retiring from trade and buying estates abounded. Defoe estimated that within the past two generations 500 great estates within a hundred miles of London had been purchased by men who made their fortune in trade.50 The rise and fall of families in general seemed to Defoe a natural process but one that had accelerated during his lifetime and he addressed the reasons for this in his Compleat English Gentleman. Writing in the guise of a gentleman of ancient lineage himself, Defoe explained that ‘All family



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Law, trade, war, navigation, improvement of stocks, loans on public funds, places of trust, and abundance of other modern advantages and private wayes of getting money … have rais’d a great number of familyes to not only prosperous circumstances, for that I am not speaking of, but to immense estates, vast and, till of late, unheard of summs of money amass’d in a short time and which have, in the consequence rais’d such families to a stacion of life some thing difficult to describe and not less difficult to giv[e] a name to.51 As the word ‘gentleman’ had come to mean a man whose family honours, house, and lands were his own ‘by prescription and usage time out of mind’, people were reluctant to bestow that title upon men with new fortunes. However, enquire too deeply into an ancient lineage, Defoe argued, and it soon collapsed ‘like a Rope of Sand’ revealing baser origins and less antiquity than current vanity would ever admit.52 The idea that gentility was an inherited quality of the blood ‘as if there were some differing Species in the very Fluids of Nature’, he treated with sarcasm.53 Although he discounted ancient lineage and bloodlines, Defoe did not want to reduce the idea of gentleman to mean a man of ‘generous principles’ alone, a definition useful for moral instruction perhaps but one which ‘will not do for our purposes’. Nor did he wish to deny the concept of gentility altogether. ‘The Design of this Work is not at all to level Mankind, to blend the Low and the High together, and so make a meer Mob of the People’, he explained. Divine wisdom had provided for ‘differing Ranks and Classes in every Part of the Creation’ and he acknowledged a gentleman ‘to be the Glory of the Creation, the exalted head of the whole Race, that demands Honour and Distinction from the rest of the World’. The goal of this work was rather to show the gentleman ‘how to place himself in the rank which God and Nature design’d for him’.54 The central premise of the Compleat English Gentleman was that there were really two sorts of gentlemen, the ‘born’ and the ‘bred’. The qualifications of both should include sufficient wealth to support an estate and a generation’s remove from the employment which created that wealth in the first place. The independence which these first qualifications provided, moreover, must be used to good effect – to develop one’s mental and moral capacities in order to become a man worthy of responsibility and emulation.55 This, Defoe believed, was exactly what the born gentlemen of his generation were failing to do while their counterparts, the bred gentlemen,



honour begins some where, either in trade, virtue, [or] favour of the prince, all assisting to the advance of fortune.’ Every previous age, he suggested, has witnessed the decline of a few ancient families and the rise of new ones who, in a generation or two, were accepted as bona fide gentry. However, in this age

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I am willing to giv[e] up the first money getting wretch, who amass’d the estate. Purse-proud, insolent, without manners, and too often without sence, he discovers his mechanick quallifications on all occasions; the dialect of the Alley hangs like a brogue upon his tongue, and if he is not clown clad in his behaviour, ’tis generally supplied with the usuall aire of a sharper and a bite … But when I say I thus giv[e] up the founder of the house, I must yet open the door to the politer son … Call him what you please on account of his blood, and be the race modern and mean as you will, yet if he was sent early to school, has good parts, and has improv’d them by learning, travel, conversation, and reading, and abov[e] all with a modest courteous gentlemen-like behaviour: despise him as you will, he will be a gentleman in spite of all the distincctions we can make, and that not upon money onely … but upon the best of all foundations of families, I mean a stock of personall merit, a liberal education, a timely and regular discipline and instruccion, and a humble temper early form’d and made the recepticle of the best impressions and subjected to the rules and laws of being instructed.56 It appears the bred gentleman was to be the focus of the second part of Defoe’s text, which remained unfinished. The first part, focused on the failings of the born gentleman, was a subject which had attracted his attention since his earliest days as a writer. Their failings, Defoe believed, were numerous but not irreparable for they were chiefly the result of the nobility’s and gentry’s indifference to or disdain for learning, particularly when it came to educating their eldest sons. Ladies more concerned with being fashionable than nurturing, placed the responsibility for rearing their children in the hands of wetnurses, nannies, and tutors. They considered their sons to be too grand to attend school where they might be hectored by sorry schoolmasters and mix with ‘the rabble of every trades-man’s boys’. Tutors, as Defoe perceived them, were often fearful for their places and therefore apt to become ‘playfellow[s]’ rather than instructors, encouraging a love of pleasure rather than learning in their young charges. Many gentlemen believed that educating their heirs would be superfluous at best and dangerous at worst, rationalizing that ‘reading and book knowledge did but serv[e] to form vast designs in men’s heads, sent them up to court, embark them in politicks, embroil them with partyes, and by placeing them at the head of factions in the State, involv[e] them in frequent mischiefs, and some times bring them to



regularly demonstrated themselves to be men of learning, responsibility, virtue, and manners. At least while writing in the persona of a born gentlemen, Defoe was willing to overlook the first generation of a rising family but the next was a different case:

ruine and distruccion’. As far as their own lack of education was concerned, some gentlemen lamented it, some acknowledged but ignored it, others were boastful, arguing their natural capacities and estates were ‘ornament enough’ for a gentleman. For every gentleman who regretted his own lack of learning, Defoe claimed there were twenty who bragged about it.57 Defoe found this contempt for learning despicable in both its assumptions and effects. While his fellow countrymen were always ready to complain about royal tyranny and arbitrary government they ignored the kind of paternal tyranny which allowed ‘absolute power in the head of the house to doom his subjects, that is his children, to be fools or wise men by his meer arbitrary will’. Ignoring a child’s education was to commit a ‘personal violence and injustice to the child’ and a ‘violence upon Nature, which I call an insult on Heaven’ as God intended that our reason and understanding be ‘cultivated and improv’d’. An ‘untaught, unpolish’d gentleman is one of the most deplorable objects in the world’, he argued. The soul of such a man was like a ‘lyon in a cage’, which has all its strength, beauty, and courage but ‘surrounded with impassable barrs’, unable to exercise its magnificence in the world as nature intended. The English nobility and gentry should be ‘the envy … and the example of all the gentry in Christendome’: they enjoyed fine estates, secure property rights, a balanced constitution, and ‘examples of the benefits of learning on their doorstep’ thanks to the achievements of men like Newton, Locke, and Boyle. Instead, their disregard for learning exposed them to the contempt of their inferiors at home and their equals abroad.58 A lack of education among the gentry, especially among eldest sons, had important practical consequences. Luxury, extravagant spending, and a desire to emulate those above one’s own social station had infected every level of society but was, Defoe believed, particularly prevalent among the gentry. Ancient but perhaps less wealthy families especially felt a pressure to ‘live expensively’ in order to ‘look like other people’ thus spending more than they could rationally afford. Years of borrowing often meant that ‘what is left to the eldest son is a callamity, not an estate’. Defoe blamed this false sense of pride and the poor financial decisions which supported it specifically on a lack of education.59 A more educated gentry would have a greater sense of self-worth and more financial acumen than to fritter away their inheritances for the sake of keeping up appearances. Extravagance and indolence had wider economic consequences as well. These habits kept the gentry from improving their estates which might give employment to the poor and benefit the nation as a whole, a point Defoe explored more fully in his Tour and Plan of the English Commerce.60 These ramifications extended into the political realm as well because an uneducated and profligate nobility and gentry could be more easily manipulated and corrupted by courtiers and politicians. Defoe expressed concern that the nation might not be able to count on these men to defend its liber-




ties should Britain ever again face a ruler or ministry determined to undermine them. Ignorant and indebted gentry could be more easily ignored, too dim and distracted even to notice their own marginalization in the management of public affairs. Worse than being marginalized, they might also be made the actual ‘engines and instruments’ of politicians bent on destroying their own rights and privileges. Far from supporting the argument made by some gentlemen that educating their sons might lead them into politics with all its dangers, Defoe countered that education was necessary to keep gentlemen out of political danger. Although they might claim that posts and places were ‘civil badges of human drudgery’ compared to the rewards of hereditary possession and the private life, bribes and pensions were all too attractive to gentlemen burdened by reduced estates and addicted to ‘thoughtless luxury’. Uneducated gentlemen, Defoe warned, could only be buffoons at court and easy targets for factions and parties. If through bribery and influence they happened to be elected to the Commons, they could never act as effective leaders of a solid country opposition to the court’s parliamentary managers.61 It seemed to Defoe that in denying the value of education, the gentry were denying a responsible role for themselves in contemporary society. When asked about the proper role for gentlemen, Defoe claimed many of them insisted that ‘their dogs and horses, their sport, and their bottle are the proper bussiness of a gentleman … that Heaven gave them estates to enjoy them … to satiate their souls with good, and to remove them from all the dull unpleasant part of life called bussiness and application’. In the face of fundamental historical change, the gentry had happily accepted emancipation from the military duties incumbent upon them in the feudal age but refused to accept any new social responsibilities in this age of commerce and improvement. In conversations about war, they amused themselves by scoffing ‘let beggars and mercenaries be knock’t on the head for wages’ as they now had money to pay for soldiers. As for commerce and improvement, it was the usurer’s job to make money and the gentleman’s ‘calling’ to spend it; learning remained ‘good, dull, poreing work for the parsons and pedants’. The unlearned gentleman, Defoe argued, was also incapable of assuming the role of moral exemplar, either for his posterity or for society at large. Taught to love pleasure rather than learning from an early age, he spends his youth ‘wallowing in sensuality, sloth, and indolence’ and his mature years ‘wearyed with … wanton excesses’, until his death which ‘makes room for the untaught heir to live the horrid scene over again’.62 It was easy to criticize the squirearchy as countless satirical depictions of the period make clear, but Defoe was also interested in the psychology of an otherwise intelligent body of men deprived of learning by mere social convention. Young heirs, he remarked, ‘learn to kno’ they are gentlemen long before they learn that they are men’. As their pride increased, their



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neither look in, or look out, or look up; if they look’d in, they would see what empty, what weak, what unform’d things they are; if they look’d out, that is, look’d round them, they would see how bright, how beautifull learning rendred other men, and what they might have been, if they had had justice done them in their educacion; as to the last their looking up, they that cannot look in can seldome look up: They that can not contemplate themselves can very ill contemplate their Maker.63 Without any claim to merits of their own, they clung all the more firmly to the idea that family pedigree alone exalted them above ordinary men. The gentleman coming to terms with himself or with other uneducated gentlemen thus became ‘embarrasst in an inextricable labrinth’. On the one hand, the ‘law of nature’ compelled a rational mind to recognize the foolish aspect of a person with more pride than sense. On the other, ‘the rules of decency, which is nature in a gentleman’, obliged the individual to see himself and other gentlemen as superior creatures. In this ‘particularly perplexing’ contradiction, Defoe saw the veneration of form without substance, or in the cultural idiom explored in earlier chapters, idolatry. Society had come to worship the gentlemanly ideal purportedly present in the born gentleman but absent in reality like an ‘idol when the deity is absent, as when our people bow to the candles upon the altar when they deny the Reall Presence, a sort of popery that every body may not think of’. Intellectually one accepted that many gentlemen had no real personal merit but socially one still paid them deference. Of course there were some true ‘idolators’ who believed in the real presence of superiority simply upon seeing ‘escutcheons and trophyes’ and the ‘blazonry’ of gentlemen’s houses and Defoe knew that his text would invite their criticism. Nevertheless he wanted to show that the born gentleman, ‘abstracted from other Merit’, was an ‘exalted Creature of our own forming … an Idol of our own, [and] like Nebuchadnezzar, we would have all the meaner World fall down and worship him’. He was willing to honour ‘ancient lineage as much as possible [but] without idolatry’ so long as the established gentry and nobility admitted that ‘vertue, learning, a liberal educacion, and a degree of naturall and accquir’d knowledge, are necessary to finish the born gentleman; and that without them the entitul’d heir will be but the shaddow of a gentlemann’.64

v. Conclusion In writing The Compleat English Gentleman, Defoe sought to break and remake the hollow idol of a gentleman or, perhaps more accurately, he



sense diminished until they learned to be proud of the fact they had no education. While Defoe could be scathing in his criticisms of the gentry he took pity on gentlemen who could

wished to suggest that, thanks to the forces of commerce, this iconoclastic process was now under way.65 As a young man during the reign of William III, Defoe had hoped for a regeneration of society in general and of the gentry in particular. Then he had put his faith in the reformation of manners initiatives and grand schemes for the establishment of national academies of learning and military science like the ones he proposed in his Essay upon Projects published in 1697. By end of his career, Defoe appears to suggest that historical changes might eventually sweep aside ‘born’ gentlemen if they failed to find responsible roles for themselves in this modern age. The ‘bred’ gentlemen, or ‘modern gentry’ would, in time, ‘bring learning and good educacion so much in fashion’ that they would ‘shame’ the ancient gentry out of their ignorance and indolence and into becoming more informed and useful members of society. Gentlemen who neglected or refused to accept this new standard, Defoe asserted, would eventually be ‘voted infamous, be hiss’d off the stage of life … and be no more rank’t among the gentry: a happy time, which I have good reason to think is not very farr off’.66



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The Devil and Daniel Defoe: History in a Heterodox Age

i. Introduction Commerce and gentility were central issues to Defoe until his death in 1731 but his greatest intellectual preoccupation during the last decade of his life was the rise of heterodoxy. In 1726–7, he produced a number of lengthy works to combat what Maximillian Novak has termed the ‘great deistic offensive of the 1720s’.1 Although John Toland, the most notorious Deist of his day, had died in 1722, there were plenty of other writers whose challenges to various aspects of orthodox Christianity Defoe felt compelled to address. Chief among these was William Whiston who succeeded Isaac Newton in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics but was expelled from it in 1710 for heresy. By the 1720s Whiston had established himself as a kind of ‘entrepreneur of natural philosophy’, projector for various longitude schemes, and promoter of Unitarian ideas.2 Another target was Whiston’s friend and fellow Unitarian, Thomas Emlyn, whose Arianism and doubts about the authenticity of certain scriptural passages Defoe was especially keen to discredit.3 Defoe also responded to the Deistic content of the works of Toland’s anti-standing army compatriot, Walter Moyle, which were posthumously published in 1726. Other writers and provocations could be added to this list. Directly or indirectly, Defoe’s defence of orthodoxy was a continuation of his response to the Bangorian and Salters’ Hall controversies of the previous decade, discussed in earlier chapters, and to influential heterodox publications by men like Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins.4 In response to these writers and events, and to a perceived growth in irreligious attitudes and behaviours around him, Defoe produced a remarkable outpouring of titles in which he reaffirmed the historicity of scripture, the role of special Providence, the reality of both demonic and angelic spirits, the limits of human reason, and the centrality of Trinitarian soteriology for regulating one’s conduct in this world and preparing one’s soul for the next. This chapter will focus on four major works, each several hundred pages in length, which Defoe published between May 1726 and September 185



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1727. The first three, The Political History of the Devil, A System of Magick, and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, focused respectively on the precise nature and history of Satan, a survey of mankind’s pretensions to supernatural powers, and the role of angels and apparitions in human affairs, though there was considerable thematic overlap between them. Although most scholars acknowledge some seriousness in these works, there has been a tendency to minimize their intellectual importance by describing them as ‘jocular’ in tone and more entertaining than edifying in purpose, or by reading them as evidence of Defoe’s lifelong preoccupation with the ‘occult’, itself a telling word.5 Rather they were specific, even urgent, attempts to answer recent challenges to Christian orthodoxy by examining them in the widest chronological context possible. The fourth work, A New Family Instructor, is often read in the context of Defoe’s earlier didactic manuals or for insights into his fictional methods but it too was another volley in his campaign against heterodoxy as well as his last statement on the truth of the Protestant religion and the doctrine of the Trinity. Defoe ranged over the whole of human history in all four works, most explicitly in The Political History of the Devil and A System of Magick which he designed as two-part investigations into ancient (pre-Christian) and modern (Christian) manifestations of their subject matter. The division of these texts into two parts, focusing on the interaction between humanity and the spiritual world before and after the birth of the Messiah, reinforced Defoe’s message that original sin and Christ’s Atonement were the conceptual bookends which held the volumes of secular time in place; removal of either of them threatened the meaning and order of human history as he understood it. Both doctrines, however, were being increasingly questioned by critics of revealed religion. Many of these thinkers promoted the idea of natural religion, a belief system available to all human beings by virtue of their inherent goodness and capacity for rational thought. The increased acceptability of this kind of argument indicated to Defoe that he was now living in a time which, if not constitutive of a post-Christian age, was outrageous enough in its intellectual hubris to differ from preceding periods. A comparison of Defoe’s attitude towards human reason in 1706 with his treatment of it by 1726 demonstrates the extent to which two decades of contentious public debate about natural and revealed religion had chastened him. In 1706, Defoe had dedicated Jure Divino, his other lengthy exploration of the Devil’s role in human affairs, to ‘REASON: First Monarch of the World’ and ‘The Almighty’s Representative and Resident in the Souls of Men’.6 By 1726 Defoe believed he was witnessing the unwelcome endpoint of an overweening faith in the power of human reason – an increase in religious scepticism and a concomitant decline in morality. One example of the problem, as Defoe perceived it, was revealed by the frustration he expressed in having to ‘direct … my story to an age, wherein to be driven to Revelation and Scripture-assertions is esteem’d giving up



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the dispute; people now-adays must have demonstration; and in a word, nothing will satisfy the age, but such evidence as perhaps the nature of the question will not admit’.7 This did not stop him from relying on the Bible, still early-modern Europe’s most important source for ancient history, but he had come to realize that scriptural arguments were less efficacious than they had been a generation before; when he began his career as a propagandist, there had been no need to defend their use. Suspicion of scriptural proof, he noticed, had become not just a matter of questioning this specific source of evidence but one which demanded a new intellectual style: Unhappy Times! where to be serious, is to be dull and grave, and consequently to write without Spirit. We must talk politely, not religiously; we may show the Scholar, but must not show a Word of the Christian; so we may quote prophane History, but not sacred; and a Story out of Lucan or Plutarch, Tully, or Virgil will go down, but not a Word of Moses or Joshua. Well, we must comply however; the Humour of the Day must prevail; and as there is no instructing you without pleasing you, and no pleasing you but in your own Way, we must go on in that Way.8 Defoe proceeded to do again what he had done in a lifetime of writing – he instructed his readers by entertaining them, giving himself licence to use humour and even sensationalism to defend orthodox positions while condemning heterodox thinkers, particularly those among the ‘polite’, for addressing the most solemn subjects with ridicule and frivolity. He knew what sold books and laced these works with magicians’ tales, Faustian fables, and ‘Chimney-Corner Histories’ about Satan appearing in various shapes, upsetting furniture and crockery.9 He also knew that by presenting these stories against the far more dramatic background of sacred history, he might replace his readers’ cloven-hoofed characterizations of the Devil as a trickster who made things go bump in the night with a serious appreciation for Satan as an historical agent. If legends and ghost stories had trivialized the real role that demonic and angelic spirits played in human affairs, thereby diminishing people’s understanding of the ultimate purpose of creation, Defoe would remind them of the real drama of human history and the true mystery of the Atonement, by which Christ alone released mankind from its fatal enslavement to the Devil.

ii. Satan and magic in the ancient world: from the creation to Christ Satan was surely an evil force in history but there were limits to his influence and even to his malevolence. First, as a seraphic spirit, the Devil had considerable powers but, Defoe assured his readers, these were not as



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great as some of ‘the brain-sick heads of our Enthusiasticks’ suggested. The Devil could not foretell the future; nor could he act ‘in the ordinary manner as bodies do’ upon physical objects. He did, however, exercise the ‘secret art or capacity of insinuation, suggestion, accusation, &c … by which he deludes and betrays mankind’.10 He was also assisted by many spiritual agents who filled the air like insects in a ‘Beam of Evening Sun’.11 There were also innumerable benevolent spirits who communicated with mankind. The nature of this spiritual world was not well understood and although Defoe believed mankind might benefit from a greater understanding of it, those magicians who claimed to have special access to it were fooling themselves and others.12 Secondly, he pointed out, the Devil was ‘a believer’ who ‘fears God’ and therefore has ‘more religion than some of our men of fame’. The most despicable sins of this age – the atheist’s denial of God and Socinians’ and Arians’ diminishment of Christ’s divinity – were ones the Devil himself did not commit, enabling Defoe to traduce heterodox thinkers of his day for outsinning Satan himself.13 Satan’s fall from heaven was not merely a convenient place to begin his historical narrative but an issue with immediate relevance. The most celebrated account of this event in the eighteenth century was undoubtedly Milton’s Paradise Lost and here again a comparison between Defoe’s Jure Divino and A Political History of the Devil is instructive. In 1706 Defoe could celebrate Milton as a ‘Masterly … Genius’ but by 1726 he felt compelled to expose the Arian theology he saw as embodied in Milton’s epic poem.14 He contested Milton’s account on several grounds, most notably the text’s lack of clarity about the coeval and co-equal nature of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Defoe dismissed the excuse of poetic licence for such a solemn matter, pronouncing that ‘Mr. Milton is not orthodox in this part, but lays an avow’d foundation for the corrupt Doctrine of Arius’. Conceding that Paradise Lost was ‘a fine poem’, he nevertheless denounced it as ‘the Devil of a History’ because it made ‘a meer je ne scay Quoi of Jesus Christ … jostles with Religion, and shocks our Faith in so many points necessary to be believ’d’.15 It was perfectly correct, Defoe added, to recognize Satan’s pride as the cause of his expulsion but beyond that, conjecture, poetic or otherwise, was fruitless. No one could explain how an evil like the sin of pride entered heaven in the first place. To the question unde malum?, Defoe answered that human beings must be content with ignorance until they reached the ‘other side [of] the Blue-blancket, and then we shall know the whole Story’, a modesty of mind, he believed, most heterodox thinkers lacked.16 In his counter-offensive against them, he thus continually stressed the limits of human reason while confidently asserting Trinitarian theology as a truth supported by solid scriptural evidence. After the expulsion of Satan and his fellow rebel angels, Defoe explained, God took steps to replenish his heavenly host through the Creation. God’s new creature, man, was mean in appearance but ‘seraphic’ in spirit.



