Naval Engagements: Patriotism, Cultural Politics, and the Royal Navy 1793-1815

NAVAL ENGAGEMENTS

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Naval Engagements Patriotism, Cultural Politics, and the Royal Navy 1793–1815 TIMOTHY JENKS

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Timothy Jenks 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–929771–1

978–0–19–929771–9

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To my professors, friends, and students at the University of Toronto 1992–2002

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Acknowledgements Writing a book incurs debts—what follows is my honest attempt to discharge them. Accounts are due then, first, to faculty members in the Department of History at the University of Toronto, especially to my thesis supervisor, Richard Helmstadter. I would also like to thank Trevor Lloyd, Jennifer Mori, and Thomas McIntire, who served as the members of my thesis committee. Draft chapters were read over the years by a number of friends and colleagues in the Department of History, namely, Adam Crerar, Stephen Heathorn, Greg T. Smith, Jeffrey McNairn, Kevin Siena, Jerry Bannister, Simon Devereaux, Ken Hogue, and Lorne Breitenlohner. Beyond the University of Toronto, James Epstein, Nicholas Rogers, James Vernon, and Keith Wrightson provided varying kinds of support and guidance, and for that I thank them fully. At East Carolina, my greatest debt is to Michael Palmer, Chair of the Department of History, for the research leave that permitted the completion of this book. Thanks as well are due to my colleagues Michael Gross and Carl Swanson, both of whom read portions of the developing manuscript. Funding for this project was provided by the Social Science Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Government, the Associates of the University of Toronto Travel Grant Fund, the School of Graduate Studies and the Department of History at the University of Toronto, and the Department of History at East Carolina University. The staffs in London at the British Library and the National Maritime Museum, and in Toronto at the Microtext Reading Room at the University of Toronto, provided professional help and friendly service. At OUP I would like to thank Ruth Parr, Anne Gelling, Peter Dent, and Timothy Saunders for shepherding this book towards its publication. Significant passages from Chapter 1 appeared earlier as my ‘Language and Politics at the Westminster Election of 1796’, Historical Journal, 44 ( June 2001), 419–39, © 2001 Cambridge University Press. It is reprinted here with permission. Similarly, some passages in Chapter 4 first appeared in my article ‘Contesting the Hero: The Funeral of Admiral Lord Nelson’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), 422–53, © 2000 North American Council on British Studies. It is reprinted here by the

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permission of the University of Chicago Press. I am also grateful to the staffs at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and the British Library in London, for permission to reproduce images from their collections. Finally, I would like to thank my family—Heather, Ashlyn, and Tara. Without them, the completion of this book would not have seemed possible. It would definitely not have been worthwhile. Timothy Jenks October 2005

Contents List of Illustrations Introduction

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1. The ‘Glorious Firsts of June’

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2. Patriotic Instabilities

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3. Naval Triumph and the Public Sphere

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4. Contesting Naval Heroism

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5. Lord Cochrane in Radical Westminster

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Conclusion

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Appendix 1. Members of Parliament for Westminster, 1790–1818

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Appendix 2. Published Trafalgar poems

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Bibliography Index

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List of Illustrations 1. ‘WHAT A CUR ’TIS! ’ H. Humphrey (publisher), National Maritime Museum: Department of Prints and Drawings (PAF 4151), 9 June 1795. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission. 2. Dresses à la Nile respectfully dedicated to the Fashion Mongers of the day. W. Holland (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 3864), 24 October 1798. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission. 3. Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, K.B. Thomas Dighton (artist, engraver, publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD 3834), October 1798. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission. 4. Naval Pillar. Richard Elsam (architect and artist), Thomas Tegg (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD 3896), May 1804. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission. 5. Burdett Campaign Handbill, Westminster election, 1807. British Library Add. 27838 fo. 131. By permission of the British Library. 6. Things as they have been—things as they now are. Portrait of Lord Cochrane taken during his confinement in the King’s Bench prison in 1814 the morning dress as he then was. S. T. Taw (artist), E. Niaws (engraver), R. Bothside (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 4148), 8 May 1815. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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Introduction But it was not the sea alone that I saw: the grand fleet was riding out at anchor at Spithead. I had heard of the wooden walls of Old England: I had formed my ideas of a ship, and of a fleet; but, what I now beheld, so far surpassed what I had ever been able to form a conception of, that I stood lost between astonishment and admiration. I had heard talk of the glorious deeds of our admirals and sailors, of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and of all those memorable combats, that good and true Englishmen never fail to relate to their children about a hundred times a year. The brave Rodney’s victories over our natural enemies, the French and Spaniards, had long been the theme of our praise, and the burden of our songs. The sight of the fleet brought all these to my mind; in confused order it is true, but with irresistible force. My heart was inflated with national pride. The sailors were my countrymen; the fleet belonged to my country, and surely I had a part in it, and in all its honours . . . William Cobbett, 1796¹

What Cobbett described is what serves as the subject of investigation in this study—the role played by images of the navy and its heroes in the culture of British wartime patriotism. At the time these lines were penned, William Cobbett was an erstwhile British soldier about to embark upon the career that would make him a best-selling radical journalist, a leader in the struggle for parliamentary reform, a denizen of Newgate, and—triumphantly in 1832—a member of the first reformed parliament. Given the degree to which Cobbett’s later prescriptions for national regeneration and economic recovery were posed as a defence of an idealized rural England, it is interesting to note that here the author of Rural Rides frames national identity through the invocation of ¹ William Cobbett, The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine (London, 1927 edn.), 25.

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an institutional symbol—the British royal navy. In Cobbett’s intentionally evocative retelling, ‘talk of ’ the navy’s ‘glorious deeds’ and ‘memorable combats’ was a major vehicle for the articulation of national identity in the oral village culture of his youth. This is clearly an imagined community, where naval knowledge constitutes a kind of patriotic catechism and where collective belonging is culturally conferred. The rustic inhabitants of Cobbett’s village of memory identify with an ocean, a navy, a fleet, and sailors that many of them have never seen. They have ‘ideas of a ship’ and ‘conceptions’ of the navy—ideas and conceptions powerful enough to inform their sense of identity and to give them a proprietary and equivalent interest in the navy as an institution (‘The sailors were my countrymen; the fleet belonged to my country’). Crucially, more than mere identification is at play. Issues arise that elevate the navy into a distinct political symbol whose meaning and history are worth fighting over. For the images and events of Britain’s naval history recur to the young Cobbett with an ‘irresistible force’—but in a ‘confused order’. There is serious work to be performed here—in order for concepts of ‘natural enemies’ and national identities to be made politically actionable, agendas need to be attached, interpretations need to be advanced, and the task of ‘ordering’ a national naval history needs to be undertaken. This study examines that effort as made by a range of social groupings in Britain during the French Wars of 1793–1815. With its focus placed on the exploration of British political culture, it is, at once, a cultural history of national identity, a social history of naval commemoration, and a political history of struggles over patriotism. These were subjects with considerable contemporary currency. Naval symbolism was central to the political culture of the late eighteenth century—modern historians of Britain, though, have been slow to discern this. The tendency has been simply to attribute naval patriotism to apparently natural factors like ‘islandness’, or to the historical success of the navy. These played an obvious role, but naval patriotism was also the result of the ability of the eighteenth-century navy to sustain a conversation about the nation. This allowed the navy to occupy a singular place in late eighteenth-century imaginings of national identity. Why did the navy achieve this position by the end of the eighteenth century? Primarily because it functioned as an effective social analogue, as a metaphor for British society. The notion of the ship as a microcosm of society— a ‘wooden world’—was long held. So, too, were its constitutional

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associations as the ‘ship of state’. Perhaps most central was the cultural stereotype of ‘Jack Tar’. As will be shown, the popular associations arising from this figure’s deployment in naval patriotism were crucial to the place the navy occupied in Georgian political and cultural discourse. In focusing on the navy in this way, I make no argument that the other institutions of the eighteenth-century state—in particular, the army— were unimportant for the patriotic culture of the day.² Newspapers traced the progress of both the British army and the navy in this period, and the victories and heroes of both were celebrated in poetry, spectacle, portrait, prints, and song. But a range of factors worked to inhibit the development of patriotic affect on the part of the army, at the same time that the symbolic valence of the navy was being elevated. While it might be initially tempting to explain the navy’s position by its better performance than the army, especially in the first half of the wars of 1793–1815, this is not the whole story. That only consolidated a process that was well under way, and whose roots were political and cultural. First among these was that the army was seen as inimical to the domestic interests of the British people. Here its reputation suffered from the army’s very presence in the realm, and its proximity to local communities. Fear concerning standing armies and their role in absolutist government dated to the seventeenth century and continued to have purchase for eighteenth-century subjects.³ The role the army played in maintaining public order did little to quell such concerns; indeed, its operations against riotous crowds undoubtedly aggravated its public standing.⁴ Added to this were the disruptive effects that the presence of regiments could have for local communities. Billeting, prostitution, and pressures on provisions were some of the problems that accompanied the army on the domestic front.⁵ By contrast, the navy was not politically threatening in any constitutional sense, nor was it used for purposes of ² The case has been made though, for the primacy of the monarchy in these affairs. See Linda Colley, ‘Apotheosis of George III: loyalty, royalty, and the British nation, 1760–1820’, Past and Present, 102 (1984), 94–129; id., Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992), 195–236; Marilyn Morris,The British Monarchy and the French Revolution (New Haven, 1998). ³ Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 160, 214–15. ⁴ Tony Hayter, The Army and the Crowd in Mid-Georgian England (London, 1978), 1–35. ⁵ Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the American War of Independence (Oxford, 2000), 275, 291–4.