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Endowed with a soul and the capacity to know good and evil, he was ultimately ‘made in the very Image of God’ and destined, after a probationary period on earth, ‘to enjoy that very Glory and Felicity, from which Satan and his Angel’s had been expell’d’. Because God had created mankind in order to repopulate heaven, the Devil became humanity’s envious and implacable enemy, determined to render men and women unworthy, as he was, of paradise. Satan was not jealous of Christ, as Milton had suggested, but of his rival and replacement, man.17 By corrupting Adam and Eve, the common parents of mankind, the Devil had enjoyed considerable success but he could never achieve ultimate victory because eventually ‘the Promise of Grace … purchased by the Messiah’ would save enough souls to fill the vacancies in heaven. ‘The World may be said to be upheld and continued for the Sake of those few [souls]’, Defoe asserted, ‘since till their Number can be compleated, the Creation cannot fall, and more than, that without them, or but for them it would not have stood.’18 Although the Devil had successfully introduced a fundamental taint into human nature, malice against his Maker and envy of his rival, man, compelled Satan to aggravate mankind’s compromised moral condition at every opportunity. Encouraging neglect or defiance of God’s expressed commands seems to have been the primary strategy for his initial and continued corruption of the first generations of mankind. Satan had, for example, tempted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge. By appealing to her desire for divine wisdom, not to her physical vanity or appetite for power, Defoe explained, the Devil had ‘set her Head a maddening after Deism’, a decidedly polemical way to describe original sin. Defoe’s chronology included other key events in the corruption of the earliest generations of man. Satan goaded Cain into jealous fratricide, appealing to his pretensions of ‘divine Right’ entitlement to God’s favour as the eldest Son of Adam, an argument which resonated with attacks Defoe made against divine-right monarchy and the arrogance of eldest sons in other works. He tempted Seth’s godly sons to intermarry with the ‘Daughters of Men … the curs’d Race of Cain’ and prompted Canaan, the son of Ham, to make sport of Noah’s drunken nakedness.19 Defoe, like many orthodox thinkers, combined this kind of doctrinal demonology with secondary causes to explain man’s continuing depravity. The most popular explanatory schemes included a general physical decay of the universe and the negative effects of human and environmental diversity on religion as the race of man intermarried, multiplied, and moved around the globe.20 As discussed in previous chapters, Defoe rejected notions of universal degeneration, believing instead that the world’s broken surface and regional diversity were part of God’s providential design to encourage human correspondence, discovery, and improvement. He also rejected the idea of travel and human dispersion as corruptive forces for the same reason. After the Fall and the Deluge, the destruction of Babel was the next




biblical episode to generate historical conjecture in the early-modern period, an event crucial to Defoe’s increasingly sophisticated defence of commerce as a providential force in human history. For many writers Babel represented yet another fall from grace for mankind. Some speculated that the dispersal of humanity from the plains of Shinar led people to lose touch with the sources of divine knowledge thus creating the conditions for religious pluralism and idolatry. Still others theorized that this dispersion led not just to religious degeneration but to cultural and even physical degradation as a once-settled population scattered around the globe. Some segments, it was true, soon settled down into the promising patterns of agriculture and urbanization but other peoples wandered further afield, regressing into nomadism and savagery, a decidedly backward step in the stadial schemes of enlightened historiography. In contrast, a minority of writers, Defoe among them, took a more positive view of human diffusion in the biblical world. The tower of Babel, Defoe posited, was not a literal staircase to heaven but an allegorical account of the timidity and folly of Noah’s descendants. Under Satan’s influence, they had ignored ‘God’s command’ to ‘replenish the Earth … spread their Habitations over it, and People the whole Globe’, choosing instead to concentrate all human and material resources into the building of one stupendous city.21 As Defoe explained the previous year in his General History of Discoveries and Improvements, such a plan was not ‘practicable’; Providence had foreseen the need for global expansion, trade, and discovery if the human race was to sustain itself.22 By confusing their speech, God forced the separation of people into families, tribes, and nations, a train of events which Defoe described as ‘the first Disappointment that I find the Devil met with, in all his Attempts and Practices upon Mankind’. God had complicated Satan’s task by forcing him, as well as man, out of the cosily circumscribed arena in which they had previously operated and into ‘a thousand new scenes of Action’.23 The dispersion of humanity not only ensured its material well-being, it held out hope for greater success in its struggle against the Devil as well. The destruction of Babel soon remedied peoples’ initial refusal to repopulate the earth but ensuing developments ‘presented Satan with an Opportunity to break in upon their Morals at another Door (viz.) their Pride’. The confusion of tongues encouraged the formation of tribes or language groups and their development into flourishing nations. However, population pressure soon stimulated competition for land which the Devil exacerbated by encouraging pride within these groups and envy between them. Even though there was still plenty of ‘Elbow-room’ in the world, as Defoe termed it, ‘Nations and Tribes began to jostle with one another … and so began Oppression, Invasion, War, Battle and Blood, Satan all the while beating the Drums, and his Attendants clapping their Hand[s], as Men do when they set Dogs upon one another’. Thenceforward, Defoe



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explained, goading nations into war ‘would take up a great Part of the Devil’s History’, a strategy he employed not only by provoking the collective pride of peoples but also by arousing the individual ambitions of their political leaders. From Nimrod, grandson of the cursed Ham, to Louis XIV ‘and many a mighty Monarch between’, Satan ‘has plaid upon the Frailty of Princes’ by inflaming their ‘dreams of Empire’ and ‘universal Monarchy’. If conquest and tyranny were diabolical in origin, then so too were those military and aristocratic codes of honour which dismissed prudence on the battlefield as ‘Cowardice’ and demanded satisfaction of one’s honour via the duel. Equating ‘imaginary Things call’d Bravery and Gallantry’ with ‘Virtue and Honour’ was all part of ‘the Devil’s new Management’. In order to justify murder and conquest, Satan had ‘wheedled Mankind into strange unnatural Notions of Things’ according to ‘Rules which God never appointed’ and which Nature and Reason could not sanction.24 Taken by itself, it could be said that this account of the origins of conquest and empire in the ancient Near East was more informed by Defoe’s prejudices against absolute monarchy and the persistence of feudal assumptions than by any careful consideration of biblical chronology. The analysis presented in these works on the spiritual world, however, must also be read in the context of Defoe’s other historical narratives. Only six months before, in his General History of Discoveries and Improvements, Defoe had championed the Phoenicians as the maritime and commercial exception which proved the rule, attested by Scripture, that the history of the ancient Near East had been largely dominated by a succession of conquests and land-based empires – Babylonian, Assyrian, Macedonian, and finally Roman. In three decades of almost daily engagement with public opinion about matters foreign and domestic, Defoe had developed a view of history in which God’s providential design favoured commerce and the growth of knowledge as the route to human fulfilment on earth. War and conquest were negations of these human potentialities, a corollary most fully explained in his General History of 1725, and now rearticulated in 1726 as a chief component of Satan’s design to undo mankind. After sabotaging relations between men by encouraging warfare and conquest, Satan next sought to destroy relations between men and their Maker by leading them into idolatry. Defoe made a point of denying Deistic arguments that idolatry was either a primitive manifestation of natural religion or some corrupted version of it at ‘one remove’ from the original. His own explanation relied on a patristic theory of the demonic origins of idolatry but he was willing to augment this with the kind of euhemeristic arguments being developed by both orthodox and heterodox thinkers of the period. Echoing the thesis he initially set out in Jure Divino, Defoe argued that idolatry first appeared when men sought to sanctify their own political power. Satan’s first ‘Hero’, Nimrod, feared as the mighty hunter of men in life, idolized as the mighty Belus or Baal in death, became the founding




father of both empire and euhemerism in the ancient world. Satan, Defoe reiterated, ‘proceeded politically and by Degrees’, encouraging men first to deify and worship other dead heroes and kings, then to venerate ‘Statues and Bustoes representing their Persons’, and eventually ‘to adore every Block of their own hewing, and to wor[ship] Stocks, Stones, Monsters, Hobgoblins, and every sordid frightful Thing, and at last the Devil himself’. Political ambition and the Devil’s cunning had led men down the pernicious path towards idolatry but cultural conditions also contributed to this process. The lack of written records, Defoe conjectured, facilitated the transformation of fact into fable and fabrications into sacred objects. ‘Oral tradition, and the Tongues and Memories of fallible Men’ turned past actions into deeds of ‘Miracle and Wonder’ and dead kings who performed them into demigods. Satan provided additional motivation by insinuating that the true God was such a ‘dreadful, unapproachable Being’ that worship of him was impossible without ‘the Interposition of some Medium which might receive their Adorations in his Name’.25 The notion of a purely vengeful God, this passage suggested, was a diabolical invention, not an ecclesiastical one as heterodox thinkers often charged.26 By leading men away from peaceful correspondence into war and from worship of the one true God into a panoply of idolatrous practices, the Devil succeeded in further debauching mankind. So complete was Satan’s victory that God was obliged to undertake a ‘new kind of Creation … and call a select Number out from among the rest, who he himself undertook should own his Godhead or supreme Authority, and worship him as he requir’d’.27 As God’s chosen people, the Jews proved to be Satan’s toughest challenge in the ancient world but they too succumbed to sin and the demonic pressures of war and idolatry. As summarized by Defoe, their story simply confirmed what Deistic writers sought to deny, namely the continuing intervention in human history by both a destructive Devil and a righteous and omnipotent God. Many heterodox thinkers dismissed demonic explanations for idolatry and emphasized priestly rather than royal ambition as the key factor in its rise. Deists like Toland and Collins argued that natural religion had been co-opted and corrupted by the priestly castes of antiquity who invented a host of superstitious practices and beliefs, including the notion of original sin, as a means of social control.28 Defoe partially accepted a historical scenario in which priestcraft came to flourish but denied the premise that a natural theology, accessible to all human beings through reason alone, had been corrupted. Religious truth, he repeatedly asserted, could only be ascertained through the gift of divine revelation. As we shall see, Defoe sought to condemn rational religion as a new cult of reason and its proponents as modern magicians. He therefore sought to explain the rise of priestcraft as the consequence of man’s natural but misdirected quest for knowledge and desire to maintain social status. Then, as now, he argued, this combination could lead people in foolhardy, even dangerous, directions.



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Although ancient men and women had lost much of Adam’s understanding of the world, they did possess ‘a vehement and inflam’d Desire after Knowledge, planted in their Minds by Nature it self’, a sense ‘of a vast Treasure hidden in Nature apt for Discovery’, and a ‘vast capacious Understanding fitted for that Search’. In the ancient world, he explained, the word ‘magician’ originally referred to scholars and men of science, learned figures either schooled in the knowledge of previous authorities or men who ‘studied Nature … made Observations … and were Masters of perhaps a little experimental Philosophy’. Esteemed in an ignorant age for their extraordinary wisdom, they were soon revered by the common people and drew the praise and patronage of princes and kings. Though government at this time was patriarchal, some of these wise men, like Cadmus and Prometheus, became political leaders in their own right. As the world grew more knowledgeable, however, these learned men had to preserve their superiority and status by learning more, by ‘searching farther and farther into the Arcana of Nature’. Three strategies presented themselves. They could delve into the study of astronomy and mathematics, as the magi who followed the Star of Bethlehem had done. They could pursue ‘experimental Philosophy’ and become, among other things, physicians and naturalists. They could also pursue ‘the Study of Reason (viz.) Natural Homage, and the Worship of the Gods’. The first two options enabled these magicians to preserve their dignity and usefulness. The third way, however, was the door to ‘all the wicked things, which have since … given a black Character to the very Name of a Magician; for under the shelter of Religion, the worst and most Diabolical things were practis’d’.29 Defoe’s Baconian sensibilities here are unmistakable. God had intended mankind to use reason to improve human existence through discovery and improvement of the natural world but religion was a matter of faith and revelation.30 Defoe wished to make it clear that not all wise men in the ancient world were magicians and that the transformation of some of them into diabolical sorcerers was a ‘long Progression of Studies’. The key phase in this transition, he believed, took place in Egypt, regarded as an especially superstitious and idolatrous place, and happened sometime between the eras of Joseph and Moses.31 An Egyptian mix of philosophy, idolatry, and priestcraft then spread throughout the Near East and Mediterranean world. While some pagan priests willingly deceived the vulgar in order to preserve their own power and status, many may have come to believe they possessed special access to the gods. In this belief, however, they themselves had been deceived by the Devil, who was more than happy to use them as agents of idolatry. Satan strove to keep as much of the ancient world as possible mired in various forms of paganism. Even the Jews, and the Christians after them, who found special favour with God, were not inoculated from the attractions of idolatry and spectacle, as the history of Israel and Roman Catholicism were to prove.




Defoe admitted that convincing his readers to associate pagan idolatry with the Devil was a difficult task while other writers were busy extolling paganism, in whole or in parts, for its principles of justice, morality, dedication to the public good, and homage to a ‘Divine Being’ or ‘first moving Cause of Life’.32 A System of Magick contains a lengthy attack on Numa Pompilius, whom he identified as a favourite of these writers, and on Roman paganism, a move which alerts us to an important but hitherto unappreciated context for understanding Defoe’s text. In the early months of 1726, The Works of Walter Moyle were posthumously published. This twovolume edition included Moyle’s celebrated Essay upon the Constitution of the Roman Government, a tract widely circulated in manuscript in the wake of the standing army controversy of 1697–8. Moyle had been an important participant in that debate, a learned polemicist and man of letters and a companion of John Trenchard and John Toland, two of Defoe’s most important adversaries in print. Moyle’s Essay, a key text in the history of English republican thought, has justly attracted the attention of historians of political thought for its Harringtonianism and analysis of Rome’s civil constitution.33 What most attracted Defoe’s attention, however, was Moyle’s analysis of Rome’s ecclesiastical constitution. Moyle praised Numa, successor to Romulus, for perfecting a system of worship based upon ‘the Common Principles of Religion all Mankind agree in’. Numa did not ‘enjoin the belief of Contradictions and Impossibilities’ or ‘clog … it with Creeds and Catechisms, and endless Niceties about the Essence, Properties, and Attributes of God’. Nor did he ‘require the belief of many Articles of Faith, which create Schisms and Heresies’. He instituted specific forms of worship but tolerated dissent from them and ‘did not extend to regulate the Opinions or Devotions of private Men’. He promoted belief in the ‘Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul’, not because it was an accepted truth but because it was on par with other ‘Fables’ which were ‘of great use and service to the state’. In compliance with vulgar opinion of the day, Moyle asserted that Roman elites paid lip service to ‘the Godhead in the plural number’ while privately and solemnly believing in ‘the Unity of the Godhead’ themselves. He added that although Roman priests may have originally had considerable power, they eventually came under full control of the state, which greatly contributed to republican liberty.34 Moyle’s reverence for the lawgiver Numa was, in part, an attack on Trinitarian Christianity and a manifesto for natural theology framed within a civil religion, and Defoe certainly recognized it as such. He had been condemning commonwealthmen for their heterodoxy for decades: Trenchard in the 1690s, Toland in the 1700s and 1710s, and now Moyle in the 1720s. Reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe’s impassioned destruction of the giant wooden idol in the Farther Adventures, Defoe set upon Moyle’s praise of Roman paganism with blistering prose.35 For all his ‘Sincerity



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and Piety’ Numa’s religion amounted to little more than a ‘confus’d Mass of idolatrous Ceremonies’ and ‘a Scheme of pompous Paganism’. He may have acknowledged a ‘supreme Power, a God of all the Earth, a great first Cause of Life’, but he filled his city ‘with Temples and Altars, to innumerable and unknown Deities’, established inhumane games and gladiatorial sport ‘in Honour of the[se] Gods’, deified the stars, and created serried ranks of priests to offer sacrifices to ‘Stocks and Stones, the Work of their own Fingers, and the Idols of their own Brain[s]’. The Romans, Defoe continued, ‘were the most civiliz’d Heathens that the World ever saw; their Government had in it all the Appearance of Justice and Moderation’ and their people honoured virtue, love of country, courage, ‘Temperance, Eloquence, Learning and Philosophy’. And yet their augurs, soothsayers, and priests were nothing more than ‘Magicians’ and ‘Dealers with the Devil … in the worst Sense’. Their games, sacrifices, and rituals designed ‘for appeasing the angry Gods, were the most horrid and barbarous Pieces of Ignorance, or hellish Cruelty and Brutality, that could be imagin’d’, entirely ‘unworthy of God’ and ‘inconsistent with his Nature’. The Romans may have ‘erected Temples to Justice, to Honour, to Virtue, and to Peace’ but they also ‘studied all possible ways, by War, and Blood, to amass Treasures, and enlarge their Empire, ’till, as the Roman Histories confess, they left no Nation unsubdued, except such as they found it not in their Power, or worth their while to Conquer’. It was not only the rabble of Rome who had been deluded by this system but its ‘Philosophers … Poets [and] Men of the most exquisite Parts, and the most polite Knowledge’. Barbarism on this scale, with its veneer of civility and religiosity, Defoe concluded, had to have been aided by ‘the Magick and Artifice of the Devil and his Instruments’.36 Other authors had praised other heathen lawgivers – Solon, Lycurgus, Confucius – for their morality, justice, and ‘natural Principles of Religion’. Like Numa, whatever their wisdom and piety, Defoe argued, these examples were insufficient proof that true religion could be ascertained without the gift of divine revelation: God for wise Ends did not think fit to accept these little Emanations of Natural Light, or to reveal himself to the Persons; however sincere they may be said to be in the pursuit of Divine Light … those natural Reasonings were not sufficient to inform the Mind of Man concerning God; But … for want of farther Illuminations, the Devil was suffer’d to chop in, and confound all their brightest Ideas of Worship, with a horrid Rhapsody of complicated Idolatry. The fact that the wisest and most virtuous men in human history were incapable of perceiving God should have been sufficient to




crush the notions which our more Polite Gentlemen now advance … that the humane Judgment is in its self infallible, and therefore in some manner equal to the divine Being … [and] which, if rightly cultivated and improv’d … guides the Soul to understand things in a superior way; This they say is Magick … and this, say they, duly follow’d, would from the Beginning have made Men be, as the Serpent told them they should be, viz. like Gods, knowing Good and Evil.37 Unfortunately, Defoe believed, the polite world’s worship of reason, ‘like our late South-Sea Stock’, had become a ‘general Infatuation’ which defied nature and common sense, and threatened the moral order of society. Reason, like credit, was a marvellous faculty but it had to be properly grounded and managed for the individual and society alike to reap its benefits.38 War, conquest, and idolatry, Defoe maintained, had been Satan’s primary means for rendering men and women of the ancient world unfit for heaven. That world, and Satan’s overwhelming success within it, changed dramatically when God made his most important intervention in human history in the person of the Son.

iii. Satan and magic in the modern world: from Christ to the Beau Monde If the Satan of the ancient world was enraged by the prospect of human beings taking his place in heaven and instituted warfare and idolatry to stop it, Satan in modern times became apoplectic upon ‘seeing Man … placed in a State of Recovery’ by Christ’s perfect sacrifice, a promise of Redemption not offered to the Devil and ultimately beyond his power to prevent. In answer to the question as to why Satan would bother to corrupt mankind in the face of ultimate defeat, Defoe had simultaneously to assert that although the Devil had always understood Christ to be the Son of God (pace Milton and other Arians), he was ignorant of the future and did not fully understand ‘the Mystery of the Incarnation’. By encouraging Judas to betray Jesus, for example, the Devil did not realize that through his death, Christ would rescue the repentant and fulfil all scriptural prophecy.39 Satan thus remained determined to encourage his rival man to sin rather than repent, fomenting war and idolatry where possible while developing new strategies when these older methods proved less effective in a Christianizing world. One of these new strategies, religious persecution, quickly proved to be ineffective. Despite the Devil’s arming the whole Roman Empire against the Christians, their numbers continued to increase. The Church’s very success, however, eventually provided Satan with new opportunities to take advantage of man’s corrupt nature as the institution’s growing wealth and power encouraged greed and ambition among its churchmen. Not surpris-



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ingly, Defoe characterized the growth of the papacy’s spiritual and temporal powers as Satan’s own ‘Restoration’, a new ‘Epocha’, and his most important victory over mankind since the Fall. It was largely through the papacy that the Devil continued to employ his favourite methods of idolatry and warfare in Europe. By introducing ‘so many Gewgaws’ and ‘devilish Principles’ into the Christian faith, the Catholic clergy turned Christian worship into idolatry.40 By ‘empower[ing] every Priest to make a God for ’em with a half Ounce of Meal’ and then turning the eating of this god into ‘Part of their most solemn Idolatry’, popery had surpassed ‘all the Magick of Paganism, and all the Conjurations of Hell’ which preceded it.41 Through his ‘alliances with Rome’ Satan had also been able to embroil European nations in a ‘long list of massacres, wars, and expeditions in behalf of religion’. From the first Crusades in the Holy Land to the last of the Wars of Religion in Europe the papacy had spent sickening sums of blood and treasure, to Satan’s rather than God’s great satisfaction.42 While the papacy and its allies had frequently resorted to war in order to further their aims in the past, Defoe commented that commercial competition and cultural developments had made a permanent, unified Catholic front against Protestantism impossible. Defoe now offered some ‘comfort [to] those faint-hearted Christians among us who cry out the Danger of a religious War in Europe’. The immediate context for these cries had been the formation of a diplomatic and commercial alliance between Austria and Spain the previous year. What some took as evidence of a united Catholic conspiracy designed to aid the Jacobites, recapture Gibraltar, and undermine British trade in the Far East, Defoe was inclined to dismiss as Hapsburg bluff.43 The inability of Spain, Austria, or France to effect any permanent offensive alliance, he argued, was an unintended consequence of the Devil’s influence over Europe during the middle ages. While Satan had fostered ecclesiastical unity under the Whore of Babylon, he had simultaneously encouraged the personal jealousies and ambitions of feudal lords. Over time, regional differences in climate, commerce, and manners calcified the fluid divisions of feudal warfare into permanent national boundaries. Discord between the Christian princes of Europe had served the Devil well when it prevented unified action against ‘the growing power of the Turk’ in the fifteenth century but spectacularly backfired against him by the sixteenth when it prevented sustained and unified action against the Reformation. Britain need not fear a coordinated Catholic military offensive: Jarring Humours may be reconcil’d, but jarring Interests never can: They may unite so as to make a Peace, tho’ that can hardly be long, but never so as to make Conquests together; they are too much afraid of one another, for one to bear, that any Addition of Strength should come to the other.44




Spain and Austria might well take measures to improve their commerce but conquest was a different story. These comments were a remarkable foretaste of what John Pocock has called ‘the Enlightened narrative’ which posited that Europe was emerging from an era of confessional strife into a new age in which concerns about commerce and the balance of power dominated relations between nation-states.45 Instead of pursuing this line of argument further, however, Defoe demurred. After the lines quoted above, he added, ‘But this is a Digression. We shall find the Devil mistaken and disappointed too on several other Occasions, as we go along’ and he returned to discuss Satan’s latest methods for influencing actors ‘on that Stage of Life we call the State’.46 Regardless of Defoe’s own increasing consciousness that the state itself was operating within a novus ordo seclorum, his campaign against heterodoxy was premised upon an even grander narrative, the problem of sin and redemption within that new world order. If persecution and religious warfare had been less efficacious in the Christian era than the Devil had hoped, Defoe suggested that ‘Liberty in Religion’ and ‘the sowing [of] Error and Variety of Opinion’ had been the Devil’s best strategy for corrupting men and women in modern times. Satan first put ‘this new foot of Politicks’ forward in the fourth century by encouraging Roman civil authorities to support the heresiarch Arius against Athanasius, orthodox Bishop of Alexandria. History provided many examples of the Devil’s success in promoting heresy and of the danger that religious liberty posed to the true faith, not least to Defoe’s own co-religionists whom he admitted were evidently weaken’d by the late Toleration: Whether the Devil had any hand in baiting his Hook with an A[ct] of Parliament or no, History is silent, but ’tis too evident he has catch’d the Fish by it; and if the honest Church of England does not in Pity and Christian Charity to the Dissenters, straighten her Hand a little, I cannot but fear the Devil will gain his Point, and the Dissenter will be undone by it.47 As explained in Chapter 2, although Defoe’s principled stance against the practice of occasional conformity complicated his relationship with the Dissenting community he had also been an even more vociferous critic of Anglican animosity towards his co-religionists. It may therefore seem odd to find him calling for more Church stricture but such was the despondency of Old Dissent by the mid-1720s. As a young man during the reign of James II, Defoe had scorned to accept any liberty of conscience he believed was dependent upon the dispensing power of an arbitrary and papist prince. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution, he had happily embraced the limited toleration guaranteed by Parliament and held out hope for future comprehension within the national Church or at least for peaceful coexistence alongside it. That optimism was tempered by renewed Church militancy



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under Queen Anne and all but extinguished by Presbyterian divisiveness at Salters’ Hall in 1719. English Presbyterianism was a dying sect and its fate illustrated Defoe’s own belief about man’s struggle against Satan: the real danger came from the ‘Treachery of the Garrison within’.48 That danger was manifest not just within Defoe’s own splintering Dissenting community but in the heart of the religious, social, and political establishment of England. Defoe still insisted that the Devil and his agents communicated with mankind using the ‘soft still Methods’ of persuasion, suggestion, and the gratification of corrupt desires but he asserted that the nature of human desires had changed: as Men in general seem to have alter’d their Manner, and … move in a higher and more exalted Sphere, especially as to Vice and Virtue; so the Devil may have been obliged to change his Measures … As the taste of Vice and Virtue alters; the Devil is forc’d to bait his Hook with new Compositions; the very Thing call’d Temptation is alter’d in its Nature. As ‘the World is improv’d every Day’ and with the ‘encrease of Knowledge and Discovery’, men and women were less motivated by fear than by ‘Wit, Beauty, and gay Things’. They had become ‘too much Devils themselves’ to be afraid of Satan, who happily accepted his rivals’ growing capacity to do his work for him.49 Treating God with ‘Indolence and Negligence’ and the Devil with ‘Complaisance’, they believed themselves ‘wise Men’ but were, in fact, ‘Fools’. The nation’s elite, Defoe argued, were not only doing the Devil’s work for him but surpassing him in their wickedness by denying either some aspect of God’s divinity or his existence altogether. The Devil now seemed to have ‘no Business but to sit still and look on’ while men became ‘Agents in their own Destruction’.50 The ‘Beau mond[e]’, whom Defoe frequently castigated for their failure properly to educate themselves or their children, nevertheless seemed to be idolizing the powers of human reason, embracing it not simply as a spark of the divine within man but as a faculty capable of determining what constituted the divine itself. Suddenly men who had previously eschewed learning of any sort were now eager to dip into Polemicks, study Michael Servetus, Socinus, and the most learned of their Disciples; they shall reason against all Religion, as strongly as a Philosopher, blaspheme with such a Keenness of Wit, and Satyrise God and Eternity, with such a Brightness of Fancy, as if the Soul of a Rochester or Hobbs was transmigrated into them; in a little length of Time more they banter Heaven, burlesque the Trinity, and jest with every sacred thing.