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public order. And although relations between seamen and civilians in port towns could be fractured, the absence of continuous barracking meant that these tensions were less pronounced, temporary, and geographically limited. As well, in an era increasingly exposed to the rising cultural sensibilities of urban and commercial groupings, the navy benefited by its apparent proximity to certain social values. The promotional requirements of sea service and lieutenants’ examinations gave it an institutional culture that many contemporaries regarded as cognizant of merit. Considering the aristocratic character of the army officer corps (in which commissions were venally purchased), this redounded to the navy’s advantage. A range of domestic factors, then, stifled the development of a popular attachment to the army, or rendered difficult its deployment in political argument. Secondly, the navy had the advantage in its comparative ability to articulate symbolically the national interest. While the victories of both the army and the navy were a source of national pride throughout the warridden eighteenth century, they were not necessarily received in the same context. The army, through its largely continental activity, was less easily linked to the vital national interest. Naval victories, by contrast, were more readily invested with imaginative consequences and significance. Most importantly, they inhered fully to the contours of ‘national defence patriotism’.⁶ This considerably elevated their significance for political activists, and for a pragmatic reason: the broadly appealing national defence aspects of naval patriotism made it a perfect platform from which to advance wider political agendas. This was crucial to the widespread and continued contestation of naval symbols as loyalists, Whigs, and radicals were to prove. Naval patriotism’s proximity to the perceived national interest was additionally significant because it permitted the navy to have symbolic purpose in peace as well as war. A third factor, then, that privileged the navy in patriotic culture concerned the fact that in wartime naval symbolism dovetailed with the interest in national defence, while in peacetime it could be attached to the concerns of commerce. Consider an example from 1802, during the Addington ministry, when the government—having signed the Peace of Amiens—sought to bolster its public standing with an interesting display. The occasion was the ⁶ The term is J. E. Cookson’s. See The British Armed Nation, 1793–1815 (Oxford, 1997), 7–8.

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opening of the West India Docks at Limehouse. Ten thousand spectators attended this event, in which the newly christened West Indian trader the Henry Addington (sporting the British standard and the Admiralty flag) was ceremonially admitted into the docks while the band played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’. The afternoon ceremony and evening banquet featured the attendance of political notables and feted the eponymous prime minister and his cabinet. The event shows the ministry attempting to manage naval patriotism in a pacific and commercial direction. The water of the dock itself was the location for this imagining; ‘its surface, smooth as a mirror’ suggested to one writer the very peace ‘which all the nations of the world, after buffeting storms and tempests, must feel when lodged in its tranquil bosom’.⁷ Naval symbolism, then, through its associations with commerce, could be translated into wider maritime contexts.⁸ All these factors assisted naval symbols in becoming politically relevant centres of discourse and for that reason they demand our attention. A historical approach that is attentive to political symbolism is particularly appropriate for the period 1793–1815, affected as it was by the French Revolution. Historians have long been aware that the 1790s ushered in an era of considerable political repression; increasingly they have pointed to the simultaneous representational crisis unleashed by the Revolution. One major effect was to alter the nature of political discourse (whether in the realm of text, ritual, or symbol) and to elevate the significance of alternate cultural venues.⁹ Given that these changes were occurring, it makes sense to chart the discursive trajectory of a political symbol, with the aim of revealing the dynamics that affect a political culture during a revolutionary period. Admittedly, the two wars of 1793–1801 and 1803–15 had distinct ideological characters. But viewing the period as whole is an advantage, in that it allows the significant continuities in naval patriotism to more fully emerge. Mindful of these ⁷ Star, 28 Aug. 1802. ⁸ Kathleen Wilson, ‘Empire, trade and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain: the case of Admiral Vernon’, Past and Present, 121 (1988), 74–109; id., ‘The island race: Captain Cook, protestant evangelicalism and the construction of English national identity, 1760–1800’, in Tony Claydon and Ian McBride (eds.), Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650–c.1850 (Cambridge, 1998). ⁹ Works that accept this include James Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (New York, 1994), and Gillian Russell, The Theatres of War: Performance, Politics and Society 1793–1815 (Oxford, 1996).

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concerns then, this study seeks rhetorical struggles concerning naval patriotism in a range of venues throughout the wartime contexts of 1793–1815. In so doing, it aspires to broaden our understanding of the terms of political contest in an era of emergent nationalism. Although this study limits itself to the period 1793–1815, when naval patriotism was submitted to particular pressures, it does not argue that naval patriotism was exclusive to the period. Recall that Cobbett’s words, though written in the 1790s, refer to a conception of the navy that informed his youth. Throughout the eighteenth century Britain’s naval supremacy was asserted, its naval achievements celebrated, politicized, and constructed as emblems of national identity.¹⁰ The oppositional interests of early and mid-Georgian patriotism could be expressed by reference to naval heroes and naval history, as Nicholas Rogers and Kathleen Wilson have revealed. The fact that attention was first directed to this area by historians tracing questions concerning popular political mobilization alerts us to the importance that naval symbols had for mainstream political culture. Indeed, naval patriotism was advanced through the staple forms of eighteenth-century political articulacy. Support for Admiral Vernon in the 1740s, and Admiral Keppel in 1779, was expressed in crowd actions, parliamentary manoeuvres, and an accompanying material culture.¹¹ Both episodes were addressed in contemporary verse and drama, forms that had earlier featured the anti-Walpolean rhetoric of the 1730s.¹² Though the forms which articulated naval patriotism were largely established, there were—as indicated above—new contexts operating in the period 1793–1815. In addition to the revolutionary dynamic already named, these would include the increasing size of the audience for national politics, the expanding mechanisms for popular political mobilization, and the changing criterion according to which parliamentary politics and the national interest were coming to be judged. ¹⁰ Wilson, ‘Empire, trade and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain’; Gerald Jordan and Nicholas Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes: Patriotism and Liberty in Hanoverian England’, Journal of British Studies, 28 (1989), 201–24, Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998), 122–51; Stephen Conway, ‘ “A joy unknown for years past”: the American war, Britishness and the celebration of Rodney’s victory at the Saints’, History, 86 (2001), 180–99, and ‘War and National Identity in the mid-eighteenth century British Isles’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), 863–93. ¹¹ Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’; Wilson, Sense of the People, especially 140–65. ¹² For the latter, see Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Politics, Poetry, and National Myth (Oxford, 1994), especially 150–61.

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Britain’s political culture during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has, of late, been reconceptualized in several important studies.¹³ This book complements those findings, arguing that an enhanced understanding of Georgian Britain requires acknowledgement of the role political symbols played in sustaining its political culture and mediating public debate. The point was not lost on a prescient observer like Cobbett. It is no accident that the passage cited in the epigraph to this chapter (which appears in his 1796 pseudo-autobiography, The Life and Times of Peter Porcupine) is situated in a discussion that narrates his political coming of age. National identity and political awareness were closely related aspects of an eighteenth-century subject’s consciousness. This is why they are enmeshed in Cobbett’s rendering, and also why, in this study, politics and culture are enmeshed in a manner that might seem surprising. Political history, naval history, social history, and the history of art and literature are often examined under separate rubrics. Necessity is the mother of this convention, but it obviously cannot stand for a study that explores the meanings that images of the navy and its heroes held for eighteenth-century Britons. These were substantial, diverse, and expressed in a range of cultural forms. This work, then, proceeds in the spirit of the ‘new political history’ of late Georgian Britain, exploring national identity from a political-cultural perspective.¹⁴

PATRIOTISM, NATIONAL IDENTIT Y, AND POLITICAL SYMBOLISM A number of British historians working in the late Georgian period have been increasingly drawn to the study of patriotism and national identity.¹⁵ Much of this work, particularly that covering the years after 1789, has been implicitly related to the long-standing ‘revolution debate’, ¹³ Bob Harris, Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2002); Conway, The British Isles and the American War of Independence; Elijah Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000); James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c.1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993). ¹⁴ The term is Dror Wahrman’s. See ‘The new political history: a review essay’, Social History, 21 (1996), 343–54. ¹⁵ Gerald Newman, ‘Anti-French propaganda and British liberal nationalism in the early nineteenth-century: suggestions towards a general interpretation’, Victorian Studies,

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which sought to explain the absence of a successful revolutionary movement in Britain. By the late 1980s the debate centred on the relative traction enjoyed by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary opinions in Britain, with specific attention being paid to the degree to which support for the existing political order, or loyalism, could be said to have eclipsed that held for its reformist rival, popular radicalism.¹⁶ Such work re-established awareness of the breadth of loyalism, and created the opportunity for wider conclusions. Linda Colley seized this opportunity with her Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (1992), which proposed a narrative framework for reconceptualizing the period through the prism of national identity.¹⁷ In Colley’s view, patriotism was a partly altruistic and partly atavistic identification with Britain that provided opportunities for greater participation in the political nation. Largely a middle-class ethos 28 (1975), 385–418; id., The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740–1830 (New York, 1987); Hugh Cunningham, ‘The language of patriotism, 1750–1914’, History Workshop Journal, 12 (1981), 8–33; Linda Colley, ‘Radical patriotism in eighteenth-century England’, in R. Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 vols. (London, 1989); Miles Taylor, ‘John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England c.1712–1929’, Past and Present, 134 (Feb. 1992), 93–128; Peter Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism: War, Popular Politics and English Radical Reformism, 1800–1815 (Aldershot, 1996); Philip Harling, ‘Leigh Hunt’s Examiner and the language of patriotism’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996), 1159–81; id., ‘The Duke of York affair (1809) and the complexities of war-time patriotism’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), 963–84; Russell, The Theatres of War, and Cookson, The British Armed Nation. ¹⁶ For a recent overview of this literature, see Edward Royle, Revolutionary Britannia: Reflections on the Threat of Revolutions in Britain, 1789–1848 (Manchester, 2000), 1–12. Significant salvos have been offered up by E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968); Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1979); Robert Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country: The English Loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, Ky., 1983); H. T. Dickinson, ‘Popular conservatism and militant loyalism, 1789–1815’, in H. T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the French Revolution (London, 1989); id., Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977); John Dinwiddy, ‘Interpretations of Anti-Jacobinism’, in Mark Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991), 38–49; David Eastwood, ‘Patriotism and the English state in the 1790s’, in Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, 146–68; Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars (London, 1979). ¹⁷ Linda Colley, ‘Apotheosis of George III’; id., ‘Whose nation? Class and national consciousness in Britain 1750–1830’, Past and Present, 113 (1986), 97–117.

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(but not without significance for all ranks), it was this sense of national identity—forged through the mechanisms of commerce, protestantism, and war—that constituted the most significant dynamic of the period 1700 to 1830. Within this framework, the domestic impact of the French Wars of 1793–1815 occupied a central position. The wars with Revolutionary and, later, Napoleonic France created a range of opportunities for citizens to identify with, and advocate on behalf of, the British nation-state. Experiences like the volunteer movement featured in her analysis as a cultural crucible in which popular patriotism was exhibited, facilitated, and forged. This was a collective process, more widely experienced, she famously observed, than the shop floor of the factory.¹⁸ Participation in this effort, she argued, fundamentally altered conceptions of the rights of British citizenship and paved the way for post-war demands for parliamentary reform.¹⁹ Colley’s oeuvre stimulated significant scholarly interest.²⁰ With respect to her assessment of the period 1793–1832, dissatisfaction rested on two closely related fronts. First, there was a general suspicion of her arguments concerning the class-transcending aspects of national identity. Second, there was scepticism regarding the extent to which the largely conservative patriotic ethos she outlined actually percolated throughout the social structure.²¹ This study addresses both issues. It shows how persistent concerns of rank and class were to conceptions of naval patriotism in the period, and it expands the findings of scholars who have pointed to the contested nature of patriotism.²² Much previous work has been attentive to the different ways patriotism was articulated by different ranks, and has thus laudably avoided the ¹⁸ Colley, Britons, 312. ¹⁹ Ibid. 283–319. ²⁰ Her analysis of the volunteers generated responses by Cookson, The British Armed Nation, and Austin Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 1794–1814 (Oxford, 2003). ²¹ Cookson’s conclusion was that patriotism had ‘no unifying cross-class identity’, and that the French wars did little to attach the lower orders ideologically to the British state; The British Armed Nation, 243. ²² Cunningham, ‘The language of patriotism’; Taylor, ‘John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England c.1712–1929’; Harling, ‘Leigh Hunt’s Examiner and the language of patriotism’, and ‘The Duke of York affair’; Peter Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism. Colley’s work, it should be noted, is more nuanced on this point than is sometimes granted, see ‘Whose nation?’, 103–15. But see also E. P. Thompson’s review of Colley, ‘Which Britons?’ Making History: Writings on History and Culture (New York, 1994), 320.

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temptation to see the process of national identity formation as one of hegemonic indoctrination. Still, the tendency has been to explore the manner in which patriotic activity and its attendant understandings diffused through the British social structure, spread by processes of emulation, consumption, and genuine adherence. Several historians, for instance, have joined with Colley in investigating the importance of military service in fostering national identity.²³ These studies share an approach centred on activities (enlistment, producing a print of a battle, participating in a victory celebration) that are taken to be made actionable by a distinct patriotic inclination (and which can therefore be read as evidence of patriotism). This approach though, is not necessarily as illuminating as it seems. Focusing on military service as a barometer of national identity, for instance, is problematic because contemporaries themselves tended to disassociate military service from patriotic sensibility. To give them their due, these historians—particularly J. E. Cookson—are aware of the contingent nature of their sources. It is therefore to join with them in disentangling the skeins of patriotic culture and national identity that this study is presented. It approaches patriotism with greater focus on the contingencies of patriotic discourse, paying attention to the multivalent experience of patriotic culture. This means I treat patriotism as a category of behaviour, a public costume of rhetoric and symbolic activity, which all points on the political spectrum have sought to invest with interpretative determinism and claims of exclusivity.²⁴ Rather than focus on the activities through which national identity percolated, or was translated from rank to rank, it traces the manner in which the meanings constitutive of that identity circulated, and were contested, within late Georgian society. This also involves lessening the focus on a consequence-driven historiography of national identity (a historiography concerned primarily with charting long-term effects for the political development of nation-states) in favour of an exploration of the meanings that were articulated by specific political symbols, as well as of the significance of that articulation itself. ²³ Cookson, The British Armed Nation; Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence; Gee, The British Volunteer Movement; Harris, Politics and the Nation. ²⁴ My view of patriotism then, is similar to Russell’s observation that ‘eighteenthcentury patriotism was at base a performance, an assumption of a role (that implicitly could be counteracted)’. Theatres of War, 101.

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The focus shifts from an effort probing the possible political consequences of the ‘national pride’ that people like Cobbett felt in the navy, to an exploration of how it was possible, and why it was necessary, to feel that pride in the first place. Approaching naval symbols with the awareness that meanings were contested and challenged requires an examination of the precise contexts in which these were deployed. For this reason, the chapters of this study proceed chronologically, an arrangement that also reveals the central narrative around which it is organized—the twenty-two-year attempt to regulate a social and cultural space that I conceptually label ‘the patriotic public sphere’. A gentle nod in the direction of the work of Jürgen Habermas, this term has advantage in drawing attention to the notion of a discursive site where meaning was not only negotiated, but whose very borders were contested as well.²⁵ As will be shown, certain participatory conventions governed the patriotic public sphere. These conventions restricted access, monitored the level of plebeian involvement, and prescribed particular roles for different ranks and classes. Far from being a place where all social ranks were welcome, the patriotic public sphere was a place to which access was conceptually restricted and which the elite attempted to regulate. The British government, the elite, and the loyalist movement worked in a propagandistic manner to define the experience of the wars in an ideologically acceptable way. This effort lasted until 1815. Along the way there were significant changes in loyalist strategy—changes related to the dynamics operating in the patriotic public sphere. Although the narrative unfolds chronologically, the various chapters have distinctive thematic, methodological, and historiographical qualities. Chapter 1 is characteristic in this respect. It examines the cultural politics of the first major naval engagement of the war—the ‘Glorious First of June’, 1794. The government made little effort to sponsor or regulate it at this time, but patriotic culture was far from incidental to the wartime experience. An exploration of the parliamentary and theatrical contestation of this victory by political groupings and an examination of the Westminster election of 1796 (in which one of the victorious admirals stood as the governmental candidate) reveal the profound social fissures ²⁵ Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1991 edn.).