It was bad enough, Defoe thought, that so many ‘Men of Quality … whose upper Rooms are not extraordinarily well furnished in other Cases’, believed their own minds superior to revealed truth and religious authority but these men had become ‘so very witty in their Wickedness’ as to ‘gather Admirers by hundreds and thousands’.51 Many gentlemen, he charged, espoused heterodoxy because it provided morally easier alternatives to a theology which promised eternal punishment for sin. He also realized, however, that more pernicious than the self-serving rationalizations of even a large number of libertines was the promulgation of ‘damnable Doctrines in Religion … by Men of apparent Sanctity’ and reputation. Dissenting or Anglican, seemingly reputable men were spreading disreputable ideas, harbouring ‘Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost … and denying the Godhead of him who is God blessed for ever’.52 Via emulation or indoctrination, English men and women were following the heterodox examples and lessons set by their lay and clerical superiors. Defoe was aware of the more clandestine channels in which heterodoxy spread – infamous aristocratic drinking clubs and secret societies in which gentlemen ‘go a mobbing among those meanest of mad things called freemasons’.53 More obvious to him, of course, were the public sites in which ideas were exchanged and promoted. The most important of these was the pulpit, as the Bangorian and Salters’ Hall controversies had made clear.54 If one were to punish those who were now ‘dividing the Trinity, and unsanctifying the Holy Ghost’, Defoe exclaimed, what ‘Church, Chappel, Meetinghouse or Congregation’ existed which ‘would not be divided against it self’? What ‘Inns of Court, Palace, College, or University’ would not be decimated?55 Realizing the less sanguine aspects of doux commerce, however, Defoe paid even greater attention to new commercial and sociable venues of communication. In the parlance of modern scholarship, one might say that Defoe was essentially criticizing the elites for creating an amoral and heterodox public sphere. This was not the public sphere of Habermasian rational debate,56 however, but one in which the pretence of reason was worshipped and glorified. He condemned a growing culture in which ‘Fops are the Men of Weight’, the Tatler and ‘the eternal Clang of Tea-Table Tattle’ had become the arbiters of morality and manners, and booksellers catered to customers who bought the most and read the least, those ‘Sir Timothy Title-Page[s]’ who knew ‘the first Leaf of every thing’ thereby covering their ‘Ignorance of the Inside of any thing’.57 It was a world in which women participated ‘infinitely more so than was possible in former Ages’ but they did so largely through ‘three newinvented Colleges’ of which Defoe had frequently expressed his disapproval. At the ‘Tea-Table, the Assembly, and the Masquerade’, ladies learned, respectively, to be ‘Light-headed … Light-hearted, and … Lightheel’d’.58 There was ‘Money to be got’ by entrepreneurial freethinkers like William Whiston who delivered lectures ‘for the Instruction of young



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Magicians’ in various London coffee-houses after his ejection from Cambridge for Arianism.59 Defoe identified the extreme rationalism of heterodoxy as a new form of magic and the historical analysis he presented in his works of 1726–7 was shaped to make this point. The heterodox fops and wits of his own day had their antecedents in the astrologers and magicians of antiquity whom the Devil had invited ‘to search after more Knowledge than Nature could instruct them in’.60 A dominant message of these works was that heterodoxy had entered a new phase which saw no limits to the powers of the human mind and refused to accept ‘any such thing as an Incomprehensible’. The attitude of ‘some of the politest Men in this Age’ now seemed to be that all things should be ‘measured … as it were by scale and compass’ and that unless they could be ‘see[n] with their Eyes, and Fe[lt] with their Hands’, all doctrinal mysteries should be repudiated. Defoe acknowledged that there were different levels of disbelief. Arians and Socinians, by denying the coeval and co-equal nature of the Son with the Father, reduced the status of ‘their Saviour’ to one ‘below the Devil’.61 Sceptics accepted the notion of God but divested him of those attributes which made him the object of adoration, homage, and affection. Deists reduced God ‘to a Level with our Reasoning … robbing him of the Power of Rewards and Punishments, and making him so good, so kind and gracious, that they do not leave him room to be Just’. Atheists surpassed all forms of Christian heterodoxy and pagan heathenism too for ‘instead of worshipping many Gods, [they] save themselves the trouble of Idolatry, and worship no God at all’.62 Such a taxonomy was not unusual but Defoe extended his argument to consider recent defences of atheism and these variants of heterodoxy not merely as greater or lesser examples of unbelief but as symptomatic of a new kind of enthusiasm. While his readers might believe that ‘all Enthusiasms, Heresies, and mysterious things in Religion’ were ‘in the same Class’, Defoe would demonstrate that this ‘kind of thinking rightly call’d Free’ did not originate in the depths of hell but in ‘the Height[s] of human Imagination and Invention’. Atheists will tell you, Defoe claimed, that through their own inquiries and meditations they come out transform’d into a new kind of Species, they tell you that they are arriv’d to a compleat Knowledge of the Eternal Mysteries; that God is nothing but the Sum of human Desires, the Ecstacy of an exalted Spirit, carry’d up into the Regions of eternal Calm and Quiet, where the Soul is in Raptures of Joy and Love. This they resolve by the light of the refin’d sublime Judgment to be the Perfection of Happiness, and that is God … They tell you farther, to descend to the Personality of a God, is talking wildly and immethodically, and what is inconsistent with Nature; that




God is a Quality, rather than a Being, that cannot be describ’d by Words, any more than it can be limited by Space; that the supreme Essence is an inconceivable Spirit of Light and Glory, and the Soul receives an assimulating Light and Knowledge, even by the Contemplation of it, by the Rays of a communicable Effulgence; so that having been once illuminated, it continues enjoying a full Lustre of eminent Glory for ever after. This unintelligible Stuff is all Magick to me, and I believe we may truly say it is so to us all … and if this be the Discovery that Magick makes to the Mind, the Magicians will have small cause to boast of their Improvement, I presume it shall leave the Mind darker than it finds it.63 This new kind of magic would ‘have all Heaven resolv’d into Nature, all Religion into Reason, and all God into Philosophy’. It went ‘infinitely beyond all the Enthusiasm and religious Frenzy’ the world had previously known. Enraptured by the possibilities of its own powers, the mind was free to create ‘a new Scheme of Nature, new Notions of Being, of Life, of Motion, of past, present, and future’.64 The arrogance of these new magicians extended beyond their selfproclaimed sophistication regarding theology. Defoe resented their claims to moral superiority. They ‘talk in a kind of Cant … representing themselves as a kind of angelick People’ who see themselves ‘act[ing] in a higher Sphere … endow’d with superior Light’ and ‘liv[ing] beyond the ordinary Rate of their Fellow-Creatures’. We shall see, he chided, if these are ‘Illuminations from Heaven, or Delusions of Hell’. One would expect such superior beings to exert themselves in doing good, charity, beneficence, and reform but on the contrary, freedom of thought, more often then not, engendered freedom from moral restraint. Those most demanding of rational proof in matters of faith were more than willing to make do with the weakest of arguments to justify their own corrupt inclinations.65 It was ‘not many Years ago’, Defoe claimed, that people talked of being inspired by ‘good Spirits, if such there are, [which] dictated things of Value to the Minds of Men’, a time when ‘they convers’d in the very Confines of the mysterious World’. By this, he wished to make clear, he did not mean the kind of enthusiasm associated with ‘Raptures and Agitations’ but the text suggests he had trouble articulating exactly what he did mean. Nowadays, he remarked, Every man seems to me to have his Daemon of a particular kind, proper and separate to himself, by which he either governs himself, or is govern’d, I know not well which to call it; and so he walks on in his own way, follows no body, and leads no body; but is a Principle, a Doctrine, a Governor, nay, a God to himself.66



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Was Defoe struggling to identify both a sense of disenchantment and one of alienation? These are anachronistic words and yet they seem to fit both Defoe’s mood and his analysis of what was happening in his society and therefore deserve exploring. If by disenchantment one means a world in which people no longer believe in supernatural or spiritual interference, Defoe had to walk a fine line. He wanted people to eschew superstition and to be sceptical about individuals who claimed to have special access to supernatural truth or powers, whether diabolical or heavenly. At the same time, he wished to affirm that both God and Satan communicated to human beings, through invisible spiritual means, messages which men and women often experienced as inklings, intuitions, and dreams. This kind of spiritual intervention in the world had been denounced by Deists like Anthony Collins.67 Defoe had visited this issue before. Crusoe learned to heed the voice of Providence and the reader presumes his ultimate salvation; Roxana succumbed to the Devil’s soft suasions and she and we expect her damnation.68 In the Serious Reflections, Defoe attempted to explain the workings of the spiritual realm more fully in Crusoe’s ‘Visions of the Angelic World’. For Defoe the invisible world of spiritual communication was proof of the ‘great superintendency of divine Providence in the minutest affairs of this world’.69 The unhappy image, cited above, of the man ‘separate to himself’ who ‘follows no body, and leads no body’ certainly suggests a process of alienation, if by that term we mean a dissociation from aspects of one’s community, identity, or personality. In former times, Defoe pointed out, heretics at least attracted communities of followers and were able to judge the success of their messages by the quantity and quality of their disciples. Even the Jews asked if any of their elders or rulers believed Jesus. ‘But now’, he exclaimed, God save us! so many Men, so many Maggots … every Man broaches his own Opinions, preaches them to himself, is his own Convert; his Soul is the Disciple of his Fancy, and his Senses the Pulpit of his Humour; as for other People, as he teaches no body, so he scorns to be taught by any body, and bids God da … him, if he had not rather go to the Devil, than not go to Heaven his own way. Thus we live in a general Disguise, and like the Masquerades, every Man dresses himself up in a particular Habit, not two appear a-like in the whole Place; … as the Habits are not alike, so they are always particularly remarkable for being directly opposite to the Person they cover; the Phlegmatic dresses à la Sanguine, the Sober mimicks the Drunkard, the Chaste chuses to dress à la Courtisane, the Atheist puts on the Religieuse, the Christian has the Vest and the Turban, and the Quaker a Habit from the Theatre.70




Subject only to the authority of his own fancy in matters of religion, heterodox man absolved himself of the responsibilities to refine his opinions in light of those held by others or to guide others in the shaping of theirs. There was no need to moderate one’s religious views in light of those of the community or test the strength of them through exchange and competition for disciples if every individual opinion was equally valid. For Defoe, community and civility coalesced around centres of common belief, not around disparate strands of doubt. His concerns contradicted the hopes of a growing number of thinkers who, in the wake of two centuries of religious strife, had begun to argue that rational scepticism, not confessional conviction, was more likely to produce peace and prosperity at home and abroad.71 To Defoe, this stance was loaded with irony rather than irenicism. Among his own co-religionists, the claims of rational theology produced a bitter public dispute which permanently weakened the institution of English Presbyterianism.72 In society at large, especially among the ‘polite’, it had led to a variety of heterodoxies which challenged the efficacy and/or existence of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and therefore, he believed, threatened the moral order. He found it ironical that members of the gentry, whose disdain for learning and books he had so often criticized, had developed a taste for abstruse theological debate and the worship of reason. By emphasizing this ‘polite’ enthusiasm for rational religion, Defoe was criticizing the intellectual pretensions and moral turpitude of a certain segment of society, not the ethos of politeness itself. As previous chapters have shown, Defoe believed in the reformation of manners and the civilizing process which the exchange of goods and opinions promoted. There were some opinions unworthy of exchange, namely those that questioned the Godhead, but otherwise commerce was a central component of God’s providential plan. That said, the freethinker who ‘bids God da[mn]’ to everyman did not bode well for a society hoping to cement its communal bonds through the virtues of sociability entertained in Addison’s Spectator or those institutionalized through a civil religion as envisioned by republican thinkers like Moyle and Toland.73 If freethinking liberated one from any communal imperative to refine and reform one’s religious views, the excerpt quoted above also suggests estrangement from one’s self as well as one’s society. In that passage Defoe proceeded without explanation from the example of freethinking theological independence to the disintegration of social identities. Modern scholarship has regarded these as separate and unrelated phenomena, but for Defoe they were intrinsically linked. If religion was reduced to private opinion, outward expression of identity became a matter of choice, of theatre, and of deceit. Toland’s Islamic studies gave rise to a Christian in a turban; the conversion that summer of the atheist rake, the Duke of Wharton, to Roman Catholicism was one more opportunistic twist in a scandalous career; Quakers were suspect, not for their inner light, but for



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their outward appearance.74 The issue for Defoe was not one of autonomous ‘self-fashioning’ but rather the logical consequence of a theological position in which the human mind came to worship itself.

In September 1727, Defoe published A New Family Instructor, another volley in his campaign against heterodoxy and his last and most complete statement on the righteousness of the Protestant religion and the doctrine of the Trinity. In returning to the didactic genre of guide literature, Defoe was revisiting a formula which had brought him success in the past, one which also enabled him to reaffirm some of his most fundamental beliefs and to offer families some practical advice on the best methods for combating ‘the Decay of Christian Knowledge’ and the ‘fashionable Madness’ of doubt.76 Divided into two main parts and ending with a blank verse poem entitled, ‘Trinity: or the Divinity of the Son’, the text dispensed its advice through a series of dialogues between a devout father, his children, and the occasional family visitor or friend. The first part addressed the problem of priestcraft as the family coped with the eldest son’s conversion to popery and his attempts to convert his adolescent siblings. Thanks to their father’s religious instruction, the children resisted their brother’s papist arguments and eventually he too returned to the Protestant fold. The second part addressed the problems of enthusiasm and atheism as the father provided his children with arguments proving the divine authority of scripture, the identity of Jesus as the Messiah, and the coeval and co-equal nature of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Besieged by fashionable heterodoxy whenever they socialized – ‘we meet with it in all our Conversation’ – the children expressed a keen intellectual interest in and gratitude for their father’s pedagogy. Acknowledging that his earlier Family Instructors had focused on the educational needs of younger children, Defoe emphasized that older children, and parents too, benefited from religious instruction in the home because it was impossible to avoid ‘those Enemies of all serious Religion … in an Age so bold in Error as this is’.77 One remedy for the ills of the age, Defoe believed, was the proper exercise of ‘Family Government’, by which he meant fathers taking responsibility for the religious education of their children, apprentices, and servants. In earlier instruction manuals, especially The Complete English Tradesman, Defoe focused on the decline of this institution and sought its explanation in the growth of luxury, emulative consumption, and the monetization of master/apprentice relationships.78 In the New Family Instructor, Defoe chose instead to present a family in which both grandfather and father were model heads of their household – prosperous in business, well informed about religion, loved by their children, and respected by the wider community. Children were required to read the



iv. Remedies for ‘this enlighten’d Age’75

Bible and attend ‘Family Worship’ daily. These were supplemented with religious ‘Table-Talk’ and evening catechism. In all these exercises, Defoe pointed out the importance of making religious instruction pleasant and diverting and free from ‘heavy and troublesome ceremony’. Although religion was paramount, the father of these dialogues also taught his children other subjects such as modern history and geography so that ‘his Family was a little College’.79 Despite his excellent upbringing, however, the eldest son converted to Rome and only a brush with death and the assiduous efforts of his family won him back. Having attended university and developed his tastes in books and learning, the son informed his father of his desire to go abroad. Mindful of ‘how many well-read Atheists, and learned Hereticks’ emerged from the universities, the father insisted his son spend several months improving his grasp of the doctrinal differences between popery and Protestantism and of the history of Christianity from its beginnings through the Reformation. What is especially striking about the first dialogue is the way in which Defoe emphasized the dangers of Catholic luxury and sociability to young men travelling abroad. The father knew the Church’s temporal possessions, magnificent buildings, vast libraries, and pomp and glory of Rome made ‘a great impression on the Mind’.80 He depicted Catholic priests who befriended strangers not as rude proselytizers but as paragons of politeness: they offer you all imaginable Civilities, give you the utmost Respect, shew you every thing that is rare and curious, wait upon you to your Apartments, officiously serve you with the greatest Diligence, and with such inimitable Courtesy, so faithful, so assiduous, so apparently disinterested, ’tis impossible not to be obliged by them.81 Priests made a point of showing strangers not only their charity and piety but also ‘how agreeably they live’, entertaining visitors with wine, sweetmeats, and books. They arranged letters of introduction and refectory dinners in any country one might wish to visit and even loaned gentlemen money. Thus, the father warned his son, they ‘bring you, first, into love with their Persons, and at last with their Principles’.82 In the remaining six dialogues of Part I, Defoe refuted the principles of popery by having the father fortify his other children against their papist brother’s attempt to convert them. The father used his knowledge of history to show how the early Church ‘reduc’d their Primitive Purity of Principles into one great Mass, or Bulk of Idolatry and Superstition’. Influenced by the Devil, sullied by the incorporation of pagan practices, and corrupted by power both given and taken from temporal rulers, the Church of Rome became the ‘greatest Seminary of Degeneracy and Apostacy, that ever was in the World’. As their power grew, priests and bishops became factious,



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raising ‘Divisions in the Church … and Tumults in the State’. One of the most dangerous divisions, the Arian heresy, confirmed that ‘Liberty has not always been an advantage to the Christian Religion’.83 While priestcraft and enthusiasm were often conceptualized as opposite extremes of religious error, Defoe had the father express how the two might meet in the persons of Catholic saints. Men like St Francis mistook ‘the turbulent Motions of their own Spirits to be the immediate Dictates of the Holy Ghost; and the Tempest of the Brain to be divine Inspiration’. Deluded into thinking their ‘extravagant Undertakings’ and ‘Excess in good Desires’ were evidence of ‘sacred Perfection’, their enthusiasm surpassed that of the ‘grossest’ and most ‘whimsical’ of English sects, including the Adamites, Sweet-Singers, and Family of Love. Veneration of these saints then became another form of Catholic idolatry. By inculcating the fallacies of Catholicism and the truth of Protestantism in his children, the father made them ‘an Overmatch for their Brother’. Eventually, weakened by illness and disenchanted with the trinkets, trappings, and idolatry of his new religion, the brother returned to the family and his Protestant faith, remarking, ‘Popery was a gay Thing Abroad, and ’twas a mighty Way of going on through Life, but there was nothing in it to go through Death’.84 Defoe began Part II of the New Family Instructor by explaining that the father’s lessons about popery encouraged his children to seek his views on a variety of other religious disputes which regularly confronted them. The father believed that each of these disputes was connected, in one way or another, to the growing number of Christians willing to question the divinity of Christ. This, he warned, was ‘the Foundation upon which Atheism is making its New Fortification, and entrenching itself in order to resist Gospel Revelation; and as it unhinges our Faith, and makes way for all manner of Looseness in Principle, so ’tis time we should attack it with our utmost Force’. In various dialogues, he praised scripture for its ‘Divine Authority’ and power to captivate the mind and elevate the soul. He examined several passages with his children in order to elucidate Christ’s dual nature as person, mediator, and servant and as the Messiah, the Word, and the Lord. He explained the mission of the Holy Ghost as the Father, the Comforter, and the Spirit. He reaffirmed the ‘hypostatick Union’ and the ‘glorious Mystery of the Holy Trinity’. In each of these exercises, he also disparaged Arians, Socinians, Deists, Atheists, Sceptics, and Free-thinkers for their resistance to the complexities of orthodox theology – to the ideas that the scriptures could have been recorded by men but inspired by God, that God himself could show both mercy and righteous vengeance, and that Christ could be both human and divine. Ultimately, it did not follow that something ‘cannot be, because they, who are given up to Unbelief, cannot comprehend it’.85 It is significant that the father’s final discussion with his children concerned the so-called ‘Johannine Comma’, an interpolation in the text of 1 John 5:7, indicated below in italics:




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While claims that the New Testament provided ample evidence of the doctrine of the Trinity were increasingly challenged, most comprehensively by Samuel Clarke’s Scripture-doctrine of the Trinity, published in 1712, the authenticity of the Johannine comma was specifically challenged by Thomas Emlyn in a series of pamphlets between 1715 and 1722. Over half of the last dialogue in the New Family Instructor rehearsed the orthodox points made by Emlyn’s opponent in this debate, David Martin, a minister at the French church in Utrecht.86 Defoe concluded his text with the father leaving his children a copy of one of Martin’s texts with marked passages and his own blank verse poem on the Trinity.

v. Conclusion We return, then, to the themes of commerce and gentility mentioned at the outset of this chapter. A tradesman’s son, schooled in the new science, witnessing his nation’s economic development, Defoe celebrated the principles of discovery, improvement, and commerce throughout his long career. These trends nevertheless brought, in Defoe’s eyes, unexpected and unwelcome outcomes. At the end of his life, we can see in his historical analyses the unease he felt as he came to perceive that his age was one in which the commerce of goods and opinions, in the forms of luxury and heterodoxy, was transforming human consciousness. Even the elites of his day were willing to dupe themselves and the masses by worshipping their own powers of reason. Defoe had identified the extreme rationalism of heterodoxy, not in its own terms as the extension of a benign or even a secular Reason, but as a new form of magic. For Defoe, such themes could be explored, and morals enforced, within the arena of a single family. Just as Robinson Crusoe is not best understood as a reflection of nascent capitalism or imperialism, so A New Family Instructor was no anticipation of the world view later attributed to ‘the bourgeoisie’. That text once more reveals a Defoe not only well informed about, but preoccupied with, a Trinitarian soteriology and its practical meaning for a tradesman’s family. If the Devil was a world-historical figure, he might still meet his match, in Defoe’s vision, at the hands of English Nonconformist piety. At stake, in Defoe’s words, was nothing less than the ‘whole frame of Nature, Time, and Providence’.87



For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these Three are One. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one.

It is fitting that Defoe’s Christian name should have been Daniel, for like the biblical prophet of the same name, much of Defoe’s vision was expressed in the text which predicted that ‘many shall run to and fro’, and knowledge shall be increased’.1 This book has examined Defoe’s capacity to perceive funadamental historical change and long-term social process in the light of his observations on liberty, property, commerce, warfare, manners, and religious belief. It establishes Defoe as a crucial link in the evolution of eighteenth-century theories of civil society, political thought, and modern historical understanding: that is, as a link between the intellectual worlds of John Locke (a world preoccupied with natural rights and scriptural history) and later Scottish Enlightenment historians (a world preoccupied by the new social norms of ‘politeness’ and the civilizing process). Defoe’s writings were expressed primarily in the established discourses of providentialism, Baconian optimism, and Whiggism. His works reveal a tension between a reality based upon transition, specialization, toleration, and exchange against an older value system which stressed stability, authority, and conformity. Because Defoe saw these competing views as historical products in themselves, this book has examined the growth of a modern sense of history as a consequence of the tension between the development of commercial values and the persistence of traditional institutions and belief systems in the eighteenth century. Defoe’s output was enormous, and much of it was published anonymously; there is a real problem in grasping the totality of Defoe’s thought. Yet a systematic study of Defoe as a serious historical and social thinker has not hitherto been undertaken for more profound reasons than the canonical problems of attribution and magnitude. Defoe was neither an historian nor a theorist by design or temperament, but he helped to stimulate a distinctively social form of analysis within a wide variety of genres. All of his thoughts were negotiated through communication with a consumer public, whose increasing importance represents just one of the central structural, social, and historical changes which he so forcefully articulated and helped to create. 209



Conclusion

This study challenges the conventional identification of Defoe as a Lockeian thinker, an egalitarian, a spokesman for a rising middle class, and an architect of a new and secular national identity. Such images too often derive from the need of modern scholarship to find ancient antecedents for present-day positions and to depict major authors as spokesmen for, or prophets of, a new age. Those images and interpretations seldom arise without at least some cause, and their prevalence in a range of important recent scholarship has justified the close study of Defoe’s texts that this book has offered. Yet if a new Defoe emerges from these pages, it must follow that new questions in turn arise that call for further research and further reflection. One such set of questions relates to how Defoe now stands in relation to a preoccupation of scholars in many disciplines, the Enlightenment. It is established in this book that Defoe was not trying to escape from Christian theology, as the received account of ‘the Enlightenment’ ought to require; rather, that he was trying to shore up a faith and a religious practice derived from late seventeenth-century Nonconformity. What does it mean that Defoe could arrive at the historical explanations set out in this book while still desperately holding on to orthodox theology and its authority, an authoritative and literalist approach to religion which Enlightened thinkers, in the accepted interpretation, wanted either to distance themselves from, or to destroy? This book has had at least two leading themes: the centrality of Trinitarianism to Defoe’s thinking, and the importance of Defoe’s developing historical analysis. But the key assertion of this book has been that these two themes were related. And if that relationship was a reality, this new vision of Defoe has important consequences for the received view of Enlightenment as an attempted escape from Nicene theology as well as for the received view that eighteenth-century British historiography was developing in an idiom in which any relation between sacred and secular time was less and less important. The reader will now appreciate why a chronological and not a thematic structure has been chosen. It has been the intention of this book to show the development of Defoe’s historical thought over time. He intended to write on religion, trade, Revolution Principles, and other domestic and foreign matters of the moment, but through this daily polemic he produced a vision of his world that fascinated Marx and continues to fascinate postmodernists. Defoe was sensitive to ideas we normally associate with postmodernism, notably the unstable relationship between language and meaning. This raises questions about the essential novelty of postmodernism itself, and also about how a new historical understanding of Defoe bears on the relation between postmodernism and the ‘modernism’ of which he has long been held to be emblematic. Such issues as these seem certain to keep Defoe near the centre of academic attention for many years to come.



210 Daniel Defoe

Introduction 1. John Robert Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World (Chicago, 1958); for ‘Defoe’s England’ see G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (1942); Peter Earle, The World of Defoe (1976). 2. The current domination of Defoe studies by these research strategies is clear from online databases such as Historical Abstracts and Expanded Academic ASAP. 3. J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), p. 459. 4. This study does not dissent from the view that Puritan forms of writing were influential in shaping Defoe’s novels; see J. Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim (Baltimore, 1966) and G. A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, 1965). It does, however, offer a corrective to the dismissive approach to Defoe’s religion offered by Ian Watt who influentially argued that what mattered in Defoe’s treatment of religion was its ‘subjective and individualist’ pattern, so providing access to the hero’s inner life. The ‘relative impotence of religion in Defoe’s novels’ was Watt’s theme; ‘indeed the heritage of Puritanism is demonstrably too weak to supply a continuous and controlling pattern for the hero’s experience’; Crusoe’s religion has ‘curiously little’ effect on his behaviour; Defoe’s ‘religious upbringing forced him from time to time to hand over a brilliant piece of narrative by a star-reporter to a distant colleague on the religious page who could be relied on to supply suitable spiritual commentaries quickly out of stock. Puritanism made the editorial policy unalterable; but it was usually satisfied by a purely formal adherence’; indeed ‘Defoe’s own religious beliefs changed a good deal, and he expressed in his writings the whole gamut of doctrines, from intransigent predestinarianism to rational deism’: Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957), pp. 75–6, 80–2. 5. Eschatology: the branch of theology dealing with death, judgement, heaven and hell, and the final destiny of mankind. 6. Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996). 7. [Defoe], Conjugal Lewdness: or Matrimonial Whoredom (1727), p. 400. 8. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Vol. I, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 8. 9. J. G. A. Pocock, pp. 152–65, in L. P. Curtis, Jr (ed.), The Historian’s Workshop: Original Essays by Sixteen Historians (New York, 1970). 10. Philip Hicks, Neoclassical History and English Culture from Clarendon to Hume (1996). 11. Sir John Davies, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely Subdued, nor brought under Obedience of the Crowne of England, until the beginning of His Maiesties happie Raigne (1612), for which see J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: a Study of English Historical Thought in the 17th Century (Cambridge, 1957; 2nd edn, 1987); J. G. A. Pocock (ed.), The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge, 1977); Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767); John Millar, Observations Concerning the 211



Notes

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Distinction of Ranks in Society (1771); idem, Historical View of the English Government (1787). Some scholars wish to reframe Defoe’s novels as ‘histories’, e.g. Robert Mayer, History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (Cambridge 1977); Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences; Geoffrey M. Sill, The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel (Cambridge, 2001). P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, The Canonization of Daniel Defoe (1988); idem, Defoe De-Attributions: a Critique of J. R. Moore’s Checklist (1994); idem, A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998). ‘The key to the interpretation of Defoe’s character seems to lie rather in this – that he knew he was a great writer who could write to more effect on most topics than any of his contemporaries; and that he saw no reason why the world should be deprived of the fine writing which he could give it. He could and did write on both sides in many controversies. He wrote both for and against the Septennial Act. He espoused both parties in the Bangorian controversy. His justification, if there was need of it, would be that his pamphlets represent the best work on both sides’: Laurence Hanson, Government and the Press, 1695–1763 (Oxford, 1936), p. 94. From a large literature see, for example, J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge, 1979); James Sutherland, The Restoration Newspaper and its Development (Cambridge, 1986); C. John Sommerville, The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information (New York, 1986); Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (Beckenham, 1987); Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 1695–1855 (Harlow, 2000); Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2005). For a scholarly restatement of the interpretation of the later Stuart monarchy as a threat to liberty that Macaulay depicted, see Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (2005) and idem, Revolution: the Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (2006). For which see especially Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge, 1996); idem, William III: Profiles in Power (2002); Manuel Schonhorn, Defoe’s Politics: Parliament, Power, Kingship and Robinson Crusoe (Cambridge, 1991). Warren Johnston, ‘Revelation and the Revolution of 1688–1689’, HJ, 48 (2005): 351–89; idem., ‘The Patience of the Saints, the Apocalypse, and Moderate Nonconformity in Restoration England’, Canadian Journal of History, 38 (2003): 505–20. For the theme of politeness see especially Lawrence B. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, 1994) and ‘Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century’, HJ, 45 (2002): 869–98; Markku Peltonen, ‘Politeness and Whiggism, 1688–1732’, HJ, 48 (2005): 391–414; Nicholas Phillipson, Hume (1989), pp. 17–34. The central Christian doctrine of the Trinity explained the Godhead in terms of three persons or modes of being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Socinians (named after Fausto Sozzini, 1539–1604) denied the divinity of Christ and interpreted him as a merely human teacher. The ‘Trinitarian controversy’ was another important debate of the 1690s.



212 Notes

21. E.g. John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994); idem, ‘Locke, Socinianism, “Socinianism” and Unitarianism’, in M. A. Stewart (ed.), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford, 2000). 22. There has been a reluctance to take seriously Defoe’s writing on Satan. Simon Schaffer, for example, treats Defoe’s use of the ‘the devil’ as metaphor: ‘The Devil was a construct which Defoe used to describe the source of the social illusions which prevented the establishment of a creditable British polity … Defoe invented a figure to treat this difficulty of trust and its social manifestation: the Devil’: ‘Defoe’s Natural Philosophy and the Worlds of Credit’, in John Christie and Sally Shuttleworth (eds), Nature Transfigured: Science and Literature, 1700–1900 (Manchester, 1989), pp. 13–44, at pp. 13, 24, 31–2. 23. For problems with the Habermasian conception of a ‘public sphere’ see for example, Andrej Pinter, ‘Public Sphere and History: Historians’ Response to Habermas on the “Worth” of the Past’, Journal of Communication Enquiry, 28 (2004): 217–32; Christian Thorne, ‘Thumbing Our Nose at the Public Sphere: Satire, the Market, and the Invention of Literature’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 116 (2001): 531–44; Harold Mah, ‘Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians’, Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000): 153–82; J. A. Downie, ‘The Making of the English Novel’, EighteenthCentury Fiction, 9 (1997): 250–66. 24. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000). 25. Key texts were Samuel Clarke’s The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712), which reached a second edition in 1719, and Anthony Collins’s A Discourse of FreeThinking: occasion’d by the rise and growth of a sect call’d free-thinkers (1713), the latter published without the names of author or printer. The accession of George I in 1714 created a climate in which such debate could flourish. 26. Watt, The Rise of the Novel, p. 89.

1

Establishing a Voice: Defoe’s First Steps from Failed Tradesman to Successful Author

1. See most recently, Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000); Eveline Cruickshanks, The Glorious Revolution (Basingstoke, 2000); Tim Harris, Revolution: the Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (2006). 2. P. G. M. Dickson’s The Financial Revolution in England, 1688–1756 (1967) provides the classic account. John Brewer’s The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1689–1783 (1989) charts the growth of Britain as a ‘fiscal-military state’. The creation of a credit economy and culture has also captivated the collective imagination of many literary scholars in recent years. 3. Mark Knights, ‘“Meer religion” and the “church-state” of Restoration England: the Impact and Ideology of James II’s Declarations of Indulgence’, in Alan Houston and Steve Pincus (eds), A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 41–70. 4. For the best exploration of Defoe’s preoccupation with the idea of biblical kingship and a powerful corrective to reading Defoe as a prophet of modern liberalism, see Schonhorn, Defoe’s Politics. 5. This paragraph and the next two attempt to summarize, in brief, the ideology of civic humanism explored in the works of J. G. A. Pocock. See his Machiavellian Moment and Virtue, Commerce, and History.



Notes 213

6. Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘No Standing Armies!’ The Anti-Army Ideology in SeventeenthCentury England (Baltimore, 1974). Alan Downie analyses the debate within the context of public opinion in Harley, ch. 1. 7. [Defoe], A Letter to a Dissenter from his Friend at the Hague (1688); A New Discovery of an Old Intreague (1691). 8. Backscheider, Defoe, p. 48; Defoe’s early financial dealings are discussed in detail, pp. 41–67. 9. The bill passed the House of Commons but was defeated in the House of Lords. 10. In the Preface, Defoe wrote that he had ‘kept the greatest part of it by me for near Five Years’: [Defoe], An Essay upon Projects (1697), p. iii. Other internal evidence suggests that some of Defoe’s proposals were responses to the creation of the Bank of England and the Million Lottery in 1694 and to debates taking place in 1695–6: Joyce D. Kennedy, Michael Seidel, and Maximillian E. Novak (eds), The Stoke Newington Daniel Defoe Edition [of] An Essay upon Projects (New York, 1999), pp. xx, xliii (endnote 4). The Essay is cited in this chapter from the 1697 edition. 11. There is much more to be said about Defoe’s connections with Poultry publishers, especially John Dunton: N. H. Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England (Leicester, 1987), pp. 121–5, at p. 125. 12. See also Julian Hoppit, ‘Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790’, HJ, 33 (1990): 305–22, at pp. 308–10; Peter Laslett, ‘John Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Origins of the Board of Trade: 1695–1698’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 14 (1957): 369–402. Joan Thirsk suggests that debate about projects at the end of the seventeenth century may reflect the delay between long-term economic trends and reflection about them: Economic Policy and Projects: the Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1978), pp. 8–10. 13. For which see especially Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: the Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988). 14. For the relationship between Protestantism and the new sciences see Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660 (1975) and Margaret Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 1976). Maximillian Novak explores Defoe’s use of natural law theory in Defoe and the Nature of Man (1963). 15. Ilse Vickers, ‘The Influence of the New Sciences on Defoe’, Literature and History, 13 (1987): 200–18, at p. 214. A much fuller treatment of Bacon’s influence on Defoe’s thought is found in her Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996). Vickers addresses the Essay upon Projects in passing but it does not receive the extended attention she gives to other Defoe texts. This study acknowledges Vickers’ important work and seeks to take it further. 16. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 11–12. 17. William Petty, another admirer of Bacon’s, whom Defoe cited in the Essay, expanded Bacon’s system into a tripartite system, distinguishing between goods finished by hand and those finished by tools or machines. See Vickers, ‘Influence of the New Sciences on Defoe’, p. 203. 18. For discussion of these works, see chs. 5 and 8. 19. John Spurr, ‘“Virtue, Religion and Government”: the Anglican Uses of Providence’, in Tim Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie (eds), The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), p. 31. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel (Baltimore, 1987) and J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: the Politics of Party 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), underestimate providentialism’s continuing relevance.



214 Notes

20. [Defoe], The Danger of the Protestant Religion Consider’d from the Present Prospect of a Religious War in Europe (1701), p. 32. 21. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, p. 119. 22. Ibid., p. 1. 23. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 423–5. 24. Temple’s theory that a nation’s industry or idleness was based upon the ratio between land and population explained both Dutch prosperity and Irish stasis. Davenant sought to justify English control of Irish trade: Istvan Hont, ‘Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics: Neo-Machiavellian Political Economy Reconsidered’, in John Dunn (ed.), The Economic Limits to Modern Politics (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 41–120, pp. 51–7, 81, 88. 25. Hont, ‘Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics’, p. 51, fn. 12. Necessity as the mother of invention appeared several times in Defoe’s works. Maximillian Novak suggests that Defoe ‘took his theory from John Asgil[l], who went beyond Temple in asserting that “All the Improvements in the World have been produced from the Necessity of Men, putting them upon Invention”’: Economics and the Fiction of Daniel Defoe (Berkeley, 1962), p. 50. Asgill was a lawyer who occasionally wrote on economic matters and was part of Locke’s college (see Laslett, ‘John Locke, the Great Recoinage’). Defoe cited Asgill’s Several Assertions prov’d, in Order to Create another Species of Money than Gold and Silver, in the Essay upon Projects, p. 67. As explained in Chapters 3 and 7, Defoe later attacked Asgill for his religious ideas and other economic writings. 26. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 31–5. 27. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Modern research confirms Defoe’s impressions: see Christine MacLeod, ‘The 1690s Patent Boom: Invention or Stock-Jobbing?’ Economic History Review, 39 (1986): 549–71. 28. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. x, 4–5. 29. Ibid., pp. 6–8. 30. Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: the English Patent System, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 1988). 31. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, p. 24. 32. Prince Rupert actually died in 1682. Defoe’s date of 1680 supports Henry Roseveare’s contention that England’s financial revolution began in the reign of Charles II and not in the wake of 1688 as argued in Dickson, The Financial Revolution. 33. Defoe’s selective review of Restoration projects and their relation to James II is explored more fully in K. R. P. Clark, ‘“The Whole Frame of Nature, Time, and Providence”: Daniel Defoe and the Transition from Rights to Politeness in English Political Discourse’, PhD thesis (Johns Hopkins University, 1998), pp. 90–100. 34. Stephen B. Baxter, ‘William III as Hercules: the Political Implications of Court Culture’, and W. A. Speck, ‘William – and Mary?’ in Lois Schwoerer (ed.), The Revolution of 1688–1689: Changing Perspectives (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 95–106, 131–46; Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge, 1996). 35. For other proposals at this period for an academy to reform the English language, see Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language (5th edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002), pp. 253–71. 36. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 233, 252. In the chapter ‘Of Academies’, p. 282, Defoe attacked the ‘barbarous Custom’ of ‘deny[ing] the advantages of Learning to Women’.



Notes 215

37. See John Spurr, ‘Virtue, Religion, and Government’, passim, and Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (Manchester, 1977), p. 238. 38. See Lawrence B. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge, 1994) and Nicholas T. Phillipson, Hume (1989), ch. 2. For two assessments of the continuing importance of this discourse in recent scholarship, see Lawrence B. Klein, ‘Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century’, HJ, 45 (2002): 869–98; Markku Peltonen, ‘Politeness and Whiggism, 1688–1732’, HJ, 48 (2005): 391–414. 39. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, p. 228. 40. Ibid., p. 231. 41. Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 9 and passim. 42. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, p. 232. 43. Ibid., pp. 232–3. 44. Ibid., pp. 236–7. 45. Ibid., p. 234. 46. Ibid., p. 235. 47. Klein, Shaftesbury, ch. 8. 48. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 227–8. 49. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 432–6; idem, Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 230–7. 50. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 233–7. 51. Ibid., pp. 243–5. 52. T. C. Curtis and W. A. Speck, ‘The Societies for the Reformation of Manners: a Case Study in the Theory and Practice of Moral Reform’, Literature and History, 3 (1976): 45–64. 53. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 238–40. 54. Ibid., pp. 247–8. 55. [Defoe], The Poor Man’s Plea (2nd edn, 1698), pp. 4–5, 9–10, 16, 18. 56. Ibid., p. 9. 57. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, p. 249. 58. Ibid., pp. 253, 252–4, 260. 59. Ibid., p. 255–7. 60. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 61. Ibid., pp. 257–60, 268–9. 62. Norbert Elias, The Court Society (New York, 1984), pp. 239–40. Defoe continued to condemn the practice of duelling. See, for example, issues of the Review for the following dates: 29 April–23 May 1704; 5 December 1704; 14 December 1710; 29 November 1712. See also Victor Kiernan, The Duel in European History (Oxford, 1992). 63. [Defoe], Essay upon Projects, pp. 279–81. 64. For a general account of foreign relations and their economic dimension, see D. W. Jones, War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough (Oxford, 1988); Jeremy Black, European Warfare: 1660–1815 (New Haven, 1994); idem, A System of Ambition? British Foreign Policy, 1660–1793 (1991). 65. Andrew Fletcher, A Discourse upon Militias (Edinburgh, 1698); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 423–36; John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 29. 66. See, for example, the advertisement placed at the end of the second edition of An Argument in which Trenchard denies the charge that he ‘artificially hired one Mr. D. T. to write Reflexions upon’ his tract, presumably to draw additional support. The initials ‘D. T.’, a misprint in the first edition of Defoe’s Some Reflections on a Pamphlet lately Publish’d Entituled, An Argument, were corrected to



216 Notes

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

2

‘D. F.’ in the second edition. At one point in the debate, it must be noted, Defoe remarked that Trenchard’s An Argument, An Argument … Part Two, and Andrew Fletcher’s Discourse upon Militias ‘seem to me to be wrote by the same Hand’: [Daniel Defoe], An Argument, shewing, that a Standing Army, with Consent of Parliament, is not Inconsistent with a Free Government, &c. (1698), p. 1. Defoe’s knowledge of the opposition authors is further discussed below. See also Lois Schwoerer, ‘Chronology and Authorship of the Standing Army Tracts, 1697– 1699’, Notes and Queries, new series, 13 (1966): 382–90. Defoe’s account matches that of Mark Goldie, ‘The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688–1694’, History of Political Thought, 1 (1980): 195–236. Schwoerer, ‘No Standing Armies!’, p. 175. Downie, Harley, pp. 32, 34 and ch. 1, passim. For divisions within the Whig party, see Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, chapter 11; Goldie, ‘The Roots of True Whiggism’. Trenchard was certainly a central figure in the commonwealth milieu that Goldie skilfully reconstructs. Goldie’s brief mention of Defoe in this essay may have encouraged others to include Defoe in this distinct group of London reformers. One must caution that Defoe’s appearance in Charles Mordaunt’s City regiment during the Lord Mayor’s Show to honour William III in 1689 does not alone give Defoe radical credentials. See, for example, Laurence Dickey, ‘Power, Commerce, and Natural Law in Daniel Defoe’s Political Writings, 1698–1707’, in John Robertson (ed.), A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the Union of 1707 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 67, 70; Richard Ashcraft and M. M. Goldsmith, ‘Locke, Revolution Principles, and the Formation of Whig Ideology’, HJ, 26 (1983): 773–800. Manuel Schonhorn’s Defoe’s Politics offers a useful corrective to Defoe’s ‘radical’ image. [Trenchard], An Argument, pp. 1–2. Ibid., pp. 3–4. [Defoe], Some Reflections On a Pamphlet lately Publish’d, Entitulted, An Argument Shewing that A Standing Army Is inconsistent with A Free Government (1697), p. 2; [Trenchard], An Argument, p. 5. [Defoe], Some Reflections, p. 3; see also pp. 4, 7. [Trenchard], An Argument, p. 7; [Defoe], Some Reflections, p. 5. [Defoe], An Argument, shewing, that a Standing Army … is not Inconsistent. [Defoe], Some Reflections, p. 6. [Trenchard], An Argument, pp. 14–15. See, for example, [Defoe], Some Reflections, pp. 8–11, 25–6. [Defoe], An Argument, shewing, that a Standing Army … is not Inconsistent, p. 8. [Defoe], A Brief Reply to the History of Standing Armies in England (1698), p. 23. Ibid., pp. ii–iii. Downie, Harley, ch. 1. [Defoe], A Brief Reply to the History of Standing Armies in England, p. 25. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., pp. 20, 24.

‘The Mushroom and the Oak’: Dissent and the Church of England, 1697–1705

1. See below, Chapters 5, 6, and 9. Mark Knights, in ‘Occasional Conformity and the Representation of Dissent: Hypocrisy, Sincerity, Moderation and Zeal’, Parliamentary History, 24 (2005): 41–57, argues that the occasional conformity



Notes 217

2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

controversies demonstrate how ‘religious conflict was seen in terms of a struggle for secular power … contemporaries saw politics – the use of state power for private or partisan ends – as being conducted under the guise of religion’, so that ‘Religious language was … consciously viewed as a veneer covering private, sectional or group ends’ (pp. 44–5); and he cites Defoe to establish the primacy of political over religious goals (pp. 41, 46–7, 49). Although charges of opponents’ insincerity were rife in this controversy, it is shown here that Defoe’s position on occasional conformity was indeed built on consistent religious principles. See below, Chapter 5. Henry Sacheverell, The Perils of False Brethren, both in Church, and State (1709). J. Ramsbottom, ‘Presbyterians and “Partial Conformity” in the Restoration Church of England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1992): 249–70. For a cogent summary of the controversy see John Flaningam, ‘The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697–1711’, JBS, 17 (1977): 38–62. The story of Defoe’s Lutheran-style protest is often repeated in the literature without citing its probable source. In 1697 the 30 November–2 December edition of The Postman remarked on a ‘foolish pasquil, reflecting on the Lord Mayor’ which was ‘fixed upon the door of St. Paul’s’ before Sir Humphrey attended a Thanksgiving Day service at the cathedral on Thursday, 2 December: Roger Thomas, ‘Presbyterians in Transition’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, p. 124, n. 1. [Defoe], An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, in Cases of Preferment, with a Preface to Mr. How (1700); John Howe, Some Considerations of a Preface to an Inquiry Concerning the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters (1701); [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How (1701). [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How, in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 330. [Defoe], An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity (1702), p. 10; [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How, in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 332; [Daniel Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated (1703), p. 15. [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How, in A True Collection, p. 334. [Defoe], The Dissenters Answer to the High-Church Challenge (1704) in Defoe, A Second Volume, p. 197. [Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated, p. 17. Citing Edmund Calamy’s An Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History of His Life and Times (1702), Defoe adopted the position that the Church of England’s refusal to accept a proposal in 1660 ‘that Bishop Usher’s Reduction of Episcopacy unto the Form of the Synodical Government received in the ancient Church’ be ‘the Ground-work of an Accomodation’ was the straw that broke the conciliatory back of the Presbyterians; Defoe therefore considered that Anglican obstinacy was responsible for their ultimate separation. See Defoe, The Dissenters Answer to the High-Church Challenge in Defoe, A Second Volume, pp. 197, 200–5. For accounts of the views of Richard Baxter and James Ussher and for the failure of negotiations in 1660, see Roger Thomas, ‘The Rise of the Reconcilers’, pp. 60–7 and C. G. Bolam and Jeremy Goring, ‘The Cataclysm’, pp. 73–9, in Bolam, English Presbyterians. Defoe rehearsed the true justifications for Dissent on numerous occasions. See, for example, [Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated, p. 15; [Defoe], The Dissenters Answer to the High-Church Challenge in A Second Volume, pp. 196–7; Review, II, Bk. 5, No. 112 (22 November 1705). [Defoe], More Short Ways with the Dissenters (1704) in Defoe, A Second Volume, p. 283. Presbyterians disagreed about a number of other issues. Defoe’s position on other disputed matters is discussed below.



218 Notes

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

[Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated, p. 16. [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How, in A True Collection, p. 332. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1697), pp. 9–11. [Defoe], An Enquiry … Shewing that the Dissenters Are no Way Concern’d in it, p. 11; An Enquiry (1697), pp. 10–13. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1697), p. 11. The grounds for these various divisions are discussed below. For a general history of Nonconformity see Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford, 1978) and Bolam, English Presbyterians. For the view of English Presbyterianism as ‘a Dying Cause’, see Jeremy Goring, ‘The Break-up of Old Dissent’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, esp. pp. 175–6. See also Flaningam, ‘Occasional Conformity Controversy’, p. 41, n. 7. [Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated (1703), p. 2. Ibid.; see also [Defoe], The Shortest Way to Peace and Union (1703) in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 452. [James Owen], Moderation a Virtue, Or Occasional Conformity Justify’d from the Imputation of Hypocrisy (1703). [Defoe], The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated, p. 3. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1701), pp. 31–4. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1697), p. 9. [Defoe], An Essay upon Projects (1697), pp. 4, 12, 243–5. See Chapter 1 above; see Review, Introduction, by A. W. Secord, and [Defoe], The Complete English Tradesman (1726 [for 1725]), chs. 2 and 3, esp. pp. 22–3, 32–3, for instances of Defoe’s overt claims to effect a plain style. Brian Vickers (ed.), English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge, 1987), p. 16. Bolam and Goring, ‘The Cataclysm’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, p. 87. Roger Thomas, ‘Parties in Nonconformity’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, p. 96; also pp. 103–12. For more on Annesley and his relationship with Defoe’s family see Backscheider, Defoe, ch. 1 and passim; and [Defoe], The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley (1697). See Watts, The Dissenters, and Knud Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion (Cambridge, 1997). David L. Wykes identified Newington Green as an academy for Congregationalists; see his ‘The Contribution of the Dissenting Academy to the Emergence of Rational Dissent’, in Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion, p. 104. Backscheider notes that the curriculum included writings from a wide range of theologians and speculates that Annesley may have directed Defoe there: Defoe, pp. 14–20. Tim Cruso, a classmate of Defoe’s, was a ‘tolerationist’ Presbyterian; see Roger Thomas, ‘Presbyterians in Transition’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, p. 120. For Wilkins’s influence on Charles Morton and the curriculum at Newington Green, see Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 46–50. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1701), Preface; [Howe], Some Considerations of a Preface, pp. 30–2, 24; [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. How, in Defoe, A Second Volume, p. 342. Ibid., p. 329. Thomas, ‘Parties in Nonconformity’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, pp. 103–12. See also Jacob, Newtonians. In trying to minimize the importance of divisions within the church, Charles Leslie queried, ‘And are there not Differences of this sort too among the Dissenters? Is not their Famous How an Arminian?’: Leslie, The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing, In Answer to a late Celebrated Book Intitul’d, Moderation a Virtue, Wherein The Designs of the Dissenters against the Church: And



Notes 219

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

their Behaviour towards Her Majesty both in England and Scotland are laid open. With the Case of Occasional Conformity Considered (3rd edn, 1704), p. 14. Thomas, ‘Presbyterians in Transition’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, pp. 134–40. [Defoe], A Letter to Mr. Howe, in Defoe, A Second Volume, pp. 332–3. Flaningam, ‘Occasional Conformity Controversy’, pp. 43–4. It has become conventional to see Defoe’s role in the debate as ironic. J. R. Jones, Court and Country: England, 1658–1714 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), p. 322. For example, in his influential diatribe, The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing, a chapter by chapter refutation of James Owen’s Moderation a Vertue, Charles Leslie used some of Defoe’s arguments as ammunition, pitting Dissenter against Dissenter for his own purposes: see The Wolf Stript, pp. 31, 46. For a full account of Robert Harley and his importance to eighteenth-century journalism, see Downie, Harley. For some cases of which Defoe was probably aware, see Backscheider, Defoe, p. 101. In September 1707, John Tutchin, editor of The Observator, was beaten up and later died from his injuries. Backscheider, Defoe, p. 81. Cited in J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: the Politics of Party 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 91. Oxford was the bastion of High Churchmanship: [Defoe], Review, II, Bk. 4, No. 56 (12 July 1705); [Defoe], A New Test of the Church of England’s Honesty (1704) in Defoe, A Second Volume, p. 257; Henry Sacheverell, The Political Union. A Discourse Shewing the Dependence of Government on Religion In General: And of The English Monarchy on The Church of England in Particular (Oxford, 1702), pp. 17, 45, 55, 59. [Anon.], The Poetical Observator (1702); [anon.] The Establishment of the Church, the Preservation of the State: Shewing the Reasonableness of a Bill against Occasional Conformity (1702) which Backscheider states (Defoe, p. 95) provided Defoe with the subtitle to The Shortest Way. [Charles Leslie], The New Association: Of those Called, Moderate-Church-Men, with the Modern-Whigs and Fanaticks, to Under-Mine and Blow-Up the Present Church and Government (1702). [Defoe], An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity (1702); [Defoe], The Opinion of a Known Dissenter On the Bill for Preventing Occasional Conformity (1702). [Defoe], A Brief Explanation of A late Pamphlet, Entituled, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703) in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 442. David Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth Century England: the Political Significance of Oaths and Engagements (Rochester, NY, 1999). Roger Thomas describes ‘moderates like Baxter’ as having ‘no great liking for oaths but … a profound distaste for perjury’; see his ‘Parties in Nonconformity’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, p. 82. Quakers found the imposition of oaths to be sacrilegious and refused to take them. Proposing his academy of learning, participating in campaigns for the reformation of manners, and decrying profanity in the Review were some of the ways Defoe tried to curtail its practice. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1697), pp. 15–17. Ibid., p. 24. [Defoe], Review, II, Bk. 5, No. 111 (20 November 1705); An Enquiry (1697), p. 15. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1697), pp. 15–16. [Defoe], The Present State of Jacobitism Considered (1701), Preface, p. 11. Review, II, Bk. 5, No. 78 (1 September 1705); see also II, Bk. 4, No. 33 (19 May 1705). Review, II, Bk. 5, No. 125 (22 December 1705); III, Bk. 8, No. 122 (12 October 1706).