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that obtained in the patriotic public sphere, and show that patriotic culture was deeply politicized, along partisan lines. Central to both episodes is the manner in which the navy—and British tars—appeared as figures capable of resolving these tensions. The chapter shows that the styles of political masculinity associated with the ‘political admiral’, and the cultural stereotype of the common seaman (‘Jack Tar’), permitted the navy to perform an effective role for loyalism because they worked as images capable of containing plebeian agency. Historiographically, the chapter places naval patriotism centrally within British political culture, while methodologically it shows the value of marrying sources and evidence that are still too often viewed as interpretatively distinct. Subsequent chapters proceed similarly. In Chapter 2, the methodological focus concerns the representational instabilities (and thus opportunities) that characterized (and enabled) the partisan struggle in the patriotic public sphere. These became particularly pronounced during the naval mutinies of 1797, mutinies that affected elite perceptions of the navy’s ability to function as a national symbol because they seriously destabilized the naval identities and images that had arisen in patriotic culture. The chapter not only examines how the mutinies affected heroic discourses of masculinity and national identity, but also argues that this symbolic discourse was important to the resolution of the crisis. This is further seen in the cultural response to the battle of Camperdown later in the autumn. It witnessed a deliberate attempt to reform naval patriotism and place it on an appropriately sacral footing. As Chapter 3 reveals, this was merely the beginning of a period in which the patriotic public sphere was frequently questioned and reconceptualized. It examines a range of efforts made, and projects launched, to commemorate and acknowledge naval superiority in the years immediately surrounding the battle of the Nile (1 August 1798). These show the highly contested nature of patriotism during a period in which it has usually been described as normative and stable. Such a conclusion emerges from a method of analysis that seriously questions the existing historiographical tendency to interpret patriotic evidence in a unilateral manner. I argue for the existence of a vivid contemporary debate concerning the desirability of extending the borders of the patriotic public sphere and an appropriately contextualized view of patriotic behaviours. Having worked, then, to illustrate the patriotic public sphere, and the stresses placed upon it, the focus shifts next to consider it as a site of

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cultural production. This is possible, because the next few years saw naval patriotism become centred on the figure of Admiral Nelson. Chapter 4 sheds considerable light on the process of heroic construction in Georgian society. It traces the development of Nelson’s image as a religious, meritorious, and wounded hero, and locates it—to a degree that has never before been suggested—in relationship to some of the manifest social tensions of the period. The contemporary significance of Nelson’s image—and his body—was an important area in which the meaning of the war, and its implications for masculinity, were negotiated. While many aspects of Nelson’s image dovetailed perfectly with elite desires, Nelson did not capture the image of the navy for loyalism—nor did his victory and death at Trafalgar conclude the partisan struggle. His funeral, for instance, must be seen in the context of the struggle concerning the patriotic public sphere. Its controversies and tensions articulated contemporary debates about the membership and meaning of the patriotic public sphere. The final chapter describes how a radical naval officer— Lord Cochrane—exploited the appeal of naval symbolism and transformed politics in Westminster. Cochrane’s political career from 1807 provides a useful vehicle for narrating the contestation of the patriotic public sphere during the final years of the Napoleonic war. The chapter argues that attention to the concept of political style and sensitivity to the nature of naval patriotism can assist in revising the accepted narratives of radical Westminster. By 1814, Cochrane’s presence in the patriotic public sphere prompted loyalist supporters to seize the opportunity presented by his apparent involvement in a stock exchange hoax to launch a political prosecution of a popular radical. Loyalists attempted to strip Cochrane of his patriotic pretensions, and in this sense the subsequent trial was of a piece with another loyalist project of 1814, the ‘Grand Jubilee’ held in London’s Hyde Park. It attempted to invest the victory over Napoleon with a decidedly conservative political message. The two projects became interlinked in the final struggle over the navy and the nation during the period. In both events, the polarity between plebeian and loyalist conceptions of the navy and the nation were dramatically revealed—underlining once again that social harmony was not necessarily the result of patriotic efforts, even in Britain’s moment of victory. These, then, are the arguments to be presented in an exploration of naval symbolism that is deeply attentive to late Georgian partisan and

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class tensions. And it is precisely because these partisan and class tensions are so crucial to my interpretation that it is necessary, before proceeding any further, to establish more fully the basic contours of the patriotic public sphere through a brief conceptual overview. This also permits an introduction to the cultural forms to be examined in this study. Two important points emerge. First, that although it tended to be perceived as an elitist and literary space, the patriotic public sphere included some accessible and popular venues. Second, the significant degree to which naval and martial issues impinged on the experience of print culture, the theatre, the crowd, and urban politics, argue for their being considered distinct patriotic idioms.

LITERARY CULTURE AND THE PATRIOTIC PUBLIC SPHERE ‘Where is the man, woman, or child, in this kingdom, who has not heard and talked of Nelson? And does not the reader believe, that there are many parishes, in either of which knowledge of Pope or of Johnson’s having existed is confined to two or three persons?’²⁶ William Cobbett found the apparently greater celebrity achieved by heroes over literary men ironic, given that naval and military heroes (unlike their rivals in the world of letters) were not overtly involved in the production of the texts that advertised their fame. Cobbett was exaggerating for effect. For at the conclusion of actions, both military officers and naval commanders were charged with the responsibility of writing the official dispatches in which they provided their accounts of the battles. Episodes in victory culture (the term I use to describe the specific nature of the cultural engagement that attended battle successes) can be said to begin here, when officers in both services were afforded the unique opportunity to be the initial authors of their own fame. These reports were reprinted in the official news bulletin of the British government, the London Gazette (hereafter the Gazette), after ministers and officials at Whitehall and the Admiralty had received them from couriers. These Gazette bulletins, in turn, formed a significant amount of the loyalist content of the newspaper press, in both London and the ²⁶ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 8 (10 Aug. 1805), cols. 198–9.

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provinces, where editors and publishers simply pasted their contents into their latest editions.²⁷ This amounted to an effective form of government influence over the content of the press. The office of editor of the Gazette was a patronage post, which made possible the charge that when reporting on the war, he was guilty of ‘Making the most of it’.²⁸ Unsurprisingly, the war saw an elevation in the prominence given to gazetted intelligence. At the end of June 1795 the Oracle and Public Advertiser inaugurated a daily feature section—‘The Field of Mars’—where readers could thereafter find all the news and bulletins relevant to military affairs.²⁹ Given their increased prominence, the vigilant monitoring of the government version of the war was a project that frequently occupied Cobbett, and the critical analysis of Gazette texts became a regular feature of his Political Register. And he was not alone in his scepticism. As early as 1794 a ‘New Political Dictionary’ published in the Morning Post had defined ‘gazette extraordinary’ as ‘A marvelous account, disseminated by persons in power, to amuse the public.’³⁰ While moderate and anti-war opinion decried the Gazette as a work of fiction, loyalism considered it as literature. Sir Edward Pellew’s dispatch recounting an encounter in January 1797 with a French ship he had succeeded in driving into the rocks off Ushant was celebrated in the press as an ‘elegant Letter [that] is not the less credible to him as a Writer than his actions have been to him as an Officer’.³¹ In the opinion of one paper, it formed a fitting contrast to the ‘gasconade in which the French Republic has indulged’: Every line of it is vital—pregnant with sense, captivating by pathos. Perfectly unstudied it attains the perfection of composition. The pictures of the ‘breakers’—‘the lingering approach of the day’—the enemy’s vessel ‘lying on her broad-side, and a tremendous surf beating over her!’ the commiseration for the crew—would grace even the Epic of the first of the Poets—they are the felicities of art, springing from the fountain of manly sensibilities.³²

Gazettes were not simply periodically consumed news—they were texts read in an intensive manner. This influenced the form and style in which ²⁷ Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country, 15. ²⁸ Politics for the People, 1 (1794), 159. ²⁹ Oracle, 30 June 1795. The section was later renamed ‘The Naval and Military Gazette’. ³⁰ Morning Post, 26 Aug. 1794. Daniel Isaac Eaton claimed that the casualties for the ‘Glorious First of June’ were under-reported in the Gazette by almost a third; Politics for the People, 2 (1794), 251. ³¹ True Briton, 26 Jan. 1797. ³² Oracle, 23 Jan. 1797.