220 Notes

58. Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences, p. 47. 59. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1701) in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 312 and An Enquiry … Shewing, that the Dissenters are no ways concerned in it, ibid., p. 389. 60. [Defoe], The Consolidator: Or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions From the World in the Moon (1705), pp. 186–7. 61. [Defoe], Reformation of Manners, A Satyr (1702) in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 81; I owe the example from Moll Flanders to Manuel Schonhorn who also remarks, to different ends, on ‘the oxymoronic categories that appear often in Defoe’s perhaps unique vocabulary’. See his ‘Defoe and the Limits of Jacobite Rhetoric’, ELH, 64 (1997): 871–86, at p. 873. 62. [Defoe], Reformation of Manners in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 93; An Enquiry … Shewing, the Dissenters are no ways concern’d in it, ibid., p. 400. 63. [Defoe], The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr (1700 [for 1701]) in Defoe, A True Collection, pp. 5–6. 64. Roger Thomas, ‘The Rise of the Reconcilers’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, pp. 59–60. 65. It has been argued that the occasional conformity debate was important chiefly for the emergence of a pragmatic rhetoric of moderation: Sandra J. Sarkela, ‘Moderation, Religion and Public Discourse: the Rhetoric of Occasional Conformity in England, 1697–1711’, Rhetorica, 15 (1997): 53–79. It is argued in this chapter that Defoe’s opposition to occasional conformity was much more principled that Sarkela allows. Indeed her claim that Defoe changed his mind and defended occasional conformity in his pamphlet Peace Without Union (1704) rests on a misreading of Defoe’s text: Sarkela, ‘Moderation’, p. 67. Her quotation from that source is immediately preceded in the original by Defoe’s explanation: ‘If any Man ask me now, whether I am pleading for Occasional Conformity, I freely Answer no, nor do I Approve of it in itself, but when made use of for a mere Qualification, I abhor both the Practice and the Persons’: [Defoe], Peace Without Union in Defoe, A True Collection, II, pp. 243–71, at p. 264. 66. [Defoe], The Shortest Way to Peace and Union (1703) in Defoe, A True Collection, pp. 447–8. 67. Ibid., p. 450. 68. Ibid., pp. 455–6. 69. Ibid., pp. 458–9. 70. Ibid., p. 459. 71. Ibid., pp. 465–6. 72. [Defoe], An Enquiry (1701) in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 310. 73. [Defoe], The Shortest Way to Peace and Union, p. 466. 74. For Priestley’s opinions about Dissenters, I have relied on A. M. C. Waterman, ‘The Nexus between Theology and Political Doctrine in Church and Dissent’, in Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion, pp. 193–218; see especially pp. 209–16. 75. Waterman, ‘The Nexus between Theology and Political Doctrine in Church and Dissent’, pp. 212, 216; Watts, The Dissenters, p. 478.

3

Jure Divino: Defoe, Locke and Milton, and Political Theory

1. Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, 1986), p. 565; Paula R. Backscheider, ‘The Verse Essay, John Locke, and Defoe’s Jure Divino’, ELH, 55 (1988): 99–125, p. 119 (see also Backscheider,



Notes 221

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

Defoe, p. 81). J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: the Politics of Party 1689–1720 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 57 (‘markedly Lockeian in tone’); Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 222 (‘Defoe later stated the [Lockeian] point poetically’). C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962) and Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: the Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). An engraved portrait of Defoe was included for the price of thirteen shillings but pirated editions sold for much less. The phrase is a chapter title in Backscheider, Defoe: see pp. 159–94 and her article, ‘The Verse Essay, John Locke, and Defoe’s Jure Divino’, p. 119 and passim. For a closer analysis of the problems with her approach, see K. R. P. Clark, ‘“The Whole Frame of Nature, Time and Providence”: Daniel Defoe and the Transition from Rights to Politeness in England Political Discourse, 1688–1731’, PhD thesis (Johns Hopkins University, 1998), pp. 175–91. Martyn P. Thompson, ‘Daniel Defoe and the Formation of Early EighteenthCentury Whig Ideology’, in Gordon J. Schochet (ed.), Politics, Politeness, and Patriotism, Proceedings of The Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought, 5 (Washington, DC, 1993), pp. 109–24. [Defoe], A New Test of the Church of England’s Loyalty (1702), p. 4. [Defoe], A Challenge of Peace, Address’d to the Whole Nation (1703), pp. 3–4; [Defoe], A New Test of the Church of England’s Honesty (1704) in Defoe, A Second Volume, pp. 300–2. Downie, Harley, p. 7 and ch. 4. Leslie’s pamphlets saw several editions: The New Association (1702) reached a third edition the same year, and The New Association. Part II (1703) a third edition in 1704. The Wolf Stript saw only one edition (1704) but was followed by The second part of the Wolf stript (1707). Cassandra (1704) went to a second edition in 1705. [Defoe], A Serious Inquiry into this Grand Question: Whether a Law to Prevent the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, Would not be Inconsistent with the Act of Toleration, And a Breach of the Queen’s Promise (1704), p. 23. [Charles Leslie], The New Association. Part II. With farther Improvements. As Another and Later Scots Presbyterian-Covenant, Besides that mention’d in the Former Part. And the Proceedings of that Party since. An Answer to some Objections in the Pretended D. Foe’s Explication, In the Reflections upon the Shortest Way. With Remarks upon Both. Also an Account of several other Pamphlets, which carry on, and plainly Discover the Design to Undermine and Blow-up the Present Church and Government. Particularly, The Discovery of a certain Secret History, Not yet Publish’d. With a Short Account of the Original of Government, Compar’d with the Schemes of the Republicans and Whigs (3rd edn, 1704). [Leslie], The New Association. Part II, pp. 3–5, 6–8, 18, 29, and passim. [Leslie], The New Association, p. [ii]. [Charles Leslie], The Wolf Stript of His Shepherd’s Cloathing (1704), p. 3. Ibid., p. 46. [Charles Leslie], Cassandra. (But I Hope not) Telling what will come of it. In Answer to the Occasional Letter. Numb. I. Wherein The New-Associations, &c Are Considered. Numbers I and II (1704). [Charles Leslie], A Rehearsal of the Observator and Review (August 1704–March 1709). For more on this see Downie, Harley, pp. 65–71. [Defoe], Review, 10 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 107, p. 427. [Defoe], Review, 3 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 105, pp. 418–19.



222 Notes

20. Ibid., p. 419. 21. [Defoe], Review, 8 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 106, p. 423; 13 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 108, p. 431; 28 February 1706, III, Bk. 6, No. 26, p. 104. 22. [Defoe], Review, 8 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 106, pp. 422–3. 23. [Defoe], Jure Divino. A Satyr. In Twelve Books. By the Author of The True-Born Englishman (1706), p. xxvi. Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text. 24. See Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 161–72, at 161. 25. [Defoe], Review, 13 July, 1706, III, Bk. 7, No. 84, p. 333; 10 September 1706, III, Bk. 7, No. 108, p. 429. 26. Peter Laslett (ed.), [John Locke], Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge, 1994), II, #9, p. 272. All citations and pagination from Laslett’s edition. Paragraph numeration is Locke’s. The First and Second Treatise are distinguished by ‘I’ and ‘II’, respectively. 27. [Defoe], Review, 10 September 1706, III, Bk. 7, No. 108, pp. 429–31. 28. [Defoe], Review, 15 August 1705, III, Bk. 7, No. 98, pp. 389–90. 29. Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 169–72. 30. Only later, it seems, did Defoe express doubts about Milton’s belief in the Trinity: see below, Chapter 9. 31. Many people, Defoe included, believed Stephens was the sole author of a Letter to the Author of the Memorial of the State of England (1705), a response to the eponymous pamphlet by John Toland published earlier that year, which itself was a riposte to the extremely influential ‘church-in-danger’ pamphlet, The Memorial of the Church of England. For an excellent discussion of this controversy, see Downie, Harley, pp. 80–100. 32. Defoe’s argument about wet and dry martyrdoms, first put forward in the Review, had already caused considerable outrage which would resonate for some time to come. During Sacheverell’s trial in 1710, Sir Simon Harcourt referred to Defoe’s ‘abominable distinction’ in order to denigrate his client’s Whig accusers and their cause. See Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr. Sacheverell (1973), pp. 186–7. 33. The Political History of the Devil is discussed in Chapter 9. 34. John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 140–6, 346 and passim. Locke’s position on original sin was unclear in the Two Treatises. He seemed to suggest that God’s curse upon Adam and Eve may have applied to them alone and not to mankind in general. While Filmer interpreted God’s grant of dominion to Adam alone, Locke argued, Filmer construed God’s curse upon Adam to apply to all of mankind. In communicating with human beings, Locke explained, God had to ‘condescend to their Capabilities’ and would not therefore confuse matters by ‘crossing the Rules of language’ or using it inconsistently. It was therefore hard to believe that ‘Adam’ was to be understood as singular and particular in some scriptural passages and as a generic term for all of mankind in others, as Filmer’s interpretations would have required. However, because Locke himself read God’s donation of the earth to Adam as a donation to the whole of mankind, according to his own logic, the curse applied to mankind in general as well. Then again, this may be one reason why he placed more emphasis on other factors which justify use of the earth such as self-preservation and the labour theory of value (I, #45–6, pp. 172–3). See Marshall, Locke, p. 424 for the insignificant role which Satan played in Locke’s writings prior to his paraphrases published posthumously in 1707 as A Paraphrase Upon the Epistles of St Paul to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians.



Notes 223

35. For an example of condemnation of James II by Defoe, see [Defoe], A Letter to a Dissenter from His Friend at the Hague, Concerning the Penal Laws and the Test ([1688]). 36. For the importance of this concept in early-modern English political thought, see Gordon J. Schochet, The Authoritarian Family and Political Attitudes in 17th Century England: Patriarchalism in Political Thought (2nd edn, Brunswick, NJ, 1988). 37. [Locke], Two Treatises, II, #74, #105–12, pp. 316–17, 336–44; Laslett’s Introduction, pp. 68–70. 38. [Locke], Two Treatises, II, #45, p. 299. 39. James Tyrrell, The General History of England, as well ecclesiastical as civil (3 vols, 1696, 1700, 1704). 40. For additional examples of Defoe’s natural law beliefs, see also the following issues of The Review: II, Bk. 4, No. 3 (6 March 1705); II, Bk. 4, No. 37 (29 May 1705); II, Bk. 4, No. 40 (5 June 1705); III, Bk. 6, No. 29 (7 July 1706). 41. There are no pp. 11–14 in Jure Divino Book III and the mispagination continues to its end. Correct pagination resumes with Book IV. 42. [Locke], Two Treatises, I, #86, p. 205; #58, p. 182. 43. [Locke], Two Treatises, I, #52–63, pp. 303–9. 44. [Locke], Two Treatises, I, #25, pp. 285–6; #32, p. 291; #27, p. 287. 45. [Locke], Two Treatises, I, #181, p. 389. See also #10–11, pp. 273–4; #16, p. 279; and #172, p. 383. 46. For Sidney’s importance see Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge, 1988) and Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–1683 (Cambridge, 1991). 47. A confusing footnote citing Oceana appears in conjunction with the following passage from the poem which seems to add Harrington’s name to Locke’s and Sidney’s as exponents of ‘the Laws of Nature and Humane Understanding’, but typographical errors make the point of the footnote unclear (Jure Divino, II, p. 10). 48. [Defoe], Review, 10 September, 1706, III, Bk. 7, No. 108, pp. 430–1. 49. See [Locke], Two Treatises, II, ch. II and ch. VIII. 50. [Locke], Two Treatises, II, #6, p. 271. 51. [Defoe], An Enquiry into the Case of Mr. Asgil’s General Translation (1704) [for 1703]), p. 25. 52. Blair Worden, ‘English Republicanism’, in J. H. Burns and Mark Goldie (eds), The Cambridge History of Political Thought: 1450–1700 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 456. 53. [Defoe], The Storm (1704), pp. 90–101. 54. Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine, and Reform, 1626–1660 (London, 1975); Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia: a Study in the Background of the Idea of Progress (Berkeley, 1949).

4 Defoe and the Union of 1707: Constructing a British Identity 1. A fellow unionist and Scottish acquaintance of Defoe’s remarked that had Defoe been discovered as ‘a Spy amongst us, but not known to be such, otherways the Mob of Edin. had pulled him to pieces’: John M. Gray (ed.), Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Scottish Historical Society Publication, 13 (Edinburgh, 1892), pp. 63–4. Spiro Peterson examines the gradual fraying of Defoe’s cover in ‘Defoe in Edinburgh, 1707’, HLQ, 38 (1974): 21–33. For additional biographical



224 Notes

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

details of Defoe’s financial difficulties and life in Scotland, see Backscheider, Defoe; idem, ‘Defoe and the Clerks of Penicuik’, Modern Philology, 84 (1987): 372–81; idem, ‘John Russell to Daniel Defoe: Fifteen Unpublished Letters from Scotland’, Philosophical Quarterly, 61 (1982): 61–77. A useful introduction and selection of Defoe’s most important writings on the union can be found in D. W. Hayton (ed.), The Political and Economic Writings of Daniel Defoe: Union with Scotland, in W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank (eds), The Works of Daniel Defoe, 4 (2000). [Defoe], Review, 1 February 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 170, p. 678. Throughout I have used the Facsimile Text edited by Arthur Wellesley Secord (Columbia University Press, 1938). Volume, number, and page are original to Defoe’s serialization. The book number refers to the volume of Secord’s edition, included as a convenience for the reader. Hereafter cited as Review; Defoe, History of the Union of Great Britain (1709), ‘Of the Last Treaty, Properly Called The Union’, p. 1 and ‘Preface’, p. 6; see also Review, 21 January 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 165, p. 658. Defoe [to Robert Harley], 26 November 1706; Defoe to Robert Harley, 18 March 1706/7, in Healey, Letters, pp. 159, 211. William Ferguson, Scotland’s Relations with England: a Survey to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1977) and more categorically, P. W. J. Riley, The Union of England and Scotland (Manchester, 1978). One historiographical exception is the volume of essays in which an earlier version of this chapter appeared: John Robertson (ed.), A Union for Empire: the Union of 1707 in the History of British Political Thought (Cambridge, 1995). Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 423; idem, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge, 1986), ch. 2. Defoe, The History of the Union of Great Britain (Edinburgh, 1709), xxxii, 116, 76, 273, 131 pp. The pagination is irregular and varies between copies. D. C. Douglas, English Scholars, 1660–1730 (2nd edn, 1951), p. 14. For the importance of the role of the classical historian in the eighteenth century, see Philip Hicks, ‘Bolingbroke, Clarendon, and the Role of the Classical Historian’, ECS, 20 (1987) and Neo-Classical History and English Culture: From Clarendon to Hume (1996). For Defoe’s own call for a ‘great man’ to write about the union see Review, 26 September 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 115, p. 458; and ‘The Matter deserves a History by it self’: Review, 6 February 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 172, p. 685. Defoe, History of the Union, ‘A General History of Unions in Britain’, p. 30. Defoe, History of the Union, p. 4; ‘Of the Last Treaty’, p. 2. The History was being printed at the time of the attempted Jacobite invasion in 1708; Defoe felt compelled to add a preface which summarized the events and reinforced his argument. The Lord H[aver]sham’s Speech in the House of Peers, November 15, 1705 (1705); Review, 24 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 113, p. 452. Review, 11 December 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 120, pp. 478–9. [Defoe], A Reply to a Pamphlet Entituled, the L[or]d H[aversham]’s Vindication of his Speech, &c. (1706), p. 3. Defoe knew John Thompson in the 1690s. For his services to William, Thompson was made the first Baron Haversham and a lord of the admiralty in 1699. By 1704, however, he had jettisoned his Whig identity. Ever loyal to William’s memory and to the Whig cause, Defoe’s fortunes had been more mixed, prompting him to remark in his Reply ‘Fate … makes Footballs of Men, kicks some up Stairs and some down … and no man knows whether his Course shall issue in a PEERAGE or a PILLORY’, p. 8.



Notes 225

15. Review, 3 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 105, p. 419. 16. Review, 11 December 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 120, p. 478. 17. Review, 12 May 1705, II, Bk. 4, No. 30, p. 118. For the relationship between Haversham and Tutchin, see Downie, Harley, p. 97. 18. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 432–5. For Defoe’s attachment to the idea of a warrior king, see Schonhorn, Defoe’s Politics. 19. Review, 19 April 1705, II, Bk. 4, No. 20, p. 78. 20. ‘Thy Trees, fair Windsor! now shall leave their Woods, And half thy Forests rush into my Floods’: Alexander Pope, ‘Windsor Forest’, in John Butt (ed.), The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (10 vols, 1961), I, p. 189. 21. Review, 23 January 1705, I, Bk. 3, No. 93, pp. 385–6. 22. Review, 3 November 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 105, p. 419. Defoe used the Review to examine a range of issues concerning the effects of the War of Spanish Succession. For his views on the importance of England’s trade with Spain, see especially, 12 December 1704–30 January 1705: I, Bk. 2, Nos. 81, 83, 87, and 88 and II, Bk. 3, Nos. 89, 94, and 95. 23. Review, 6 January 1705, I, Bk. 2, No. 88, p. 366. 24. Review, 1 January 1706, III, Bk. 6, No. 1, p. 1. 25. Review, 3 January 1706, III, Bk. 6, No. 2, p. 6. 26. Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996). 27. Cited in Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 207–8. 28. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with Scotland, Part I (1706), p. 11. 29. [George Ridpath], The Reducing of Scotland by arms, and annexing it to England as a province considered (1705); [James Hodges], War betwixt the two British kingdoms consider’d, and the dangerous circumstances of each with reagard thereto lay’d open; by a full view of the consequences of it on both sides (1705); [William Atwood], The superiority and direct dominion of the imperial crown of England, over the crown and kingdom of Scotland … asserted (1704). 30. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, pp. 18–19. 31. Review, 26 October 1706, III, Bk. 8. No. 128, p. 510. 32. Defoe, History of the Union, ‘Of the Last Treaty’, p. 29. 33. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, pp. 19–21. 34. Ibid., pp. 27–8. 35. Review, 19 April 1705, II, Bk. 4, No. 20, p. 78. 36. See Colin Kidd, Subverting Scotland’s Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689–1830 (Cambridge, 1993). 37. Review, 11 December 1705, II, Bk. 5, No. 120, p. 480. 38. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, pp. 17–21. 39. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices Against a Union with Scotland, Part II (1706), pp. 31–2. 40. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, p. 23. Religion was ‘the most Dangerous Rock of Difference, on which this Union could Split’: Defoe, History of the Union, ‘Of the Last Treaty’ p. 1. 41. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, pp. 12–15. Technically, the United Provinces and Swiss cantons represented tolerant confederations and not an incorporated, dual-confessional state with a single monarch as proposed by the union treaty. 42. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices … Part I, pp. 24–5. 43. Ibid., p. 17. 44. Ibid., p. 23.



226 Notes

45. See n. 24 above. 46. Lawrence B. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1994); Nicholas Phillipson, Hume (1989), ch. 2. 47. For Defoe’s reports of Presbyterian machinations in London and his specific instructions to allay fears about the Kirk, see Healey, Letters, pp. 124–8. 48. Healey, Letters, p. 137 and passim. 49. Review, 28 September 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 116, p. 463. 50. [James Hodges], The rights and interests of the two British monarchies, inquir’d into, and clear’d; with a special respect to an united or separate state. Treatise I (1703); [George Ridpath], Considerations upon the union of the two kingdoms: with an account of the methods taken by ancient and modern governments, to effect an union (1706); [Andrew Fletcher?], State of the controversy betwixt united and separate Parliaments ([?Edinburgh], 1706). 51. [Defoe], An Essay at Removing National Prejudices, against a Union with England. Part III (Edinburgh, 1706), p. 12. 52. Review, 12 November 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 135, p. 538. Of course, this line may not have swayed many Scots who believed that, in accepting incorporation, their own Parliament was destroying itself. 53. [George Ridpath], Considerations upon the union of the two kingdoms … (1706); [James Hodges], The Rights and Interests of the two British Monarchies, with a special respect to an united or separate state. Treatise III (1706). 54. [Defoe], A Fourth Essay at Removing National Prejudices; with some reply to Mr. H[o]dges and some other authors, who have printed their objections against an union with England (Edinburgh, 1706), p. 11. See also Review, 19 December 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 151, pp. 602–3. 55. Defoe, History of the Union, ‘Of the Carrying on of the Treaty in Scotland’, p. 3. 56. Healey, Letters, p. 153. 57. Defoe, History of the Union, ‘Of … the Treaty in Scotland’, pp. 15–22. 58. [Fletcher?], State of the Controversy, p. 7. Review, 23 November 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 140, p. 559. 59. Defoe’s Legion’s Memorial claimed to represent the protest of 200,000 Englishmen. 60. Conal Condren, George Lawson’s Politica and the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 166–9. 61. [Defoe], The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, in Defoe, A True Collection, p. 139. 62. Review, 10 December 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 147, p. 586. 63. See for example Review, 26 November 1706, III, Bk. 8, No. 141, pp. 562–3; 10 December, III, Bk. 8, No. 147, p. 586. 64. [Patrick Abercromby], The Advantages of the Act of Security, compar’d with these of the intended union: founded on the revolution principles publish’d by Mr. Daniel De Foe (Edinburgh, 1706). 65. [Defoe], A Fifth Essay, at Removing National Prejudices: with a reply to some authors, who have printed their objections against an union with England (Edinburgh?, 1707). 66. The Lord Beilhaven’s Speech in Parliament, in Defoe, History of the Union. 67. Healey, Letters, pp. 196–247. 68. Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 226–52. 69. Defoe to Harley, 10 February 1708, in Healey, Letters, pp. 250.



Notes 227

228 Notes

5

Correspondence, Credit, and Commerce: Defoe and the Instability of Meaning, 1709–1713

1. The most complete account of the Sacheverell affair is Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr. Sacheverell (1973). For a review of the literature surrounding the controversy see F. F. Madan, A Critical Bibliography of Dr. Henry Sacheverell, ed. W. A. Speck (Lawrence, Kansas, 1978). 2. [Defoe], The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. See also Chapter 2 above. 3. [Defoe], A New Test of the Sence of the Nation: Being a Modest Comparison Between The Addresses To The Late King James, And Those to Her Present Majesty. In Order to Observe, How far The Sence of the Nation may be judg’d of by either of them (1710), pp. 3, 7, 13. 4. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 440, 448–9; Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 111–3. See Chapter 1, above. 5. The following paragraph is based upon P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: a Study of the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (1957) and Eric Kerridge, Trade and Banking in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1988). 6. B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1976), p. 401. 7. Tim Clayton, The English Print, 1688–1802 (New Haven, 1997). 8. Colin Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), p. 5. 9. [Defoe], Review, Vol. VI, Bk. 16, pp. 454–9 (27 December 1709). Ironically, Sir Simon Harcourt, attorney general for the queen in 1703, whose speech at Defoe’s trial in 1703 made leniency impossible, was Sacheverell’s defence lawyer in 1710. 10. [Defoe], A Letter to Mr Bisset (1709), pp. 6–7, 11–12. 11. Ibid., p. 15. 12. Holmes, The Trial of Dr. Sacheverell, p. 243. 13. Backscheider, Defoe, p. 271. 14. [Defoe], An Essay upon Projects (1697), pp. 243–5, and see above, Chapter 1; A New Test of the Sence of the Nation, p. 4. 15. [Defoe], An Essay upon Projects, pp. 243–5. 16. [Defoe], A New Test of the Sence of the Nation, pp. 4–5. 17. Ibid., pp. 4–5, 14–16. For Defoe’s views that High Church flattery contributed to James II’s absolutist pretensions, see Chapter 3 above. 18. Ibid., pp. 2, 8, 10–12. 19. Ibid., pp. 79, 87–8. 20. Downie, Harley, chs. 6–8. 21. Downie, Harley, p. 117. 22. Defoe stated that Mr. Review’s rebuke showed ‘The Notion is general, at least among themselves, that the Gross of the Cash is with the Whigs’ but in this he (and they) were mistaken. See [Defoe], An Essay upon Loans (1710), p. 19. 23. See, for example, Review, Vol. III, No. 5, pp. 17–20 (10 January 1706); Vol. III, No. 6, pp. 20–3, (12 January 1706); Vol. VI, No. 31, p. 124 (14 June 1709);



70. For an account of the Jacobite invasion in 1708 see John S. Gibson, Playing the Scottish Card: the Franco-Jacobite Invasion of 1708 (Edinburgh, 1988). 71. For an account see Alan J. Downie, ‘Daniel Defoe and the General Election of 1708 in Scotland’, ECS, 8 (1974–5): 315–28.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40.

Vol. III, No. 32, pp. 126–7 (16 June 1709); Vol. VII, No. 57, p. 222 (5 August 1710); Vol. VII, No. 116, p. 463 (21 December 1710); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, p. 452; idem., Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 99, 113; Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: a Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge, 1998); Sandra Sherman, Finance and Fictionality in the Early Eighteenth Century: Accounting for Defoe (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 40–54. In contending that readers had to give fictions a measure of credit and that buyers and sellers read bills of exchange as fictional narratives, Sandra Sherman, for example, argues that fiction and credit were homologous co-creators of an episteme of instability. Aligning herself with Foucault and the New Historicism, she attempts to refute Pocock’s argument that Defoe sought to ground opinion and passion upon experience rather than imagination. She also denies the importance of the New Science’s notions of verifiability in Defoe’s approach to the question of credit: Sherman, Finance and Fiction, p. 38. For a more nuanced approach, albeit one that also seems to underestimate experience in contextualizing credit, see Colin Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance, Preface, esp. p. xii. [Defoe], Review, Vol. VI, Bk. 14, No. 30, p. 119 (11 June 1709). [Defoe], An Essay upon Publick Credit … By Robert Harley, Esq. Printed 1710, in Sir Walter Scott (ed.), Somers Tracts (13 vols, 1809–15), p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., pp. 28–9. [Defoe], An Essay upon Loans, pp. 4–6. [Defoe], An Essay upon Publick Credit, p. 31. [Defoe], An Essay upon Loans, pp. 7–10. Ibid., pp. 12–15. Ibid., pp. 16–17. [Defoe], An Essay upon Publick Credit, pp. 31–2. [Defoe], An Essay upon Loans, p. 12. [Defoe], A General History of Trade (1713). Each of the four monthly instalments (June, July, August, September) had its own subtitle. Hereafter cited in the text with Roman numerals I–IV referring to each month respectively. Downie, Harley, p. 17. The first issue of the Mercator was published on 26 May 1713. The last issue of the Review appeared on 11 June after nine years of continual publication. [Defoe], Considerations upon the Eighth and Ninth Articles Of The Treaty of Commerce and Navigation (1713). Defoe’s view that any trade should be undertaken if economically advantageous was consistent with his disapproval of wartime embargoes, as he had argued against Lord Haversham in 1706; see Chapter 4. See also [Defoe], An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France (1713) and [Defoe], Some Thoughts upon the Subject of Commerce with France (1713). The distinction between the peace and the treaty’s eighth and ninth articles relating to commerce, loyalty to Harley, and disgust at the Whigs’ complicity in a new Occasional Conformity Bill, do not entirely acquit Defoe of venality in writing for the Tories in this period, but they help us see his motivations were more than mercenary ones. For a fair, if slightly harsher, assessment of Defoe’s activities in this period see P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe (2006), pp. 103–35. See also Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 343–4.



Notes 229

41. [Defoe to Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford], 19 October 1713: Healey, Letters, pp. 417–24. 42. See Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences, ch. 5. Vickers is correct in identifying certain elements of the text as Baconian but she does not examine the more immediate context or other important ideas and discourses operating within the text. 43. Thomas Burnet, The Theory of the Earth: containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of all things (1684–90), published in 1719 as The Sacred Theory of the Earth. 44. See also A General History of Trade, I, p. 25; II, p. 26. 45. See Chapters 1 and 4, above. 46. See Chapters 1 and 2, above. 47. H. M. Höpfl, ‘From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment’, JBS, 17 (1978): 38. 48. In A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6), Defoe emphasized the Roman empire’s disinterest in commerce in contradistinction to the Phoenician empire’s contributions to trade; see Chapter 8 below.

6

Robinson Crusoe: Orthodox Penitent

1. [Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner (1719); here cited from the first edition. 2. Hunter, Reluctant Pilgrim; George A. Starr, Defoe & Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, 1965); idem, Defoe & Casuistry (Princeton, 1971); James S. Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud (New Haven, 1987). 3. Ian P. Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (1957). 4. [Defoe], The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of his Life (1719) and [Defoe] Serious Reflections during the life and surprising adventures of Robinson Crusoe: with his vision of the angelick world (1720), cited here from the first editions. 5. The ‘Bangorian Controversy’ followed a provocative sermon by Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, delivered on 31 March 1717, which denied the Apostolic basis of the authority of the Church of England: see especially Andrew Edward Starkey, ‘The Bangorian Controversy, 1716–1721’ (Cambridge University PhD thesis, 2003). 6. The point at issue in the Salters’ Hall controversy was whether Nonconformist denominations could enforce subscription to written creeds; by a majority of four, the vote went against requiring subscription. An earlier but related contretemps occurred when Daniel Wilcox, a London Presbyterian minister, dismissed his assistant for Arminianism. Wilcox defended his action in an anonymous pamphlet, The Duty of holding fast the Form of sound Words (1717); it touched on an important area of Defoe’s concern, the stability and certainty of meaning. One estimate suggests that English Presbyterian ministers divided against subscription by 48 to 27: Roger Thomas, ‘The Salters’ Hall Watershed’, in Bolam, English Presbyterians, pp. 151–74, at p. 163 and R. Thomas, ‘The NonSubscription Controversy amongst Dissenters in 1719: the Salters’ Hall Debate’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 4 (1953): 162–8. Defoe’s alarm at the consequences for his own denomination was understandable.



230 Notes

7. Maximillian Novak, ‘Defoe, the Occult, and the Deist Offensive During the Reign of George I’, in J. A. Leo Lemay (ed.), Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment (Newark, 1987), p. 94. 8. Ronald Paulson, Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, 1700–1820 (New Brunswick, 1989), pp. 7, 34–5. 9. Ibid., pp. 9–10. 10. See P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe (2006), pp. 136–74, for the various political complexities in which Defoe operated in the latter part of the decade. 11. For Toland’s association with the Stanhope–Sunderland ministry, see Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003), introduction and ch. 6. The State Anatomy of Great Britain went through nine editions in 1717 and was followed by a supplement, The second part of the State Anatomy, that same year. Defoe responded to these with An Argument Proving that the Design of Employing and En[n]obling Foreigners, is a Treasonable Conspiracy (1717) and A Farther Argument against Ennobling Foreigners (1717). 12. Norman Sykes, ‘Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor’, in F. J. C. Hearnshaw (ed.), The Social and Political Ideas of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age, 1650–1750 (1926), pp. 112–55 and Church and State in England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1975), p. 426. 13. [Defoe], The Question Fairly Stated (1717); see also The Weakest Go to the Wall (1714) and An Essay on the History of Parties and Persecution in Britain (1711). 14. See Chapter 2 for Defoe and the occasional conformity debate. 15. For the best explanation of the relationship of politics, Christology, and the Church of England, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Within the Margins: the Definitions of Orthodoxy’, in Roger Lund (ed.), The Margins of Orthodoxy: Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 33–53. 16. [Defoe], An Argument Proving that the Design of Employing and Ennobling Foreigners, is a Treasonable Conspiracy (1717), pp. 7–8, 43, 74–5. Defoe’s title refers to the Whig ministry’s proposal to give peerages to two of George I’s Hanoverian courtiers in defiance of the Act of Settlement of 1701. 17. [Defoe], A Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadly (1717), pp. 7–8, 19–24, 28–9. 18. [Defoe], Eleven Opinions about Mr H[arle]y (1711), p. 9. 19. [Defoe], The Danger of Court Differences (1717), pp. 12, 28, 43–4. 20. [Defoe], The Old Whig and Modern Whig Revived (1717), pp. 7, 17. 21. For the history of [Giovanni Paolo Marana], Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (8 vols, 1692–4 and later reprints) and the relation of Defoe’s volume to his development as a novelist, see Novak, Defoe, pp. 528–36. 22. Justin Champion (ed.), John Toland, Nazarenus (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1999). See also Champion’s The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: the Church of England and its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992), ch. 4 and his Republican Learning, ch. 6. 23. Defoe had to have been working on the Letters before the publication of Toland’s Nazarenus but the work’s epistolary format might have given him great flexibility to insert new material. 24. [Defoe], A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris (London, 1718), Preface and p. 98. To most orthodox Christians, the Nazarenes were a heretical sect and their name became a term of opprobrium but Toland and others approved of the Nazarene faith. 25. Ibid., pp. 39–40.



Notes 231

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

Ibid., pp. 35, 39, 203, 221. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, pp. 109–10. [Defoe], A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris, p. 126. Ibid., pp. 81–4, 127–30. Ibid., pp. 60, 121, 124–5; see also pp. 129, 152, 155, and 162. Defoe explored this theme again in A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6), p. 84, discussed in Chapter 8 and in An Essay upon Literature (1726). [Defoe], A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris, pp. 152–6. Ibid., pp. 218–21. Margaret Jacob, Newtonians and The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (1981). [Defoe], A Continuation of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy at Paris, pp. 110–12. Although unattributed by Furbank and Owens, Maximillian Novak and others cite the following works as part of Defoe’s direct response to the Salters’ Hall controversy: A Letter to the Dissenters (1719) and Some Remarks upon the Late Differences among the Dissenting Ministers and Preachers (1719). [Defoe], A Letter to the Dissenters (1719), cited in Geoffrey Sill, The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 70–1; Novak, Defoe, p. 655. Although Novak does not delve deeply into questions of Christology and its relationship to Defoe’s eschatology, his scholarship has been crucial in establishing the threat Defoe felt from the rising tide of heterodoxy in this period. Sill, The Cure of the Passions, pp. 70–1. In these conclusions, Sill echoes those of Paula Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 402–3, 417–18. [Defoe], Robinson Crusoe, pp. 257, 261–2: ‘we had here the Word of God to read, and no farther off from his Spirit to instruct, than if we had been in England’. Ian Watt, in his hugely influential The Rise of the Novel, p. 89, argued that the Serious Reflections ‘cannot, as a whole, be taken seriously as part of the story’. Novak, Defoe, pp. 555, 562. Ilse Vickers, Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996); Robert Mayer, History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (Cambridge, 1997); Sill, Cure of the Passions. For other critiques of the ‘rise of the novel’ thesis and its application to works like Robinson Crusoe, see J. A. Downie, ‘The Making of the English Novel’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 9 (1996–7): 249–66; Homer Obed Brown, Institutions of the English Novel: From Defoe to Scott (Philadelphia, 1997). See Hunter, Reluctant Pilgrim, p. 20. Charles Gildon, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Mr. D___ De F____ in Paul Dottin (ed.), Robinson Crusoe Examin’d and Criticised (1923). [Defoe], Serious Reflections, Preface, n.p. See Hunter, Reluctant Pilgrim, p. 69. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, pp. 206–7. Although Crusoe’s Trinitarianism is not an issue for Hunter, his account of Crusoe’s conversion is the best treatment of this crucial episode. See his Reluctant Pilgrim, chs. 7 and 8. [Defoe], Robinson Crusoe, p. 113. John Richetti, Defoe’s Narratives: Situations and Structures (Oxford, 1975), p. 46. [Defoe], Robinson Crusoe, pp. 121, 132. For an excellent discussion of Friday’s natural religion see Timothy C. Blackburn, ‘Friday’s Religion: Its Nature and Importance in Robinson Crusoe’, ECS, 18 (1985): 360–82. [Defoe], Robinson Crusoe, pp. 257–61.



232 Notes

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

[Defoe], Farther Adventures, p. 165. Ibid., p. 188. Ibid., p. 171. Novak, Defoe, p. 561. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, pp. 133–6. Ibid., pp. 142–4. [Defoe], Farther Adventures, pp. 177–82. Crusoe remarks that some geographers believed Tartary to be the location of the book of Revelation’s Gog and Magog, two powers under Satan’s thrall (Farther Adventures, p. 328). The giant idol may have been inspired by the fourteen-foot wooden grotesques of Gog and Magog in Guildhall which as a Londoner Defoe would certainly have heard about if not seen. According to medieval legend, Gog and Magog were the last of a race of giants in Albion who were brought in chains to the palace of Brutus, now the site of Guildhall, to serve as the Trojan king’s porters. The original statues were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and replaced in 1708. Children of London were told that when the clock of St Paul’s struck twelve, the giants feasted in the hall. The 1708 statues were destroyed in the fire of 29 December 1940. [Defoe], Farther Adventures, pp. 345–6. Ibid., p. 365. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 153. Ibid., pp. 120–6. Vincenzo Cioffari, ‘Fortune, Fate and Chance’, in Philip P. Wiener (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York, 1973–4), II, pp. 225–36; Kenneth Clatterbaugh, The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1639–1739 (New York, 1999); Lorraine Daston, Classical Probability and the Enlightenment (Princeton, 1988); Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge, 1990); Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth Century England: a Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature (Princeton, 1983); idem, A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720 (Ithaca, 2000). [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 234. Ch. 5, ‘Of Listening to the Voice of Providence’, in [Defoe], Serious Reflections, pp. 204–38, at pp. 207–9. In addition to this chapter, Crusoe’s advice to heed the ‘secret Dictate’, the ‘secret Hints and Notices’ of Providence is repeated throughout the first and second volumes. See, for example, Robinson Crusoe, pp. 207–8, 296 and Farther Adventures, pp. 218–19, 286. [Defoe], Farther Adventures, pp. 297–8. Ibid., p. 298. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 139. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., p. 130. [Defoe], Farther Adventures, pp. 273, 292, 301. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 131. Ibid., pp. 253, 255. Ibid., pp. 239–40. Ibid., pp. 261, 263. Ibid., pp. 147, 149–50, 152, 155, 161. The May victory at Ramillies was celebrated at St Paul’s on 31 December 1706. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, pp. 163–6. Ibid., pp. 88–9. Ibid., p. 89.



Notes 233

84. ‘Of Atheistical and Prophane Discourse’, ibid., pp. 96–102, at pp. 97, 101–2. For the use of ridicule in heterodox thought see James A. Herrick, The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: the Discourse of Skepticism, 1680–1750 (Columbia, South Carolina, 1997), p. 7. See also John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule, Religion: the Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (1976). 85. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, pp. 90, 94 and passim. 86. Ibid., p. 81. 87. Ibid. pp. 94–5. 88. Ibid., pp. 87, 102–3. 89. Ibid., p. 104. 90. For the general sense of moral decline in the 1710s and 1720s, see Hoppit, Land of Liberty?, pp. 439, 473. 91. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 102. 92. Angus Ross, ‘Introduction’, in Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 9. This, the widely available Penguin edition, may stand for much academic writing of its time. 93. Ross, ‘Introduction’, p. 10. 94. [Defoe], Robinson Crusoe, pp. [ii–iii]; italics and Roman reversed.

7

The Perils of Consumption and the Decline of Family Government

1. [Defoe], The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), pp. 8–9. See Robinson Crusoe, pp. 28–9 for a similar appraisal of the condition of life in the lower, middling, and upper ranks of society. In the first volume, all providential signs were intended to countermand Crusoe’s wanderlust; in the second, Crusoe rationalized his wanderlust as a challenge which Providence demanded he embrace, one of several reasons why some critics accused Defoe of using Providence to suit his narrative purposes. 2. Hoppit, A Land of Liberty?, p. 338. The most important historical studies include John Carswell, The South Sea Bubble (1960); P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: a Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (1967); Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History; Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: the Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (1998); Julian Hoppit, ‘Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790’, HJ, 33 (1990): 305–22. For emphasis given by literary scholars, see Novak, Defoe, pp. 575–6; Colin Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance: Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994); Liz Bellamy, Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge, 1998); Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early EighteenthCentury England: a Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge, 1998); James Thompson, Novels of Value: Eighteenth-century Political Economy and the Novel (Durham, NC 1996); Gary Hentzi, ‘“An Itch of Gaming”: the South Sea Bubble and the Novels of Daniel Defoe’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 17 (1993): 32–45; Robert Markley, ‘“So Inexhaustible a Treasure of Gold”: Defoe, Capitalism, and the Romance of the South Seas’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 18 (1994): 148–67. 3. See [Defoe], The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1721), hereafter cited as Moll Flanders; [Defoe], The Fortunate Mistress (1724), hereafter cited as Roxana; John F. O’Brien, ‘The Character of Credit: Defoe’s “Lady Credit”, The Fortunate Mistress, and the Resources of Inconsistency in Early EighteenthCentury Britain’, ELH, 63 (1996): 603–31.



234 Notes

4. See, for example, Novak’s point about the formation of congers, or publishing groups in this period, in Defoe, pp. 566–7. 5. Whereas this chapter focuses on Defoe’s views about commerce and historical change during his own lifetime, Chapter 8 examines Defoe’s views about commerce in the ancient and modern world, and especially in England since the reign of Henry VII. Defoe’s ideas about the relationship between commerce and religion are discussed in Chapter 9. 6. For Defoe’s views on public credit, stockjobbing, and the South Sea Bubble in particular during this period see his pamphlets The Anatomy of Exchange Alley: or, a System of Stock-Jobbing (1719); The Chimera: or, the French way of Paying National Debts, laid open (1720); The Case of Mr Law, Truly Stated (1721). Defoe was also largely responsible for The Director, a twice-weekly periodical which he took over soon after its inception on 5 October 1720. It ran until 16 January 1721. For Defoe’s contribution to the debate on calicoes, see his The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers truly represented (1719); A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes and the Woollen and Silk Manufacture (1719); The Trade to India Critically and Calmly Consider’d (1720). Commissioned by the London Company of Weavers, Defoe published eighty-six issues of The Manufacturer, a periodical which ran from 30 October 1719 to 9 March 1721. 7. Quotations from The Freeholder’s Plea against Stock-Jobbing Elections of Parliament Men (1701), for example, appear in The Anatomy of Exchange Alley (1719). For a discussion of Defoe and the reformation of manners, see Chapter 1. 8. The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d (1719). 9. [Defoe], The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers (1719), p. 19 and passim. 10. Ibid., p. 37. See also [Defoe] A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes and the Woollen and Silk Manufacture (1719), Introduction, p. 24 and passim. 11. Ibid., pp. 6–7. 12. Ibid., pp. 24–5. 13. Andrew Morton, Every-Body’s Business, is No-Body’s Business (1725). During the 1720s Defoe published several pamphlets in the guise of the curmudgeonly persona of ‘Andrew Morton’. 14. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. G. D. H. Cole (2 vols, 1968), pp. 280–2, 488. 15. The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d (1719), pp. 11–13. 16. [Defoe], The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers, pp. 29–30. 17. See below, pp. 149–50, 153–4. 18. The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d, p. 6. 19. [Defoe], The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers, p. 11. 20. Ibid., p. 38. 21. Roberts published some works by authors of other persuasions, including Francis Atterbury and William Wake. Nevertheless, he was involved as printer or bookseller with a remarkable list of freethinkers in these years: John Asgill, The Succession of the House of Hanover Vindicated (1714); Thomas Chubb, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted (1715); idem, Two Enquiries (1717); Thomas Gordon, The Character of an Independent Whig (1719); Thomas Morgan, The Grounds and Principles of Christian Communion Consider’d (1720); idem, A Refutation of the False Principles (1722); Matthew Tindal, The Defection Consider’d (1717); idem, A Defence of our Present Happy Establishment (1722); John Toland, The StateAnatomy of Great Britain (1717); idem, Nazarenus (1718); idem, Tetradymus (1720); John Trenchard, A Collection of Cato’s Political Letters (1721); William



Notes 235

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Whiston, A Vindication of the Sibylline Oracles (1715); idem, The Cause of the Deluge Demonstrated (1716); idem, Mr. Whiston’s Account of Dr. Sacheverell’s Proceedings (1719); Thomas Woolston, The Exact Fitness of the Time, in which Christ was Manifested in the Flesh (1722). Roberts also published titles on the Salters’ Hall controversy. A Further Examination of the Weavers Pretences (1719), pp. 10–11. [Defoe], A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes (1719); [John Asgill], A Brief Answer to A Brief State of the Question (1719). For Defoe’s earlier views on Asgill, see Chapter 3. [Defoe], An Appendix, In Return to Mr. Asgill’s Tract, Entitled A Brief Answer, &c. in A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes (3rd edn, 1720), pp. 41–2. It was rumoured that Asgill was also the author of the periodical, The British Merchant, with which Defoe engaged. [Defoe], Tour, p. 81. Scholars determined to use episodes like the South Sea Bubble to condemn credit economies in general would do well to examine the far greater instability of economies lacking mechanisms of credit. [Defoe], The Complete English Tradesman (1726 [for 1725]), p. 409. Ibid., pp. 225–6, 408–9. See Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture, 1696–1722 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 99–100, 107; Jacob, Newtonians, p. 221. David Blewett (ed.), Daniel Defoe, Roxana: the Fortunate Mistress (New York,1987), pp. 207–12, 301–3. For the view that the novel reflected a ‘reconceptualization of money from treasure to capital’ see Thompson, Models of Value, p. 2 and passim. For an insightful reading of other aspects of finance and its cultural meanings in Roxana, see D. Christopher Gabbard, ‘The Dutch Wives’ Good Husbandry: Defoe’s Roxana and Financial Literacy’, ECS, 37 (2004): 237–51. [Defoe], The Anatomy of Exchange Alley … by a Jobber (1719), pp. 3, 15, 26–7. The financiers Defoe cited by their initials were Jacob Sawbridge, Sir George Caswell, and Elias Turner. Ibid., pp. 35, 37–8, 41. Ibid., pp. 3–4. Ibid., p. 10. For Whiston, see especially Chapter 9 below. [Defoe], The Chimera (1719), pp. 5–6, 61–2, 76. Ibid., pp. 1–7. [Defoe], The Anatomy of Exchange Alley, pp. 13, 16, 42, 46–7. Ibid., pp. 5, 45. [Defoe], Tour, pp. 90, 160, 338–9. Robert Mayer, History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (Cambridge, 1997). [Defoe], The Compleat English Gentleman, ed. Karl D. Bülbring (1890), p. xiii; [Defoe], A System of Magick (1726), pp. 235–6. For Defoe’s earlier analysis see Chapter 1. Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eightenth-Century England: Household, Kinship and Patronage (Cambridge, 2001). Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England’, HJ, 47 (2004): 875–96. See, for example, Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (1977). For a critique of Stone’s use of Defoe’s Family Instructors, see



236 Notes

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74.

8

Laura A. Curtis, ‘A Case Study of Defoe’s Domestic Conduct Manuals Suggested by The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800’, Studies in EighteenthCentury Culture,10 (1981): 409–28. [Defoe], The Family Instructor (1715), pp. 1–2, 258, 260–1. [Defoe], The Family Instructor In Two Parts … Vol. II (1718), pp. iii–iv. [Defoe], The Family Instructor [Vol. I], p. 84. [Defoe], Religious Courtship (1722), p. 290. Ibid., pp. 296, 299. Ibid., p. 306. For two among many sharply differing approaches to this text, see Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (Berkeley, 1989) and Sandra Sherman, Finance and Fictionality in the Early Eighteenth Century: Accounting for Defoe (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 3. [Defoe], Complete English Tradesman, pp. vi–viii. Hoppit, Land of Liberty?, pp. 316, 439; Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 8–13, 269–301. [Defoe], Complete English Tradesman, pp. 134–6. [Defoe], Every Body’s Business is No Body’s Business (1725), p. 7. Ibid., pp. 13–14. Ibid., pp. 15–23. [Defoe], Religious Courtship, pp. 354–5. [Defoe], Complete English Tradesman, p. 20. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., pp. 185–90. Ibid, pp. 190–6. Ibid., pp. 185–6. Ibid., pp. 191–6. Ibid., pp. 128, 134–6, 143–4. Ibid., pp. 56–7, 68, 348–52. Ibid., pp. 119–20, 127–8, 143. For the importance of the guide literature tradition in Defoe’s works, see Hunter, Reluctant Pilgrim, p. 45 and idem, Before Novels: the Cultural Contexts of Eighteenthcentury English Fiction (New York, 1990). [Defoe], Complete English Tradesman, pp. 61, 64. Ibid., pp. 48–9, 152. Ibid., pp. 365–6. Ibid., pp. 368–72, 386–7.

Defoe’s Historical Vision: Commerce and Gentility in the 1720s

1. [Defoe], A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), ed. G. D. H. Cole (1968). There are many examples of this; the best, perhaps, is his praise of Wilton and the Earl of Pembroke, pp. 193–6. Of course Defoe would have approved of Pembroke, ex President of the Royal Society and Commissioner of the Treaty of Union, 1707. 2. One scholar appeals to Benedict Anderson’s idea of nations as ‘imagined communities’ but nevertheless advances a much older picture of the Tour as ‘a vehicle advancing and articulating the transition from one cultural system to another – from a dynastic conception of nationhood to a geographically based con-



Notes 237

3. 4. 5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

ception, from a vertical and hierarchical world-view to a horizontal and hence more egalitarian one, and, on the political plane, from an ideology of royal absolutism as expressed, for example, in Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha … to one of republicanism as expressed in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690)’; Defoe ‘celebrates … a Lockean and egalitarian landscape’: Terence N. Bowers, ‘Great Britain Imagined: Nation, Citizen, and Class in Defoe’s Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain’, Prose Studies, 16 (1993): 148–78, at pp. 150, 152, 161. Another writer similarly invokes Benedict Anderson to claim that Defoe presents a community that ‘downplays the importance of existing social stratification and economic inequalities, focusing on the ostensibly egalitarian participation of every individual in the whole’: Betty A. Schnellenberg, ‘Imagining the Nation in Defoe’s A Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain’, ELH, 62 (1995): 295–311, at p. 296. Such Whiggish interpretations, however theorized, can no longer be sustained following the work of historians of political thought in recent decades. [Defoe], The Complete English Tradesman (1726 [for 1725]), p. 377. Ibid., pp. 368–73. Ibid., pp. 375–6, 386. Ibid., pp. 380–3. Defoe conveniently neglected to mention that Ezekiel’s remarks about the glory of Tyre were made in the context of prophesying its ruin: Ezekiel 26–8. The first three instalments of A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6) were published in October, November, and December of 1725 with the fourth instalment appearing in May 1726. The work was republished as a whole with an index in December 1726. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce (2nd edn, 1730); Facsimile Text Edition, Reprints of Economic Classics (New York, 1967), p. 48. [Defoe], Tour, p. 3; see also Ilse Vickers, chapter 8: ‘Defoe’s Tour: a Natural history of Man and his Activities’, in Defoe and the New Sciences (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 151–76. [Defoe], Tour, p. 3. Ibid., pp. 49, 114–17, 186. Ibid., p. 1. Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (Edinburgh, 1985), especially pp. 93–117. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, III, p. 164; II, p. 92. Ibid., pp. 134–5 and ch. 12, pp. 133–52, passim. [Defoe], Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 337–41. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, p. 294 and ch. 22, pp. 287–8, passim. These themes are further explored in Chapter 9. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, p. 28. For theological reasons, more fully explored in his An Essay upon Literature (1726), Defoe was deeply committed to the notion that the art of writing was given to Moses directly by God. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, pp. 42, 68, 78–9; chs. 1–8 passim. Ibid., pp. 99, 104, 125–6, chapters 8–11 passim. In his Plan of the English Commerce, Defoe repeated his condemnation of the Romans, calling them ‘those Destroyers and Enemies of all Improvement, Commerce, and Navigation’, p. 314. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, p. 124. Ibid., p. 123.