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they were composed. Pellew was one of many officers of the period who realized the need to elevate the tone of the official dispatch and use it as a means of presenting comforting and appropriate images of officers, seamen, and British heroism. In this particular dispatch, aristocratic and gentlemanly perceptions of war were emphasized, most particularly in the affecting description of the ‘manly sensibilities’ of the officers who observed the fate of the enemy. Pellew was perpetuating a myth about the officer class—that they remained gentlemen even in violent and brutal circumstances. There was a strong connection between gazette intelligence and Britain’s elite. It was significant in terms of both their political hegemony and their cultural identity. When an impostor spreading false news of a victory by Nelson arrived at Exeter in 1805, his first move was to identify himself to the ‘leading men of the town’ and the ‘Gentlemen belonging to a Subscription-house’.³³ This reflected the fact that subscription houses stood at the apex of a gentlemanly culture of reading with which the study of martial intelligence was strongly associated. Subscription libraries, which, along with smaller book clubs, proliferated in the second half of the eighteenth century, were male preserves whose membership closely matched the local civic elite.³⁴ They existed to provide a forum for the distribution of primarily non-fictional professional material to their members. These libraries and reading rooms subscribed to the periodicals—such as the Gentleman’s Magazine and the Naval Chronicle—that reprinted the dispatches of the Gazette. Theirs were the reading rooms where the detailed accounts of battles were studied and discussed. A letter published in the Oracle in 1799 describes a ‘very keen Newspaper Reading Club’ in an unnamed village, where printed accounts of the Battle of the Nile and other military campaigns were pored over and studied with an interest the writer found quite comical: . . . your paper, full of the accounts of the complicated movements of the Armies in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, had just been received by the Club, who, ³³ The Sun, 21 Nov. 1805. ³⁴ John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1997), 180–1. Emma Vincent Macleod has recently shown that women writers (or, at least, works pitched at women) participated in the debate over war and revolution. But the point remains, this literary culture was idealized and imagined as a male preserve. A War of Ideas: British Attitudes to the Wars against Revolutionary France, 1792–1802 (Aldershot, 1998), 158–78.

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long before I arrived, were hard at it, with their books of maps displayed on the table, which leaning three deep over one another, in a very hot day, and a very close room, they were consulting most eagerly and most unsuccessfully . . . the heat of the room, the tobacco, the punch, and the porter, so bewildered, muddled and perplexed the pates of several members . . . ³⁵

As described here, the consumption of martial intelligence functioned as an accoutrement of gentlemanly identity. This is also seen in a caricature published on the first anniversary of the ‘Glorious First of June’. The now retired Earl Howe sits in a study, smoking, with wine and punch bowl at hand, reading the Gazette of 1 June 1794 (see Figure 1).³⁶ In the first years of the war, radicals like Daniel Isaac Eaton were increasingly identifying this brand of military enthusiasm as inherently hypocritical and false. While for Cobbett and the Morning Post the problem with the Gazette was its hyperbole and untrustworthiness, for Eaton it was related to the larger problem of the representation of war. In one of his satires, an aristocrat greets a messenger—one ‘Sir Edmund Metaphor’—who visits him to bring the latest military intelligence. The news is bad, but delivered in such grand ‘accents’ that the aristocrat is transported nonetheless: though he talked of ships and men, of bellowing guns, and furnaces for conflagrating balls, of flowing sheets and swelling sails, of squadrons from Brest, and others from the Chesapeak, destined to unite their force against our fleet at Martinico, yet in such accents did the news transpire, that I could almost wish they might succeed in their atrocious enterprize, purely to enjoy the delicious honey-dew of soul-soothing consolation.³⁷

Eaton’s point was that for the aristocracy, war was a form of amusement— a cultivated divertissement pursued in the safety and comfort of their libraries and drawing rooms. He particularly identified the elevated flowery discourse of aristocratic gentlemen as a rhetorical style that obscured the true face of war, and indicted it as a factor in its perpetuation. This radical concern with the political consequences of language was ³⁵ Oracle, 6 July 1799. ³⁶ The particular object of satire on this occasion was Sir Roger Curtis, Howe’s flagcaptain, who was allegedly responsible for advice that lessened the scale of the British achievement. See M. D. George and F. G. Stephens, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 10 vols. (London, 1870–1954), vii. 180. ³⁷ Politics for the People, 2 (1794), 6–10.

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Figure 1. ‘WHAT A CUR ’TIS!’, H. Humphrey (publisher), National Maritime Museum: Department of Prints and Drawings (PAF 4151), 9 June 1795. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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a major development of the 1790s;³⁸ but pointing to the aristocracy’s detachment from the experience of war was not. There Eaton’s satire had pursued a theme presented in 1782 by the Revd Vicesimus Knox, which Eaton had earlier reprinted in his Politics for the People. It presented a classic indictment of the aristocratic management of war, arguing it was fought by ‘innocent victims’ ‘employed’ by ‘kings and grandees’, ‘who remain quietly at home, and amuse themselves in the interests of balls, hunting, wherriesm and pleasures of every species; with reading at the fire-side, and over a cup of chocolate, the dispatches from the army; and the news in the Extraordinary Gazette.’³⁹ The point here is not to suggest that these items were consumed solely by the upper ranks of British society. Satirists depicted this Gazettereading culture as uniformly aristocratic, but this was not the case. There is good reason for believing that such material was reasonably well diffused among the middling ranks of tract and pamphlet buyers. Cobbett and Eaton’s readers would have been familiar with this material too—which is precisely why it needed to be confronted. A sixpenny market for baldly reprinted Gazette accounts, associated addresses, votes of thanks, and battle diagrams did exist.⁴⁰ Newspaper and periodical distribution performed a function here too. Gazette accounts were reprinted in the newspaper press and in a number of periodicals—forms that had wide readerships. It is also important to recognize that the Gazette was the symbol of a type of literary activity and not the sole item in its content. It stood as the primary example of a perceived sphere in which a whole range of related texts and media interacted to construct meaning. In towns and major cities newspapers formed an important focus of coffee-house culture, where those persons who participated in the public sphere gathered.

³⁸ Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language 1791–1819 (Oxford, 1984). ³⁹ Politics for the People, 1 (1794), 194–5. ⁴⁰ See Good News for old England. A full, true, and particular account of the defeat of the Dutch Fleet! which took place on . . . October 11th, 1797 . . . near Camperdown . . . by the British fleet, under . . . Admiral Duncan, etc. (London, 1797), and G. Bridgeman, Account of the Victory over the Dutch Fleet, obtained by Admiral Duncan, Oct. 11, 1797 (London, 1797), both of which sold for 6d. The three editions of Official documents and interesting particulars of the glorious victory obtained over the French Fleet, . . . June 1, 1794, by the British Fleet, under the command of Admiral Earl Howe: illustrated with an accurate engraving, etc. (London, 1794) were also moderately priced, at between 1s. and 1s. 6d.

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Still, as the satirical criticisms make clear, the genre was associated with Britain’s elite. News of signal developments from abroad was consumed most intensively by them.⁴¹ The extent to which this process was exclusionary—while it claimed to be ‘national’—is worth noting. For some, being present in the process in some way was a means of expressing their own identity. In another sense, this literary culture was explicitly identified as the province of its readers. Periodicals and newspapers made significant use of officers’ letters that family members willingly passed on to them. Written originally (or ostensibly) as ‘private’ letters, these first-hand accounts became contributions that obviated the distinction between author and audience. Contemporaries were aware of the sensibilities of rank that surrounded this genre. In 1798 one correspondent to the Gentleman’s Magazine excused his contribution on the grounds that ‘as I observe you frequently admit anecdotes relative to persons of a somewhat lower rank than that of your usual readers, I venture to send you one, which I think well worth recording.’⁴² Although, as the letter indicates, the boundaries of this culture may have been slipping, they were still strongly sensed. The frequency with which the elite and gentlemanly fascination with military intelligence was satirized clearly indicates that critics saw it as a powerful force in the perpetuation of war, militarism, and monarchical rule. Its identification as ‘aristocratic’ in radical discourse was pejorative, and intended to indicate that the purpose of war was to benefit the aristocracy. The Gazette was attacked as aristocratic and false because critics feared it was becoming precisely the opposite—popular and accepted. It is important to underline the existence of this literary culture (which might be called, for convenience, the literary culture of ‘the field of Mars’), because it generated so many of the cultural forms examined in this study. The Gazette, for instance, was a frequently cited source in the explanatory notes attached to heroic and epic war poetry. It also informed efforts in the visual arts. In 1801, when Robert Ker Porter’s great battle painting of the Siege of Acre was being exhibited in London, the fashionable crowds that attended were invited to purchase an accompanying ‘descriptive collection’ of the campaign. This was a ninety-six-page item, most of ⁴¹ For a discussion of the place of foreign news in eighteenth-century newspapers, see Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1987), 197–243. ⁴² Gentleman’s Magazine, 84 (1798), 114.

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which consisted of reprinted Gazette accounts.⁴³ Regardless of the artistic form in which they appeared, the anecdotes and incidents that represented acts of war and images of heroic achievement were first filtered through this highly selective, and highly formulaic, literary culture. It is no wonder that opposition and dissenting voices challenged this monopolistic discourse. Equally significant is the fact that elite reading audiences did not see themselves as passive consumers of this literary culture. They considered themselves to be active participants within it. One prominent literary genre in which they expressed this participatory sense of national community was that of heroic panegyric and war poetry. Although such verse has been largely ignored in contemporary literary studies, it was not ignored in its own day.⁴⁴ Literary journals like the Critical Review, the Analytical Review, the Monthly Review, and the British Critic took war poetry seriously. The monthly miscellanies overflowed with proffered poetic submissions—submissions that frequently exceeded demand. The Gentleman’s Magazine for November 1805 printed nineteen examples of such poetry—sixteen of which were by apparent novices.⁴⁵ In January 1806 the Monthly Mirror reported that since it published its December issue, it had been inundated with ‘Three Odes; five Elegies; two Epitaphs; and a Monody; on the death and funeral of Lord Nelson.’⁴⁶ The late Georgian reading audience, then, was highly engaged with war poetry. Moreover, it is a mistake—as we shall see—to assume that this poetry was either politically anodyne or partisanly homogeneous. It is, rather, a necessary source through which to examine the resonance and meaning that naval battles and naval heroes, and more broadly, war itself, held for Georgian subjects. If participation in a community provided ‘pseudo-laureates’ of the late Georgian elite with opportunities for authorship and literary activism, the agency that all ranks of Britons claimed in other venues of the ⁴³ The Siege of Acre; or descriptive collection relative to the late scene of contest in Syria, between the British and Turkish force, under the orders of Sir. W. S. Smith, and the republican French, commanded by General Buonaparte. Chiefly intended as a companion to the . . . historical picture, painted by R. K. Porter, now exhibiting at the Lyceum (London, 1801). ⁴⁴ A recent work, which does submit such poetry to serious scholarly attention, is Simon Bainbridge, British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Visions of Conflict (Oxford, 2003). ⁴⁵ See Gentleman’s Magazine, 98 (1805), 1044–8. ⁴⁶ Monthly Mirror, 21 (1806), 4.

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patriotic public sphere needs to be acknowledged.⁴⁷ As consumers of a broadly (albeit unequally) accessible print culture, other ranks could play their roles and insist on their own identities, as another example from Cobbett’s writings rather dramatically indicates. During the eight years he spent in the United States from 1792 to 1800, Cobbett set up shop as a bookseller in Philadelphia, where a sixpenny illustration of Lord Howe’s victory over the French Fleet (which had been used as packing paper in a shipping parcel) came into his possession. He displayed the patriotic print in his shop, where it attracted the attention of two English labourers, who purchased it and an accompanying print at the inflated price of two dollars, having taken out a loan against their wages. These labourers (who were formerly followers of Paine) desired the print in order to lord it over American acquaintances with whom they had quarrelled by zealously advocating ‘the part of their country [Britain]’. They purchased the print ‘by way of defiance’ and displayed it to a hostile mob.⁴⁸ This was a dramatically different kind of usage from the appreciative materialism anticipated by the print-makers and consumers of gentlemanly culture. Deployed as a symbol in the street, the print functioned as an overt political sign. It was both a device through which Americans were to be distanced and intimidated and the vehicle through which two former radicals publicly realigned themselves with their country. Their act illustrates that meaning in this print culture was assigned as much by the terms of personal consumption, as it was by public acceptance (or assumptions) of its significance, a consideration that underlines the need to interpret patriotic culture carefully. Similarly uncontrolled—and similarly open to diverse ranks—was the theatre, another major venue crucial to the patriotic public sphere. Throughout the period of the war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, the stage was an important cultural forum in which battles were represented for domestic consumption. Many theatricals were naval ‘docudramas’; that is, spoken dramatic plays set specifically in the context of a contemporary battle or victory. Such representations have been called the ‘newsreels’ of their day, but as some recent studies show, they were much more than that.⁴⁹ Although not taken seriously ⁴⁷ I take the term ‘pseudo-laureate’ from the dismissive description of Waterloo poetry in H. Fry’s The Poet’s Calling in the English Ode (New Haven, 1980), 307. ⁴⁸ Political Register, 8 (5 Oct. 1805), cols. 518–20. ⁴⁹ I borrow the term ‘docudrama’ from George D. Glen’s ‘ “Nautical docudrama” in the age of the Kembles’ in Judith L. Fisher and Stephen Watt (eds.), When They Weren’t

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by contemporary theatre critics, they do need to be taken seriously in an examination of wartime patriotism. Considered ‘puerile and trifling’ by the theatrical elite, naval docudramas continued to appear because ‘the people have been led to expect them; and the managers . . . did their best to meet the public expectation’.⁵⁰ Why managers succumbed to such popular desires is explained by the social breadth of the audience at this time. The Georgian theatre was not the exclusive preserve of any particular class or group. Thus the entertainment offered could not exclusively reflect the tastes of the literary and cultural elite.⁵¹ Importantly, the social breadth of the theatre audience doubles the value of these patriotic theatricals as avenues for the investigation of wartime patriotism. Moreover, as we shall see, these theatricals were a significant site of social commentary on naval patriotism and victory culture. Theatrical representations on the Georgian stage were but one kind of performance. Public celebrations and state spectacles were another, whose advantage to historians is that they permit both the examination of the crowd and insight into non-elite opinion.⁵² This study investigates the patriotic crowd for the part it played in the victory celebrations, public pageants, and state spectacles associated with the navy and its heroes. Reconstructing the crowd’s role, however, is difficult, since its actions are generally only glimpsed through representations in the literary media of the elite and middling classes. Class tensions, as will be seen, infected representations of patriotism at almost every level. Although the presence of the patriotic crowd is obviously of crucial interest in an investigation of state spectacle’s role in the shaping of national identity, it Doing Shakespeare: Essays on Nineteenth Century British and American Theatre (Athens, Ga., 1989). The quotation is from Derek Forbes, ‘Water drama’ in D. Bradby, L. James, and B. Sharratt (eds.), Performance and Politics in Popular Drama (Cambridge, 1980), 94. Important recent works on similar theatricals include Greg Dening, Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power, and Theatre on the Bounty (Cambridge, 1992) especially 262–81, and Russell, Theatres of War. ⁵⁰ Monthly Mirror, 20 (1805), 340. ⁵¹ Marc Baer, Theatre and Disorder in Late Georgian London (Oxford, 1992), 167; James J. Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson’s London (Berkeley, 1953), 201–3. ⁵² On the patriotic crowd, see Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns, 1790–1835 (Cambridge, 1988), 234–67; Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’; Colley, Britons, 217–28; Wilson, ‘Empire, trade and popular politics in midHanoverian Britain’; id., The Sense of the People; Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain, 122–51.