238 Notes

25. Charles G. Salas has argued that Raleigh used his pro-Carthaginian account of the Punic wars to criticize James I, his political enemies Charles and Thomas Howard, and England’s policies toward Spain and later France. See his ‘Ralegh and the Punic Wars’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 57 (1996): 195–215. 26. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, p. 169. 27. Ibid., pp. 171–3. 28. Ibid., p. 186. 29. Ibid., pp. 205–6. 30. See section iii below. 31. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, pp. 237–8, 294. 32. For earlier references see, for example, the Review (24 January 1706 and 26 February 1709); later analyses appear in A Brief Deduction of the Original, Progress, and Immense Greatness of the British Woollen Manufacture (1727) and his unfinished manuscript, Of Royall Education. 33. Earlier works of Defoe’s contained citations to Bacon’s Historie of the Raign of King Henry the Seventh and Harrington’s Oceana. The sale catalogue of Defoe’s library suggests that he owned several works by both Bacon and Harrington. Oceana was not listed but two copies of Bacon’s Historie were. 34. Karl D. Bülbring (ed.), Of Royall Educacion: a Fragmentary Treatise by Daniel Defoe (London, 1895), p. 15. This unfinished work was probably composed after June 1727 and left in manuscript at Defoe’s death in 1731. 35. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 47, 121. 36. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, pp. 205–6, 210; A Plan of the English Commerce, p. 46. 37. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 45–6. 38. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, p. 211. As discussed in Chapter 5, in A General History of Trade (1713), Defoe had credited Edward III for being the first king to prohibit the export of raw wool. 39. [Defoe], Of Royall Educacion, pp. 45, 32–3. 40. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 126–7. 41. [Defoe], Of Royall Educacion, p. 43. 42. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, pp. 208–10. 43. Ibid., p. 212. 44. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 130–2. 45. Ibid., pp. xiii–xv, 128. 46. Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early-Modern Britain (Yale, 2000), pp. 5–6. 47. [Defoe], A Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 48–50. 48. Ibid., pp. 50–5. 49. Ibid., pp. ix–xiv. 50. Ibid., pp. 6–13, 80–5. 51. Karl D. Bülbring (ed.), The Compleat English Gentleman by Daniel Defoe (1890), pp. 257, 262. 52. Ibid., pp. 13, 257. 53. Ibid., pp. 16–18. 54. Ibid., pp. 6, 12, 20–1. 55. Ibid., pp. 3, 268. 56. Ibid., p. 258. 57. Ibid., pp. xvi, 7, 10, 85–90, 101, 119, 237. 58. Ibid., pp. 60–9, 110, 147–9. A less damaging assumption but one which perhaps affected Defoe most personally was the status accorded to classical versus modern



Notes 239

66.

learning. It was true that some gentlemen had been schooled in Greek and Latin and Defoe did not wish to disparage these subjects. He did complain though that someone with widespread knowledge of philosophy, history, geography, and divinity but no schooling in the ‘ancient heathen writers’ (someone like himself it may be added) was considered ‘NO SCHOLLAR’ while men who could quote a few Latin phrases often were: ibid., pp. 197–231, at pp. 200, 223. The ‘battle of the books’ was merely a skirmish in Defoe’s larger campaign to make the gentry more meritocratic. [Defoe], Compleat English Gentleman, pp. 174–7, 248, 253. Defoe emphasized this point in the Tour’s survey of Scotland. See for example pp. 734–5, 786–7; see also Defoe, Plan of the English Commerce, pp. 89–90. [Defoe], Compleat English Gentleman, pp. 174–9. Ibid., pp. 8, 64–6. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., pp. 3–5, 16–17, 42–3. As Ronald Paulson has argued, the iconoclastic process of the early eighteenth century involved the use of ‘ugly’ or ‘transgressive’ materials in the ‘re-enlivening of dead matter’, adjectives which fit gentry conceptions of those wealthy merchants and tradesmen anxious to enter their ranks. See his Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, 1700–1820, pp. 7, 19. [Defoe], Compleat English Gentleman, pp. 18, 145.

9

The Devil and Daniel Defoe: History in a Heterodox Age

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

1. Maximillian Novak, ‘Defoe, the Occult, and the Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I’, in J. A. Leo Lemay (ed.), Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge (Newark, 1987), pp. 93–108. 2. Stephen D. Snobelen, ‘Whiston, William (1667–1752)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). As a fixture in London’s coffee-house scene, Whiston became a far greater irritant to Defoe than he might have been had he remained at Cambridge. Defoe’s curiously negative attitutude towards solving the problem of calculating longitude can only be explained by the fact that Whiston was behind many efforts to do so. See [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements (1725–6), p. vii. 3. Especially important was Emlyn’s debate with David Martin about the authenticity of the Johannine Comma. This was an interpolation in the text of 1 John 5:7 intended to give support to the doctrine of the Trinity. Defoe sided with Martin in defence of this passage in his New Family Instructor (1727). His acceptance of the Johannine Comma is another indication of Defoe’s fiercely orthodox position about the Trinity. See pp. 207–8. 4. Two of these authors’ most controversial publications were Samuel Clarke, The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) and Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Freethinking (1713). 5. See Backscheider, Defoe, pp. 520–5. Rodney Baine’s study, Daniel Defoe and the Supernatural (Athens, GA, 1968), acknowledges the Deistic debate of the 1720s but it emphasizes Defoe’s interest in the supernatural as a Puritan preoccupation with shoring up the belief in special providence and ignores soteriology. Novak rightly identifies the immediate polemical context in which these texts were written (‘Defoe, the Occult, and the Deist Offensive during the Reign of George I’) but confusingly suggests that Defoe ‘may have been as much concerned with the moral issues raised by the deists as with religious principle’ (Novak, Defoe, p. 655).



240 Notes

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

Defoe, Jure Divino (1706), Dedication. This work is the subject of Chapter 3. [Defoe], The Political History of the Devil (1726), p. 46. [Defoe], An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727), p. 42. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 321. Ibid., pp. 48–52. Ibid., p. 226. This was the central thesis of Defoe’s History and Reality of Apparitions. Defoe had earlier explored the importance of learning to listen to the world of angelic spirits in the Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720), discussed in Chapter 6. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, pp. 3–4, 150. Defoe, Jure Divino, Bk. VII, p. 14. Milton’s fame would certainly have been known to Defoe since childhood. For the last eleven years of his life, Milton lived a few hundred yards from the Foe household; he died in 1674 when Defoe was a boy of fourteen. Christopher Hill credited Defoe with being ‘theologically sophisticated enough to spot the anti-Trinitarianism in Paradise Lost which most critics failed to notice for another 200 years, and which some still obstinately deny’. See his ‘Robinson Crusoe’, in History Workshop Journal, 10 (1980), 6–24. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, pp. 69–75. Ibid., pp. 64–8. Ibid., pp. 57–8, 88–93. Ibid., pp. 110–12. Ibid., pp. 103–6, 115, 134–40. For an excellent summary of these schemes, see Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990). [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 142. [Defoe], A General History of Discoveries and Improvements, pp. 12–15. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 145. Ibid., pp. 146–53. Ibid., pp. 151–7. See for example, Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Freethinking (1713); William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722). [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 159 [mispaginated as p. 157]. Toland made this charge against priestcraft in his Christianity not Mysterious (1696) and numerous other works as did Anthony Collins, for example, in Priestcraft in Perfection (1709) and An Historical and Critical Essay, on the Thirtynine Articles of the Church of England (1724). [Defoe], A System of Magick (London: J. Roberts, 1727 [for 1726]) here cited from the reissue (London: Andrew Millar, 1728), pp. 1–2, 7, 44, 46, 48. For Defoe’s Baconian credentials see Introduction and Chapter 1. R. K. Webb has argued that this Baconian separation of matters of science from matters of faith was a minority opinion by the end of the seventeenth century. See his ‘The Emergence of Rational Dissent’, in Knud Haakonssen (ed.), Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 18–19 and passim. Defoe, System of Magick, pp. 52–3, 62. Contrasting the wording of Genesis 41:8 and that of Exodus 7:8, Defoe drew significance from the fact that the first pharaoh called on the aid of his magicians and wise men while the later pharaoh (Ramses II) summoned wise men and sorcerers. Defoe, System of Magick, p. 194.



Notes 241

33. Thomas Sergeant (ed.), The Works of Walter Moyle, none of which were Ever before Published (1726). See Chapter 1 for my discussion of Defoe, Trenchard, and the standing army debate. Toland is discussed in Chapters 1, 3, and 6. For a modern edition of Moyle’s Essay showing its importance to the republican tradition, see Caroline Robbins, Two English Republican Tracts (Cambridge, 1969). Moyle employed James Harrington’s dictum that the balance of dominion changes with the balance of property. 34. Moyle, Essay, in Sergeant (ed.), Works, pp. 11–24. See also Blair Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution’, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl, and Blair Worden (eds), History and Imagination (Oxford, 1981). Attention to the religious dimension of republicanism in the eighteenth century is explored in J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1660–1832 (Cambridge, 2000) and Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: the Church of England and its Enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992), especially chs. 6 and 7. 35. For explanation of the significance of this episode, see Chapter 6 above. 36. Defoe, System of Magick, pp. 198–9, 202. 37. Ibid., pp. 195–6. 38. Ibid., p. 237. For Defoe’s views on the South Sea Bubble, see Chapter 7. 39. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, pp. 195–6, 210. 40. Ibid., pp. 200–2. 41. Defoe, System of Magick, pp. 352–3. Though heterodoxy within the Anglican and Protestant Dissenting communities remained his chief target in the 1720s, Defoe was keen to maintain his criticism of popish idolatry as well. 42. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, pp. 5–6. 43. Spain and Austria signed the First Treaty of Vienna in March 1725, a move which provoked the British into hastily arranging the Alliance of Hanover that September. See Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (Edinburgh, 1985). Defoe addressed the actions of Spain and Austria in this period in The Evident Approach of a War (1727) and The Evident Advantages to Great Britain and its Allies from the Approaching War (1727). As his Plan of the English Commerce also makes clear, Defoe was more interested in the benefits that war might bring to British trade in the New World than in using it to protect British commercial interests in Europe. For Defoe’s views about war and trade in the 1720s, see Chapter 8. 44. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, pp. 231–4. 45. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, II, p. 2 and passim. 46. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 234. 47. Ibid., p. 198. 48. Ibid., p. 363. 49. Ibid., pp. 338–9, 387. 50. Ibid., pp. 225, 333–5, 389. 51. Ibid., pp. 336–7, 353, 387. 52. [Defoe], System of Magick, pp. 79–80. 53. [Defoe], Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, p. 44. For the origins and importance of Freemasonry in this period, see Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London, 1981) and her Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York, 1991). In The Political History of the Devil (pp. 3–4), Defoe referred to the ‘red hot club’ of the Duke of Wharton, the most notorious libertine of his day. Before fleeing for the continent in 1725, Wharton founded the Hellfire Club (not to be confused with Francis Dashwood’s eponymous group) which was reputed to engage in satanic rituals. See Lawrence B.



242 Notes

54.

55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

Smith, ‘Wharton, Philip James, Duke of Wharton and Jacobite Duke of Northumberland (1698–1731)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). Tony Claydon, ‘The Sermon, the “Public Sphere” and the Political Culture of Late Seventeenth-century England’, in Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter McCulloch (eds), The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600–1750 (Manchester, 2001), pp. 208–34. [Defoe], System of Magick, pp. 124–5. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA, 1989). There is a growing critical literature about the accuracy of Habermas’s analysis of eighteenth-century Britain. See, for example, Christian Thorne, ‘Thumbing our Nose at the Public Sphere: Satire, the Market, and the Invention of Literature’, PMLA, 116 (May 2001): 531–44; J. A. Downie, ‘The Making of the English Novel’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 9 (1997): 250–66. In The Social Life of Coffee: the Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (New Haven, 2005), Brian Cowan adopts a sceptical and nuanced approach to the Habermasian public sphere. Defoe, System of Magick, pp. 337–8. Ibid., pp. 339–40. Defoe frequently condemned these arenas as corrupting of youth, especially young ladies. See, for example, his Tour, pp. 52, 69, 87, 128, 186, 217, 638. By ‘light-heeled’ Defoe may have meant ‘light-footed’ or graceful in dancing but in this context his meaning was probably more akin to the expression ‘round-heeled’ indicating an inability to remain upright or a tendency to sexual availability. Defoe, System of Magick, pp. 55–6. In this passage, Defoe also refers to Thomas Emlyn, one of the first Unitarians, who was active in Whiston’s Society for Promoting Primitive Christianity. Defoe’s frequent comments about astronomy, oracles, and other matters in both The Political History of the Devil and A System of Magick confirm that Whiston was one of his primary targets. [Defoe], Political History of the Devil, p. 343. [Defoe], System of Magick, pp. 56, 243. Ibid., pp. 235, 241. Ibid., pp. 237, 239, 242. Ibid., p. 243. Ibid., pp. 245–6. Ibid., pp. 335–6. See, for example, Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713). Brett C. McInelly and David Paxman argue that there are formal, rhetorical, and thematic links between this novel and The Political History of the Devil in ‘Dating the Devil: Daniel Defoe’s Roxana and The Political History of the Devil’, Christianity and Literature, 53 (2004): 435–55. [Defoe], Serious Reflections, p. 325. [Defoe], System of Magick, pp. 336–7. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, I, p. 7. For Defoe’s reactions to Salters’ Hall, see Chapters 6 and 7. For a survey of the historiography of politeness, see Lawrence E. Klein, ‘Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century’, HJ, 45 (2002): 869–98. For a concise description of Addison’s conception of sociability, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform’, in Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 236–7. For republican civil religion, see Justin Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken (Cambridge, 1992), especially ch. 6.



Notes 243

74. In July 1726, in order to marry a Spanish maid of honour, Wharton converted to Roman Catholicism, adding another suspect footnote to a life of political, financial, and moral scandal. See above, n. 53. For Toland’s interest in Islam, see Chapter 6. 75. [Defoe], A New Family Instructor; in Familiar Discourses between a Father and his Children, On the most Essential Points of the Christian Religion (1727), p. vi. 76. Ibid., pp. ix, 4. For a discussion of the first two volumes of the Family Instructor, see Chapter 7. This had been a successful genre in the past for Defoe. Ten editions of the first Family Instructor (1715) were published before Defoe’s death in 1731 and over twenty editions appeared in the eighteenth century, including four editions in America. The Family Instructor, Volume II (1718) was less popular but A New Family Instructor (1727) sold well. Although this last volume was set among family of a ‘Substantial Tradesman’ in London, Laura Curtis has suggested Defoe intended these manuals not just for Dissenting Londoners but the Anglican squirearchy as well: Laura Curtis, ‘A Case Study of Defoe’s Domestic Conduct Manuals Suggested by The Family Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800’, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 10 (1981): 409–28. 77. [Defoe], New Family Instructor, pp. 254, 1. In several dialogues the father and children expressed their annoyance at the frequency with which they were confronted by heterdox opinions. See pp. 279, 281, 286. 78. For a discussion of Defoe’s analysis of the decline of household government, see Chapter 7. A New Family Instructor hints at the problem by suggesting that the apprentices often resisted the twice-weekly evening catechism: p. 5. 79. [Defoe], A New Family Instructor, pp. 11–14. 80. Ibid., pp. 30–1, 180. 81. Ibid., p. 21. 82. Ibid., p. 25. 83. Ibid., pp. 61, 63–4, 113. 84. Ibid., pp. 174–9, 227, 240. 85. Ibid., pp. 260, 279, 292–3, 330, 333–6. 86. Since 1715 Emlyn had actively disputed the authenticity of the Johannine Comma in several pamphlets, engaging with a number of divines on this issue and with David Martin specifically in 1719. See especially, Thomas Emlyn, A Full Inquiry into the original authority of that text, 1 John v. 7 … Humbly addressd to both Houses of Convocation now assembled (1715); An answer to Mr. Martin’s Critical Dissertation on 1 John v. 7 … (1719); A reply to Mr Martin’s Examination of the answer to his Dissertation on 1 John v. 7 (1720); and David Martin, A Critical Dissertation upon the seventh verse of the fifth chapter of St. John’s First Epistle … translated into English (1719); An Examination of Mr. Emlyn’s Answer to the Dissertation … (1719); The Genuineness of the Text of the First Epistle of Saint John, Chap. v. 7, There are Three in Heaven, &c … Translated from the French (1722). The importance of scholarship concerning the Johannine Comma in the early-modem period is discussed, for example, in Joseph M. Levine, ‘Erasmus and the Problem of the Johannine Comma’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 58 (1997): 573–96. 87. See above, Chapter 3.

Conclusion 1. Daniel 12:4.



244 Notes

The place of publication is London unless otherwise noted. Since full titles can now easily be found on www.copac.ac.uk, and since Defoe titles are also available in P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Critical Bibliography of Daniel Defoe (1998), short titles only are provided here for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts. Works cited as by Defoe are either signed by or convincingly attributed to him.

Primary sources [Abercromby, Patrick], The Advantages of the Act of Security, compar’d with these of the intended union: founded on the revolution principles publish’d by Mr. Daniel De Foe (Edinburgh, 1706) Addison, Joseph, The Evidences of the Christian Religion (1730) Addison, Joseph, The Free-holder (1716) [Anon.] The Establishment of the Church, the Preservation of the State: Shewing the Reasonableness of a Bill against Occasional Conformity (1702) [Anon.], A Further Examination of the Weavers Pretences (1719) [Anon.], Reflections upon the Late Great Revolution (1689) [sometimes attributed to Defoe] [Anon.], Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet intitul’d, The Two Great Questions Consider’d (1700) [Anon.], Some Further Considerations about a Standing Army (1699) [Anon.], The History of the Kentish Petition, Answer’d Paragraph by Paragraph (1701) [Anon.], The Old Whig and Modern Whig Truly Represented (1702) [Anon.], The Weavers’ Pretences Examin’d (1719) Asgill, John, A Brief Answer to A Brief State of the Question (1719) Asgill, John, An Argument Proving, That … Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life without passing through Death (1700; repr. 1715) Asgill, John, Several Assertions prov’d, in Order to Create another Species of Money than Gold and Silver (1696) [Asgill, John], A Brief Answer to A Brief State of the Question between the printed and painted callicoes (1719) [Atwood, William], The Superiority and Direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown of England, over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland … asserted (1704) Bacon, Sir Francis, The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh (1622) Burnet, Thomas, The Theory of the Earth: containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of all things (1684–90), republished in 1719 as The Sacred Theory of the Earth Calamy, Edmund, An Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History of His Life and Times (1702) Chubb, Thomas, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted (1715) Chubb, Thomas, The Supremacy of the Father Vindicated (1718) Chubb, Thomas, Two Enquiries (1717) Clarke, Samuel, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1711) Clarke, Samuel, A Letter to Mr. Dodwell (1706) Clarke, Samuel, The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) 245



Select Bibliography

[Clement, Simon], Faults on Both Sides (1710) Clerk, Sir John, Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, ed. John M. Gray, Scottish Historical Society Publication, 13 (Edinburgh, 1892) Collins, Anthony, A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) Collins, Anthony, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) Collins, Anthony, A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (1717) Collins, Anthony, An Essay Concerning the Use of Reason in Propositions (1707) Collins, Anthony, An Historical and Critical Essay, on the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1724) Collins, Anthony, Priestcraft in Perfection (1710) Collins, Anthony, The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Consider’d (1726) [Collins, Anthony], A Discourse of Free-Thinking: occasion’d by the rise and growth of a sect call’d free-thinkers (1713) Davenant, Charles, Essays upon I. The Ballance of Power. II. The Right of Making War, Peace, and Alliances. III. Universal Monarchy (1701) Davenant, Charles, Essays upon Peace at Home, and War Abroad (1704) Davies, Sir John, A Discovery of the True Causes why Ireland was never entirely Subdued, nor brought under Obedience of the Crowne of England, until the beginning of His Maiesties happie Raigne (1612) Defoe, An Account of the Conduct of Robert Earl of Oxford (1715) Defoe, An Account of the Great and Generous Actions of James Butler ([1715]) Defoe, The Address (1704) Defoe, The Advantages of Peace and Commerce (1729) Defoe, Advice to All Parties (1705) Defoe, Advice to the People of Great Britain (1714) Defoe, The Anatomy of Exchange-Alley (1719) Defoe, And What if the Pretender should come? (1713) Defoe, An Answer to a Question that No Body thinks of (1713) Defoe, An Appeal to Honour and Justice (1715) Defoe, An Argument Proving that the Design of Employing and Enobling Foreigners (1717) Defoe, An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army, with Consent of Parliament, is not Inconsistent with a Free Government (1698) Defoe, Augusta Triumphans (1728) Defoe, A Brief Account of the Present State of the African Trade (1713) Defoe, A Brief Deduction of the Original, Progress, and Immense Greatness of the British Woollen Manufacture (1727) Defoe, A Brief Explanation of a Late Pamphlet, entituled, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1703) Defoe, A Brief Reply to the History of Standing Armies in England (1698) Defoe, A Brief State of the Question, between the Printed and Painted Callicoes (1719); and idem, ‘An Appendix, In Return to Mr. Asgill’s Tract, Entituled A Brief Answer, &c.’ in Defoe, A Brief State of the Question (3rd edn, 1720) Defoe, A Brief Survey of the Legal Liberties of the Dissenters (1714) Defoe, The British Visions (1711) Defoe, Caledonia (1706) Defoe, The Case of Mr Law, Truly Stated (1721) Defoe, A Challenge of Peace, Address’d to the Whole Nation (1703) Defoe, The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley (1697) Defoe, The Chimera (1720 [for 1719]) Defoe, The Compleat English Gentleman ([1728–9]), ed. Karl D. Bülbring (1890)



246 Select Bibliography

Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (1726 [for 1725]) Defoe, The Conduct of Christians made the Sport of Infidels (1717) Defoe, The Conduct of Parties in England (1712) Defoe, Conjugal Lewdness (1727) Defoe, Considerations upon the Eighth and Ninth Articles of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation (1713) Defoe, The Consolidator (1705) Defoe, A Continuation of Letters written by a Turkish Spy at Paris (1718) Defoe, Counter Queries (1710) Defoe, The Danger of Court Differences (1717) Defoe, The Danger of the Protestant Religion Consider’d (1701) Defoe, A Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadly (1717) Defoe, A Dialogue between a Dissenter and the Observator (1703) Defoe, The Dissenter Misrepresented and Represented [1704?], in Defoe, A Second Volume of the Writings (1705), pp. 344–63 Defoe, The Dissenters Answer to the High-Church Challenge (1704) Defoe, The Dissenters in England Vindicated [Edinburgh, 1707] Defoe, The Double Welcome (1705) Defoe, The Dyet of Poland (1705) Defoe, An Elegy on the Author of the True-Born-English-Man (1704) Defoe, Eleven Opinions about Mr. H_____y (1711) Defoe, An Enquiry into Occasional Conformity (1702) Defoe, An Enquiry into the Case of Mr. Asgil’s General Translation (1704 [for 1703]) Defoe, An Enquiry into the Danger and Consequences of a War with the Dutch (1712) Defoe, An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, in Cases of Preferment (1697 [for 1698]) Defoe, An Essay at a Plain Exposition of that Difficult Phrase A Good Peace (1711) Defoe, An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with Scotland … Part I (1706) Defoe, An Essay at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with Scotland … Part II (1706) Defoe, An Essay, at Removing National Prejudices against a Union with England. Part III ([Edinburgh], 1706) Defoe, An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727) Defoe, An Essay on the History of Parties (1711) Defoe, An Essay on the Regulation of the Press (1704) Defoe, An Essay on the South-Sea Trade (1712 [for 1711]) Defoe, An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France (1713) Defoe, An Essay upon Buying and Selling of Speeches (1716) Defoe, An Essay upon Literature (1726) Defoe, An Essay upon Loans (1710) Defoe, An Essay upon Projects (1697) Defoe, An Essay upon Publick Credit (1710), in Sir Walter Scott (ed.), Somers Tracts (13 vols, 1809–15) [there misattributed to Robert Harley] Defoe, An Essay upon the Trade to Africa (1711) Defoe, Every-Body’s Business, is No-Body’s Business (1725) Defoe, The Evident Advantages to Great Britain and its Allies from the Approaching War (1727) Defoe, The Evident Approach of a War (1727) Defoe, Fair Payment No Spunge (1717) Defoe, The Family Instructor (1715)



Select Bibliography 247

Defoe, The Family Instructor. Vol II (1718) Defoe, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) Defoe, A Farther Argument against Ennobling Foreigners (1717) Defoe, The Felonious Treaty (1711) Defoe, A Fifth Essay, at Removing National Prejudices ([Edinburgh, 1707]) Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress (1724) Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (1721 [for 1722]) Defoe, A Fourth Essay, at Removing National Prejudices ([Edinburgh], 1706) Defoe, The Free-Holders Plea against Stock-Jobbing Elections of Parliament Men (1701) Defoe, A Friendly Epistle by way of Reproof (1715) Defoe, A Friendly Rebuke to one Parson Benjamin (1719) Defoe, A Further Search into the Conduct of the Allies (1712) Defoe, A General History of Discoveries and Improvements ([1725–6]) Defoe, A General History of Trade (1713) Defoe, Giving Alms no Charity (1704) Defoe, The Great Law of Subordination Consider’d (1724) Defoe, The High-Church Legion: or the Memorial Examin’d (1705) Defoe, An Historical Account of the Bitter Sufferings, and Melancholly Circumstances of the Episcopal Church in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1707) Defoe, The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Col. Jacque (1723 [for 1722]) Defoe, The History of the Kentish Petition (1701) Defoe, The History of the Union of Great Britain (1709) Defoe, A Humble Proposal to the People of England (1729) Defoe, A Hymn to Peace (1706) Defoe, A Hymn to the Mob (1715) Defoe, A Hymn to the Pillory (1703) Defoe, A Hymn to Victory (1704) Defoe, Imperial Gratitude (1712) Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) Defoe, Jure Divino (1706) Defoe, The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers (1719) Defoe, The Lay-Man’s Sermon upon the Late Storm (1704) Defoe, The Layman’s Vindication of the Church of England (1716) Defoe, [Legion’s Memorial] ([1701]) Defoe, Legion’s New Paper (1702 [for 1701]) Defoe, A Letter from Captain Tom to the Mobb (1710) Defoe, A Letter to a Dissenter from his Friend at the Hague (1688) Defoe, A Letter to Mr. Bisset (1709) Defoe, A Letter to Mr. How (1701) Defoe, A Letter to the Dissenters (1713) Defoe, A Letter to the Whigs, Expostulating with them upon their Present Conduct (1714) Defoe, The Letters of Daniel Defoe, ed. George Harris Healey (Oxford, 1955) Defoe, Lex Talionis (1698) Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) Defoe, The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720) Defoe, The Livery Man’s Reasons (1701) Defoe, Memoirs of a Cavalier ([1720]) Defoe, Memoirs of Count Tariff (1713) Defoe, Memoirs of the Church of Scotland (1717) Defoe, Mere Nature Delineated (1726)