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is obviously perilous to make interpretations concerning how projected messages were necessarily perceived. An inability—or unwillingness—to come to terms with the role of the audience or crowd is one reason why some explorations of state spectacle have emphasized manipulation from above. When audiences are—for lack of evidence—seen as largely passive, historians tend to correct the reception-projection gap by underlining the ‘invented’ nature of such projects and classifying them as propaganda.⁵³ Since so many of the surviving archival sources speak primarily to issues of direct and indirect manipulation, it would be tempting to treat naval and military heroes in this manner. But it is necessary to avoid falling into the error of having the process of ‘patriot-hero-making’ fit to an analytical model that overly emphasizes manipulation from above. For that reason, I have taken inspiration from modern cultural studies, finding strength in approaches that are attentive to the roles played in the formation of cultural images by both the subjects and their audience.⁵⁴ Since the late Georgian period so obviously had its own distinctive contexts (prime among them the hierarchical and contingent relationship that the different ranks of late Georgian society enjoyed with the processes of cultural production), perspectives from cultural studies will be employed cautiously. Even so, official elements cannot be easily written out of the story. As subsequent chapters will illustrate, ministers of the day placed great importance on conferring parliamentary votes of thanks on victorious commanders and were direct participants in a number of important projects in naval patriotism. These were part of a deliberate strategy to consecrate their policies and to attach themselves to a contemporary heroic culture. The level of their commitment is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the attention paid to securing naval heroes as ministerial candidates for the borough of Westminster, the most important constituency in the country. ⁵³ See for example, John M. Mackenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880–1960 (Manchester, 1984). An influential text in this regard was Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983). Similarly, see the approach to spectacle advanced by Scott Hughes Myerly in British Military Spectacle: From the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea (Cambridge, 1996). ⁵⁴ Particularly by P. David Marshall, and his conception of the celebrity, or in this case, the hero, as ‘a negotiated “terrain” of significance’. See Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis, 1997), 47.

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The political nation and the patriotic nation were never equivalent— understanding this is fundamental to the political and cultural dynamics of the late eighteenth century. But the two did come together, at specific times and places, to confront and test one another. A crucial venue where this occurred, and where naval patriotism was thus defined and challenged, was the borough of Westminster in central London. Westminster has always occupied a special place in the historiography of late eighteenth-century Britain. Its broad franchise and proximity to the capital gave it a central importance to the development of popular politics. It has an additional importance for this study, because by the 1790s it had a tradition of naval representation stretching back into the century.⁵⁵ (See Appendix 1.) Admirals Sir Peter Warren and Edward Vernon had been active as candidates in the 1740s, and from 1780 the ministry side was successively represented by a series of naval heroes, including Admirals Rodney, Hood, and Gardner. So strong was the habit of naval representation at Westminster that Richard Brinsley Sheridan described the seat as ‘a sort of peerage which would be properly conferred on meritorious Naval Officers’.⁵⁶ Westminster was not singular in this respect (a fact that makes it valuable in the context of a national study). Naval officer MPs were a staple cohort in the parliaments of the period and sat for constituencies throughout the country. Westminster cannot claim any exclusivity over the electoral expression of naval patriotism, but it does feature in this study as the borough that saw naval patriotism most powerfully focused in a popular context. At Westminster, during ‘election-tide’, when the ritual political practices of the urban crowd reigned, here was the public sphere in the moment of its most contingent constitution. And when a naval symbol—or naval hero—entered the equation, naval patriotism was deployed in a context that had import and relevance for national political culture. What did this mean for contemporaries? What can it mean for late Georgian political culture? This is the departing point for the inquiry that follows. Such an inquiry will require excursions into the politics of cultural representation, the structure of the patriotic public sphere, dimensions of popular politics, and aspects of elite ideology. But the first requirement that was necessary to sustain such a cultural project in the 1790s ⁵⁵ R. G. Thorne, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986), iv. 3. ⁵⁶ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 129.

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was an event that approached the status of a ‘victory’—something around which heroic tropes could coalesce. And so, this study opens with a consideration of the first perceived victory of the war that began for Britain in 1793. This was Admiral Howe’s skirmish with the French squadron in the mid-Atlantic—a four-day, fog-bound series of encounters that was soon grandiloquently christened ‘The Glorious First of June’.

1 The ‘Glorious Firsts of June’ The extacy of joy displayed by the public on receiving the news of Lord Howe’s glorious victory, proves how much more Britons are delighted by success at sea than on land. The sea is our protecting element, and as long as Britannia rules the waves nothing can hurt us. A victory at sea must ever give us more heart-felt pleasure than twenty victories on the Continent. St. James’s Chronicle, 12–14 June 1794.

Such lines were neither self-confident hyperbole nor simple panegyric. Rather, the observation of the St. James’s Chronicle on the naval victory of Lord Howe (the ‘Glorious First of June’, 29 May–1 June 1794) suggests just how destabilizing and problematic Britain’s war with the Revolution was in the early summer of 1794. For one thing, Britain did not have twenty victories to speak of, whether on land or sea. Second, and unfortunately for those who supported a war effort unpopular in many quarters, Howe’s naval victory did not necessarily confirm the arguments of the pro-war party in Great Britain. This was not just because Howe’s victory (in which the British took six French ships of the line, sank another, while the French squadron realized its strategic goal and facilitated the passage of a major North American grain convoy) was a qualified success. Rather, for liberal anti-war opinion, even easy success at sea proved that Britain’s involvement on the continent was ‘not only unnatural, but destructive’ and that ‘the sea is the proper scene whereon to display our natural superiority’.¹ This alleged preference that Britons affected for victories at sea rested indelicately alongside a Pittite war ¹ Morning Post, 26 June 1794.

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The ‘Glorious Firsts of June’

strategy that had privileged continental alliances and expeditions that (with the exception of the recently successful expedition to the West Indies) placed Britain, both diplomatically and strategically, at the heart of Europe. While the pro-ministerial St. James’s Chronicle tried to explain Britons’ predilections away with sentimental allusions to their innate naval supremacy, the fact remained that naval success alone was not the vote of confidence that Pitt’s ministry desired. Previous historians have held that the general domestic effect of the ‘Glorious First of June’ was to turn the patriotic tide and restore loyalist fortunes.² This chapter calls that view into question, but its object is not simply to replace an interpretation that gives the domestic political advantage to loyalism with one in which the battle has a nugatory effect. Of greater import is the degree to which the contestation of the battle illuminates our understanding of the patriotic discourses, rhetorical modes, and national symbols available to various Georgian political groupings. Recent looks at loyalism—by Mark Philp and Kevin Gilmartin—have highlighted its rhetorical complexity and drawn particular attention to its structures of exclusion.³ This chapter argues that a similar dynamic characterized the patriotic public sphere at the outset of the war of 1793. It traces the effort to elevate a battle that was a strategic stalemate into a political victory for Pitt’s government and an ideological victory for loyalism. That effort was made by ministerial agents and loyalist activists in various venues between 1794 and 1796. Importantly, it elicited Whig and radical responses. What it revealed to all—but particularly to loyalists—were the tensions that existed in the patriotic public sphere, tensions they would spend the rest of the war attempting to resolve. This chapter proceeds, then, by focusing on the struggles over naval patriotism and the meaning of the ‘Glorious First of June’. These were waged in the street, in caricature, in verse, and on stages both theatrical and parliamentary. Since these struggles spilled over into one another it is largely in terms of narrative convenience that this chapter begins with ² J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911 edn.), 192; Robert Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country, 156; John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 3 vols. (London, 1969–96), ii. 349–50, 401. ³ Mark Philp, ‘Vulgar Conservatism, 1792–93’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 42–69; Kevin Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution: loyalist association and conservative opinion in the 1790s’, Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002), 291–328.

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a look at the immediate partisan parliamentary context into which news of Howe’s victory burst. It then turns to consider the theatrical docudramas of the ‘Glorious First of June’—an examination merited both by the degree to which these were extensions of the parliamentary struggle and the degree to which these plays represent the first fully elaborated considerations of the nature of victory culture. The chapter’s final section looks at the Westminster election of 1796. Fought during the second anniversary of the battle, and featuring the candidacy of one of Howe’s admiral heroes, it continued the patriotic struggle. Through it all the navy emerges as a unique national symbol, prized for its ability to perform socially cohesive work at the same time that it was capable of addressing a range of issues relevant to the ongoing struggles between loyalism, whiggery, and popular radicalism. EARL HOWE, LORD HOOD, AND THE ‘PORT OF PUBLIC APPROBATION’ The first year of the war was a widespread failure for Britain. The campaigns under the Duke of York in Flanders were characterized by division of purpose and plagued by uneven results. An effort led by Lord Moira to support a royalist revolt in Brittany ended in failure, the Royal Navy seized and lost Toulon in a series of events that were effectively an embarrassment for all concerned, and a British attempt to take Dunkirk was rebuffed. By the late spring of 1794, Grey and Jervis’s campaign in the West Indies stood as the only unqualified British success.⁴ In naval affairs, dissatisfaction focused on Earl Howe, the commander in chief of the Channel Fleet responsible for shadowing the French fleet at Brest, protecting British trade, and staving off invasion attempts. The frequency with which Howe’s fleet sought refuge in the anchorage of Torbay between the time it put to sea in July 1793 until its return for extensive repairs in early December, led to the admiral being pilloried as the antithesis of the fighting tar and the epitome of the aristocratic incompetent, aggravating a reputation for caution he had already earned ⁴ Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance: 1793–1802 (New York, 1942), ch. 4; Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, ii, ch. 9–10.