Defoe, Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717) Defoe, The Mock Mourners (1702) Defoe, More Reformation (1703) Defoe, More Short-Ways with the Dissenters (1704) Defoe, A New Discovery of an Old Intreague (1691) Defoe, A New Family Instructor (1727) Defoe, A New Test of the Church of England’s Honesty (1704) Defoe, A New Test of the Church of England’s Loyalty (1702) Defoe, A New Test of the Sence of the Nation (1710) Defoe, A New Voyage Round the World (1725 [for 1724]) Defoe, Observations on the Fifth Article of the Treaty of Union ([Edinburgh, 1706]) Defoe, Of Royall Educacion ([1698?–1727?]), ed. Karl D. Bülbring (1890) Defoe, The Old Whig and Modern Whig Revived (1717) Defoe, The Opinion of a Known Dissenter (1703) Defoe, The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England (1701 [for 1701]) Defoe, The Pacificator (1700) Defoe, The Paralel [sic] (1705) Defoe, Parochial Tyranny ([1727]) Defoe, Party-Tyranny (1705) Defoe, Peace without Union (1703) Defoe, A Plan of The English Commerce (1728); (2nd edn, 1730, in Facsimile Text Edition, Reprints of Economic Classics, New York, 1967) Defoe, The Political History of the Devil (1726) Defoe, The Poor Man’s Plea (2nd edn, 1698) Defoe, The Present State of Jacobitism Considered (1701) Defoe, The Present State of the Parties in Great Britain (1712) Defoe, The Quarrel of the School-Boys at Athens (1717) Defoe, Queries upon the Bill against Occasional Conformity (1704) Defoe, The Question Fairly Stated (1717) Defoe, Reasons against a War with France (1701) Defoe, Reasons against Fighting (1712) Defoe, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover (1713) Defoe, Reasons Concerning the Immediate Demolishing of Dunkirk (1713) Defoe, Reasons why this Nation Ought to Put a Speedy End to this Expensive War (1711) Defoe, Reformation of Manners (1702) Defoe, Religious Courtship (1722) Defoe, Remarks on the Bill to Prevent Frauds Committed by Bankrupts (1706) Defoe, Remarks on the Letter to the Author of the State-Memorial (1706) Defoe, A Reply to a Pamphlet entituled, The L___d H___’s Vindication of his Speech (1706) Defoe, A Reply to the Scots Answer, to the British Vision ([Edinburgh, 1706]) Defoe, The Representation Examined (1711) Defoe, The Review, ed. Arthur Wellesley Secord (9 vols, New York, 1938) Defoe, Royal Religion (1704) Defoe, A Seasonable Expostulation with, and Friendly Reproof unto James Butler (1715) Defoe, A Seasonable Warning and Caution against the Insinuations of Papists and Jacobites (1712) Defoe, A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-Born Englishman (1705) Defoe, The Second-Sighted Highlander (1713)




Defoe, The Second-Sighted Highlander. Being Four Visions of the Eclypse (1715) Defoe, The Secret History of the October Club (1711) Defoe, The Secret History of the October-Club … Part II (1711) Defoe, The Secret History of the Secret History of the White Staff, Purse and Mitre (1715) Defoe, The Secret History of the White Staff … Part II (1714) Defoe, The Secret History of the White Staff … Part III (1715) Defoe, The Secret History of the White-Staff (1714) Defoe, A Serious Inquiry into this Grand Question (1704) Defoe, Serious Reflections during the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1720) Defoe, A Sharp Rebuke from one of the People called Quakers (1715) Defoe, A Short View of the Present State of the Protestant Religion in Britain (Edinburgh, 1707) Defoe, The Shortest Way to Peace and Union (1703) Defoe, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) Defoe, The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated (1703) Defoe, The Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament-Man (1700 [for 1701]) Defoe, Some Considerations on a Law for Triennial Parliaments (1716) Defoe, Some Reflections on a Pamphlet lately Publish’d, entituled, An Argument Shewing that a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government (1697) Defoe, Some Remarks on the First Chapter in Dr. Davenant’s Essays (1704 [for 1703]) Defoe, Some Thoughts of an Honest Tory in the Country (1716) Defoe, Some Thoughts upon the Subject of Commerce with France (1713) Defoe, The Spanish Descent (1702) Defoe, A Spectators Address to the Whigs (1711) Defoe, The Storm (1704) Defoe, The Succession of Spain Consider’d (1711) Defoe, The Succession to the Crown of England, Considered (1701) Defoe, A System of Magick (1727 [for 1726]) Defoe, A Tour thro the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), ed. G. D. H. Cole (2 vols, 1927) Defoe, The Trade to India Critically and Calmly Consider’d (1720) Defoe, A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man (1703) Defoe, A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal (1706), in Manuel Schonhorn (ed.), Accounts of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal (Los Angeles, 1965) Defoe, The True-Born Englishman (1700) Defoe, A Trumpet Blown in the North (1714 [for 1715]) Defoe, The Two Great Questions Consider’d (1700) Defoe, Two Great Questions Considered ([Edinburgh], 1707) Defoe, The Two Great Questions Further Considered (1700) Defoe, Union and No Union (1713) Defoe, A View of the Present Management of the Court of France (1715) Defoe, A View of the Real Dangers of the Succession (1713) Defoe, A View of the Scots Rebellion (1715) Defoe, The Villainy of Stock-Jobbers Detected (1701) Defoe, The Vision ([Edinburgh, 1706]) Defoe, The Weakest Go to the Wall (1714) Defoe, What if the Swedes should Come? (1717) Defoe, A Word against a New Election (1710) Defoe, [Ye True-Born Englishmen Proceed] ([1701])




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Abercromby, Patrick, 91 Abney, Thomas, 36 Acts: Corporation (1661) and Test (1673), 47, 115, 121; Navigation (1651, 1660 etc.), 81, 87; Five Mile (1665), 39; Toleration (1689), 35–6, 46, 56, 198; Settlement (1701), 99, 231 n. 16; Occasional Conformity (1711), 115, 121; Schism (1714), 115, 121, 149–50; Septennial (1716), 212 n. 14 Adam, 72, 114, 120, 189, 193, 223 n. 34 Addison, Joseph, 88, 204 Adolphus, Gustavus, 6 Alexander the Great, 168 Anne, Queen, 42–3, 52, 58, 61, 80–1, 95–6, 98, 100, 114, 117, 133, 135, 147, 199 Annesley, Samuel, 39, 219 Arians, Arianism, 3, 10, 88, 114, 116, 125, 135–6, 143, 185, 188, 196, 198, 201, 207 Asgill, John, 74, 143, 215 n. 25, 235 n. 21, 236 Athanasius, 198 atheists, atheism, 134, 136, 188, 201, 203–7 Atwood, William, 85

Brahe, Tycho, 171 Britons, ancient, 69, 102, 108–10 Burnet, Thomas, 106 Bury, Arthur, 10 Cadmus, 168, 193 Cain, 120, 189 Calamy, Edmund, 218 n. 11 Cambridge Platonists, 41 Canaan, 167, 189 Carthage, 10, 166, 168–9, 171, 239 n. 25 Catholics, Catholicism, 118–19, 127, 131–2, 193, 197, 204–7 Charles I, King, 15, 20, 25, 59 Charles II, King, 25, 115, 148 Chubb, Thomas, 143, 235 n. 21 Cicero, 88, 187 civic humanists, 1, 9, 11, 15–16, 18–19, 23, 30, 86 Clarke, Samuel, 185, 208 Clayton, Sir Robert, 144 Cockerill, Thomas, 17 Collins, Anthony, 185, 192, 203, 241 Compton, Henry, bishop, 64 Confucius, 195 Copernicus, 171 Cromwell, Oliver, 32–3 Davenant, Charles, 19, 53, 215 n. 24 David, King, 6, 21, 25 Davies, Sir John, 4 Defoe, Benjamin, 94 Defoe, Daniel and academies, 21–3, 26–8, 39, 184 and Baconian science, 2, 7, 11–12, 17–18, 20–1, 35, 39, 41, 45, 48, 50, 75–7, 84, 88, 93, 97, 101, 105–7, 121, 140, 148, 163–6, 193, 208–9, 229 n. 24, 239 n. 33 and the Calico controversy, 11, 139–43, 161, 165 and chance, 130 and commerce, 2–3, 5, 9, 11, 17–21, 82–4, 86–8, 93, 96, 101–2,

Baal, 60, 62–4, 191 Bacchus, 62 Bacon, Francis, 171–2, 175 Bangorian controversy: see Hoadly, Benjamin Bank of England, 15, 17, 98, 100, 145, 147, 214 n. 10 Baxter, Richard, 39, 41, 218 n. 11, 220 n. 50 Belhaven, John Hamilton, Lord, 92 Belus, 62–4, 191 Bentham, Jeremy, 49–50 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 1st Viscount, 104 Boyle, Robert, 105, 171, 181 264



Index

104–12, 140, 148–9, 158–9, 162, 165–6, 168–71, 173–8, 184, 190–1, 200, 208 and credit, 96–103, 139, 141, 144, 146, 196, 229 n. 24, 236 n. 25 and the Devil, 3, 8, 12, 60–3, 65, 70, 126–7, 129, 134, 145, 148, 154, 167, 186–205, 208, 213 n. 22 and disenchantment, 203 and (the) Enlightenment, 3, 12, 52, 79, 93, 108, 110–11, 198, 209–10 and epistemological stability, 7, 9, 11, 23–4, 35, 38–9, 41, 45–6, 95–103, 210, 229 n. 24, 230 n. 6 and family life, 11, 110, 138–59, 205–8, 244 and fundamental law, 89–90 historical vision of, 3–5, 7–9, 11–12, 16, 19, 28–33, 62, 66, 68, 79–85, 93, 105, 111, 118, 142–3, 148–9, 151, 160–84, 190–1, 201, 208–10 and idols, idolatry, 128–30, 132–3, 167, 190, 195, 197, 206–7, 233 n. 61 interpretations of, 1, 5, 12, 16, 23, 35, 51, 113, 117, 122–3, 136, 151, 160, 209–10, 211 n. 4, 212 n. 12, 213 n. 22, 217 nn. 70, 1, 220 n. 38, 221 n. 1, 229 n. 40, 232 n. 39, 237 n. 2, 240 n. 5 and kingship, 6, 8, 14–15, 20–2, 25, 27, 31, 51–77, 82, 169, 213 n. 4, 224 n. 35 and magic, magicians, 3, 12, 140, 167, 188, 193, 195–7, 200–2, 240 n. 5, 241 n. 31 and national identity, 46, 84–8, 90, 92–4, 107, 210, 237 n. 2 and natural law, 18–19, 55, 63, 67, 70–1, 93, 97, 183, 224 nn. 40, 47 and Nonconformity, 2, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16–17, 21, 36–50, 97, 106, 116, 121–2, 136, 149, 198–9, 204, 208, 210, 218 n. 12, 232 n. 35 and Nonjurors, 45 and oaths, 44–5, 64, 95, 98–100, 116 and occasional conformity, 7, 34–50, 96, 132, 198, 218, 221 n. 65, 229 n. 40 and patriarchy, 65–6, 71–3, 160

and projecting, 6, 18, 20–1, 26, 28, 39, 215 n. 33 and Providence, 2, 7, 10–12, 14, 18, 20, 35, 47, 50, 65, 68, 70, 73, 75–8, 80, 83–5, 87–8, 92–3, 95, 97, 101, 103, 106–7, 110, 113, 122–7, 130, 135–8, 140, 154, 157–9, 165–6, 168–9, 178–9, 185, 189–91, 203–4, 209, 233 n. 68, 234 n. 1 and reformation of manners (politeness), 6, 21, 23–5, 76–7, 88, 93, 130–3, 135, 140, 184, 187 and religion, 2–3, 5, 8, 10–12, 17, 33–50, 51–77, 87, 93, 113–37, 143, 149, 154, 157, 161, 170, 183, 185–210, 211 n. 4 and standing army debate, 6, 9, 15–16, 23, 28–33, 82, 86 and state of nature, 73, 108 and subscription controversy, 10 and suicide, 74 and Trinitarianism, 2, 4, 7–11, 33, 35, 49, 58, 74, 88, 113, 116, 118, 121–7, 133, 135–6, 149, 185–6, 188, 194, 199–201, 204–5, 208, 210, 240 n. 3 Defoe, Daniel, writings of: The Anatomy of Exchange-Alley, 145, 147, 235–6 An Appendix, in Return to Mr. Asgill’s Tract, 236 An Argument Proving, 231 An Argument, Shewing, that a Standing Army, 31, 217 A Brief Deduction of the Original, 239 A Brief Explanation of a Late Pamphlet, 220 A Brief Reply, 217 A Brief State of the Question, 143, 235–6 The Case of Mr. Law, 235 A Challenge of Peace, 222 The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley, 219 The Chimera, 145, 235–6 The Compleat English Gentleman, 6, 12, 161, 164, 178–83, 236, 240 The Complete English Tradesman, 11, 144, 151–3, 155–9, 161–3, 205, 219, 236, 238



Index 265

The Conduct of Christians Made the Sport of Infidels, 117 Conjugal Lewdness, 211 n. 7 Considerations Upon the Eighth and Ninth Articles, 104, 229 The Consolidator, 221 A Continuation of Letters written by a Turkish Spy, 10, 117–19, 131, 231–2 The Danger of Court Differences, 231 The Danger of the Protestant Religion Consider’d, 215 n. 20 Declaration of Truth to Benjamin Hoadly, 116, 231 The Director, 235 The Dissenters Answer, 218 Eleven Opinions about Mr. H[arle]y, 231 An Enquiry into the Case, 224 An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, 36, 39, 218–21 Essay[s] at Removing National Prejudices, 87–9, 226–7 An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions, 186, 241–2 An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France, 229 An Essay upon Literature, 232, 238 Essay upon Loans, 100, 102, 228–9 An Essay upon Projects, 6–7, 16–30, 39, 98, 184, 214 n. 10, 215–16, 219, 228 An Essay upon Public Credit, 100–1, 229 Every-Body’s Business, 237 The Evident Advantages to Great Britain, 242 The Evident Approach of a War, 242 The Family Instructor, 149–50, 153–4, 161, 237 The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 123, 126–7, 130, 138, 194, 230–4 A Farther Argument, 231 The Fortunate Mistress [Roxana], 5, 11–12, 139, 142, 144, 148, 203 The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, 5, 11–12, 46, 139, 142, 148, 161 A General History of Discoveries, 9, 18, 148, 163–78, 190–1, 230, 232, 238–41

A General History of Trade, 9, 18, 103–11, 163, 166, 229, 239 The History of … Col. Jacque, 148, 161 The History of the Union, 4, 8, 78–80, 92, 94, 225–7 Jure Divino, 7–8, 51–77, 186, 188, 191, 223, 241 The Just Complaint of the Poor Weavers, 141, 235 Legion’s Memorial, 91–2, 227 A Letter to a Dissenter from his Friend at the Hague, 214 n. 7, 224 n. 35 A Letter to Mr. Bisset, 228 A Letter to Mr. How, 39–40, 218–20 The Life … of Robinson Crusoe, 1, 5, 10–12, 113–37, 203, 208, 230–4 The Manufacturer, 235 More Short-Ways with the Dissenters, 218 A New Discovery of an Old Intreague, 214 n. 7 A New Family Instructor, 186, 205–8, 240, 244 A New Test of the Church of England’s Honesty, 220, 222 A New Test of the Church of England’s Loyalty, 222 A New Test of the Sence of the Nation, 98, 228 The Old Whig and Modern Whig Revived, 231 The Opinion of a known Dissenter, 220 The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, 91, 227 Peace Without Union, 221 A Plan of the English Commerce, 11, 163–4, 167, 172, 175, 178, 181, 238–40, 242 The Political History of the Devil, 60, 186, 188, 241–3 The Poor Man’s Plea, 25, 216 n. 55 The Present State of Jacobitism Considered, 220 The Question Fairly Stated, 231 Reformation of Manners, 46, 221 Religious Courtship, 150, 161, 237 A Reply to a Pamphlet Entituled, the L[ord] H[aversham]’s Vindication, 225



266 Index

The Review, 35, 45, 54, 76, 78–85, 88, 92–3, 97, 101, 104, 216 n. 62, 218, 220, 222–3, 225–9, 239 Of Royall Education, 164, 239 A Serious Inquiry, 222 Serious Reflections … of Robinson Crusoe, 120, 123, 130, 132–3, 203, 230–4, 241 The Shortest Way to Peace and Union, 47, 49, 219, 221 The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, 7, 34, 42–4, 53, 59, 80, 97 The Sincerity of the Dissenters Vindicated, 218–19 Some Reflections on a Pamphlet, 30, 216 n. 66, 217 Some Thoughts upon the Subject of Commerce with France, 229 A System of Magick, 186, 194, 236, 241–3 Tour Thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain, 11, 142, 144, 147–8, 160, 164–5, 181, 235–7, 240 The Trade to India, 235 The True-Born Englishman, 43, 46, 69, 85, 221 Deism, Deists, 3, 10, 88, 114, 118, 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 134–6, 143, 185, 189, 191–2, 201, 203, 207, 240 n. 5 Dissent: see Defoe, and Nonconformity; Presbyterians Dyer, John, 54

Gildon, Charles, 123 Godolphin, Sidney, 1st Earl of, 81, 94, 100 Gordon, Thomas, 143, 235 n. 21 Goths, 82, 86, 170–1 Grotius, Hugo, 55, 71

Edward I, King, 80, 85 Edward III, King, 111, 239 n. 38 Edward VI, King, 25, 117 Edwin, Sir Humphrey, 36 Elijah, 60 Elizabeth, Queen, 25, 174 Emlyn, Thomas, 185, 208, 240, 243 n. 59, 244 n. 86 Epicurus, 120 Ezekiel, 162, 238 n. 6

Jacobites, Jacobitism, 45–6, 80, 91, 94, 97–8, 117, 147, 165, 197, 225 n. 11 James I, King, 25, 62, 86, 239 n. 25 James II, King, 5, 14, 16, 20, 45, 56, 59–60, 64–5, 99, 117, 198, 224 n. 35, 228 n. 17 James Francis Edward Stuart, 80, 94, 99 Johannine Comma, 207–8, 240 n. 3, 244 n. 86 Joseph, 193 Joshua, 187 Jove, 62 Jupiter, 120

Ferguson, Adam, 4 Filmer, Sir Robert, 33, 52, 60, 65, 71–2, 233 n. 34, 237 n. 2 Fletcher, Andrew, 29, 86, 89, 217 n. 66 George I, King, 114–15, 150, 166 Gideon, 60

Ham, 167, 189, 191 Hanover, Sophia Electress of, 81 Harcourt, Sir Simon, 223 n. 32, 228 n. 9 Harley, Robert, later Earl of Oxford, 7–8, 30, 32, 34, 42, 51, 53–4, 77–8, 88, 90, 93–4, 100, 103–4, 115 Harrington, James, 4, 30, 56, 163, 172, 175, 194, 224 n. 47, 239 n. 33, 242 n. 33 Hartlib, Samuel, 105 Haversham, Lord, 80–4, 86, 225 n. 14, 226 n. 17, 229 n. 39 Henry VII, King, 3, 9, 12, 111, 163–4, 171–7, 239 n. 33 Hoadly, Benjamin, bishop, and Bangorian controversy, 10, 35, 114–15, 118, 121, 185, 200, 212 n. 14, 230 n. 5 Hobbes, Thomas, 199 Hodges, James, 85, 89–90 Hogarth, William, 114 Howe, John, 36, 38–41 Hume, David, 4, 88, 163, 175–6 Isaiah, 162

Law, John, 145–6 Lawson, George, 91 Leslie, Charles, 43–4, 52–4, 58, 63, 72–3, 77, 91, 219 n. 35, 220 n. 40



Index 267

liberalism, 49–50 Livy, 4 Locke, John, 5, 8, 35, 50–6, 60–2, 65–6, 71–3, 77, 90, 181, 209–10, 221, 233 n. 34, 238 n. 2 Louis XIV, King, 14–16, 22, 27–8, 80, 82–4, 92, 146, 191 Lucan, 187 Ludlow, Edmund, 33 Lycurgus, 195

114, 116, 121–3, 199, 204, 218 n. 11, 230 n. 6 Price, Richard, 2 Priestley, Joseph, 2, 49–50 Prometheus, 120, 193 public sphere, idea of, 8, 200, 213 n. 23, 243 n. 56 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 56, 71 Puritans, Puritanism, 2, 10, 39–40, 45, 113, 136, 211 n. 4

Marana, Giovanni Paolo, 231 Marlborough, John Churchill, 1st Duke of, 81, 103 Martin, David, 208, 240 n. 3, 244 n. 86 Medes, 67 Methuen treaty, 104 Mill, John Stuart, 49–50 Millar, John, 4, 163, 175–6 Milton, John, 8, 52, 54, 56, 76–7, 188–9, 196, 241 n. 14 Mississippi Company, 145 modernity, idea of, 1, 4, 28 Monmouth, James Scott, 1st Duke of, 14 Mordaut, Charles, 217 n. 70 Morgan, Thomas, 143, 235 n. 21 Morton, Charles, 17, 39–40, 219 Moses, 119–20, 168, 187, 193 Moyle, Walter, 32, 185, 194, 204, 242 n. 33

Quakers, 48, 116, 121, 203–4, 220 n. 50

Newton, Sir Isaac, 171, 181, 185 Nimrod, 63, 92, 167, 171, 191 Ninus, 62–3 Noah, 167, 189–90 Normans, 46, 69, 111 Numa Pompilius, 194–5 Owen, James, 38, 53 Persians, 67, 131 Petty, Sir William, 105, 214 n. 17 Phoenicia, Phoenicians, 10, 102, 108–10, 163, 167–9, 191, 230 n. 48 Picts, 69 Plantagenets, 69, 111 Plutarch, 187 Pope, Alexander, 114 postmodernism, 210 Presbyterians, Presbyterianism, 2, 10, 17, 35, 37–41, 46–8, 80, 87–9, 93,

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 169, 171, 178, 239 n. 25 Ramilles, 133 Revolution of 1688, 5–6, 9, 14, 51, 58–9, 69, 77, 89, 95, 98–9, 198 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 114 Richelieu, Cardinal, 22, 78 Ridpath, George, 85, 89–90 Roberts, John, 143, 235 Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of, 199 Rome, Romans, 10, 15, 31, 67, 69, 82, 102, 110–11, 128–9, 131, 163, 168–71, 191, 194–5, 230 n. 48, 238 n. 22 Romulus, 194 Royal Society, 21 Rupert, Prince, 6, 20, 22, 215 n. 32 Rymer, Thomas, 79 Ryswick, treaty of, 29 Sacheverell, Henry, 9, 35, 43, 52–3, 58, 63, 77, 94–5, 97, 100, 112, 223 n. 32, 228 n. 9 Salters’ Hall, 10, 40, 114, 121–3, 125, 185, 199–202, 230 n. 6 Samuel, 66–7 Saul, 66–7 Saxons, 46, 69, 111 Scipio Africanus, 168, 171 Scotland, 8–9, 77–94, 108, 111, 175 Servetus, Michael, 199 Seth, 189 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of, 51 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of, 21–3, 88



268 Index

Index 269

Tacitus, 4 The Tatler, 200 Temple, William, 19, 215 n. 24 Thucydides, 4 Tillotson, John, Archbishop, 41 Tindal, Matthew, 10, 143, 235 n. 21 Toland, John, 10, 32, 56–7, 115, 117–21, 143–4, 185, 192, 194, 204, 223 n. 31, 235 n. 21, 241 n. 28, 244 n. 74 Tories, Toryism, 7, 9, 21–2, 24–5, 30, 32, 42–3, 47, 52, 59, 80, 82–4, 91, 95, 98, 100, 102–4, 112, 115–16, 145 Townshend, Charles, 2nd Viscount, 115

Trenchard, John, 6, 29–33, 143, 194, 216 n. 66, 217 n. 70, 235 n. 21 Tutchin, John, 53, 82, 220 n. 42, 226 n. 17 Tyre, 167–8, 238 n. 6 Tyrrell, James, 56, 69, 224 Union of 1707, 8–9, 35, 77–94 Ussher, James, Archbishop, 37, 218 n. 11 Utrecht, treaty of, 5, 9, 103–4, 111, 166 Verulam, 1st baron, 171–2 see Bacon, Francis Virgil, 187 Walpole, Sir Robert, 115 Wars of the Roses, 69 Wharton, Phillip, 1stt Duke of, 204, 242, 244 Whigs, Whiggism, 1, 9–10, 16, 20–2, 30, 32, 35, 43–4, 52, 80–1, 94, 98, 100, 102–3, 112, 115–17, 121, 136, 140, 144–5, 147, 209 Whiston, William, 143, 145, 185, 200, 236 n. 21, 240 n. 2, 243 n. 59 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 79 Wilcox, Daniel, 230 n. 6 Wilkins, John, bishop, 40, 45, 219 William I, King, 69 William III, King, 6–7, 11–12, 14–16, 20–2, 25–9, 33, 43, 48, 56, 61, 64, 82, 92, 95, 114, 135, 140, 169, 184, 217 n. 70 Woolston, Thomas, 143, 236 n. 21



Sidney, Algernon, 33, 52, 54–6, 72, 224 n. 47 Sidon, 167 Socinianism, Socinians, 3, 6, 8, 10, 29, 33–4, 41, 49, 51, 56, 61–2, 88, 114, 116, 118–19, 122, 125, 132, 135–6, 143, 188, 199, 201, 207, 212 n. 20 Solomon, King, 31 Solon, 195 South Sea Company, South Sea Bubble, 96, 139–40, 144–5, 161, 165, 196, 236 n. 25 The Spectator, 204 Spinoza, Baruch, 118–20 Stanhope, James, 1st Earl, 115, 117, 136 Stephen, King, 69 Stephens, William, 56–7, 223 n. 31 Stubbe, Henry, 118 Sunderland, Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of, 115, 117, 136 Swift, Jonathan, 100

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