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during the American War. Several numbers of Daniel Isaac Eaton’s Politics for the People targeted Howe, and in the first half of 1794 the radical publisher published a long satirical poem, The Volunteer Laureate; or, Fall of Peter Pindar. Containing, Odes to Lord Howe, Mr. Pitt and the Swinish Multitude.⁵ Here Howe’s reticence to attack the French was dwelt on in detail, the poet speaking of ‘the amiable harmless Arts of Lord Howe’—‘Always manouvering yet with so much skill | He never took a foe, nor ever will.’⁶ This opinion was not confined to the radical press. Criticism was widespread. In the daily papers Howe was the butt of squibs while James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank mocked the hapless admiral in caricature.⁷ Howe’s public image was immediately rehabilitated once news of a significant victory over the French Fleet began to arrive in London during the first week of June 1794. The pro-government Oracle addressed Howe’s critics directly, trumpeting that Howe ‘has replied in the only way becoming so great a man . . . He has been termed a manouvering admiral . . . But he was denied to be a fighting admiral . . . His refutation is a total defeat of the French fleet, and so complete a vindication is it, that the naval power of our enemy is most probably annihilated for ever.’⁸ In the prints and caricatures which now celebrated Howe’s achievement, the iconography used to attack Howe the previous winter was simply applied to the admiral in a complimentary fashion—suggesting the wide extent to which Howe’s victory and his prior failures were linked together in the public mind.⁹ To a government impeded in their military efforts, and increasingly concerned about the domestic threat of popular radicalism, news which could be tailored to vindicate their direction of the war effort and to counter revolutionary ideals was seized with alacrity. On 11 June the ⁵ Politics for the People, 1 (1794), 135, 159–60. ⁶ Archilochus, Jun. The Volunteer Laureate; or, Fall of Peter Pindar. Containing, Odes to Lord Howe, Mr. Pitt and the Swinish Multitude (New York, 1796 edn.). ⁷ John Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, K. G. (London, 1838), 219; G. J. Marcus, A Naval History of England, 2 vols. (London, 1971), ii. 29; Morning Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1793; Lucyle Werkmeister, A Newspaper History of England, 1792–1793 (Lincoln, Neb., 1967), 456–7; George and Stephens, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, vii, no. 8352; How a Great Admiral, With A Great Fleet, Went A Great Way, Was Lost A Great While, Saw A Great Sight—& Then Came Home For A Little Water, Isaac Cruikshank (artist), S. W. Fores (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF3926), 10 Dec. 1793. ⁸ Oracle, 12 June 1794. Emphasis in original. ⁹ George and Stephens, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, vii, no. 8469.

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government announced it would move votes of thanks to Howe in both houses of parliament.¹⁰ Such votes of thanks were a traditional response to the successes of his Majesty’s arms, but they were not anodyne tributes. Their purpose was to advertise partisan interpretations of military projects from the floors of both houses of parliament. While votes of thanks were often dressed up in conventional appeals to crossparty unanimity, the reality was that they were frequently partisan manoeuvres. Most passed unanimously, but the accompanying speeches often served to qualify the nature of the support given. Since most national newspapers featured parliamentary debates in their daily editions, votes of thanks were an effective means of introducing favourable versions of events into the public record. For this reason the wars of 1793–1815 had an inflationary effect upon parliamentary votes of thanks, an increase directly attributable to the practices of Pitt and his political heirs. From the accession of George I in 1714 to the outbreak of the war with France in 1793, parliament voted thanks to officers of the armed services on only fourteen occasions. By comparison, between 1793 and 1815, the thanks of parliament was voted forty times.¹¹ For the government, a motion of thanks to Howe provided the opportunity to validate their administration of the Admiralty and to argue for the vindication of their war strategy. Consequently when Henry Dundas introduced the thanks to Howe, he briefly indulged in panegyric before moving his comments in a more political direction. In a riposte to critics, he noted how ministers alone had retained confidence in the admiral’s abilities. He went on to argue that ‘the naval state of this country at present . . . was never so great or powerful at any period of our history.’¹² This was partisan argument, given that the government’s naval policy had recently been the subject of debate. Furthermore, in the ministerial view, the battle not only preserved Britain from invasion, it also argued for the eventual success of their military strategy as a whole. ¹⁰ Parliamentary Register, 38: 385; ibid., 39: 386. ¹¹ Figures for the 1714–1793 period taken from the indices of the relevant volumes of Parliamentary History (vols. 7–30), Journals of the House of Commons (vols. 18–48); Journals of the House of Lords (vols. 20–39); for the years 1793–1800, Parliamentary Debates; and for the years 1801–15, The Thanks of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland voted by the Houses of Parliament, to the Army and the Navy, for signal instances of successful efforts in defence of their country, 1801–1843 (London, 1845). I have counted votes for distinct actions or campaigns, rather than for each individual named. ¹² Parliamentary Register, 38: 394–5.

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Speaking for the government, Lord Sydney presented Howe’s victory as proof that peace was ‘to be made, not by abandoning the war, but by fighting our enemies by sea and land . . . by following the example of the gallant Commander their Lordships were now about to thank’.¹³ For loyalism the ‘Glorious First’ was scripted as a necessary prelude to eventual victory. The opposition Whig effort to contest this meaning of the ‘Glorious First of June’ commenced immediately. When the ministry announced its proposed thanks to Howe, the Earl of Lauderdale informed them that debate on the question would lead to a ‘discussion respecting the mode of carrying on the war’.¹⁴ When the thanks was debated in the Lords, Whig peers interpreted the victory as a validation of a limited ‘blue-water’ strategy. The Duke of Bedford claimed Howe’s victory showed the advisability of efforts in Britain’s ‘proper sphere’ (e.g. at sea and in the colonies), and proved the ‘absurdity of a Quixotic campaign in Flanders’.¹⁵ Similarly, Lauderdale put a partisan spin on the conceit that Britons preferred naval victories. The fact that victories in Flanders had been ‘received with pretty general indifference’ in contrast to the celebrations for the ‘Glorious First of June’ ‘ought to teach the Government the genuine sentiments of the people’. Central to the anti-war Whigs’ case was the proposition that Howe’s victory was only strategically significant if it were to serve as the occasion to bring the French government to peace terms. The ‘good use’ to be made of Howe’s victory was ‘that of procuring peace’ rather than continuing in ‘the idea of conquering France for the purpose of establishing a form of Government’.¹⁶ Outside parliament, the Morning Chronicle joined its Whig allies in challenging the government’s interpretation of the battle, declaring that Howe’s victory had ‘nothing to do with the question of the principle of the war in which we are involved’. Britain’s naval superiority meant it could safely afford to get out of the European war. The victory proved the Whig case, ‘that if we do not waste our time in idle crusades by land, we have nothing to dread in the sea-girt Isle of Britain, from all the vapouring and all the power of France’.¹⁷ In subsequent editions, the paper extended its criticism to the strategic particulars of the battle itself, pointing out that ¹³ Parliamentary Register, 39: 392. ¹⁵ Parliamentary Register, 39: 391. ¹⁷ Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1794.

¹⁴ The Times, 12 June 1794. ¹⁶ Ibid. 392.

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the French had achieved their strategic aim—the North American convoy had reached France unmolested. The ‘Glorious First of June’ was thus ‘an action which is justly regarded as a victory by both parties’.¹⁸ The Opposition’s campaign raised doubts about the battle. Nevertheless, the motions of thanks to Howe were passed unanimously. As soon as the thanks passed the House of Commons, Dundas announced that a further motion concerning thanks to another admiral, Lord Hood, would be introduced at a subsequent session.¹⁹ Because of Hood’s prominent political career and the particular services for which he was intended to be thanked, Dundas’s announcement continued the parliamentary struggle over naval patriotism—signifying, moreover, that the ministry sought to take it in an increasingly ideological direction. Admiral Sir Samuel Hood was a lord of the Admiralty, a close familial associate of William Pitt, and one of the two MPs for Westminster. The proposed parliamentary vote of thanks to him was in some respects unprecedented, and represented a clear attempt by the government to intensify its association with naval patriotism. Votes of thanks tended to be reserved for large-scale victories that were decisive or campaign-ending actions, but the taking of Bastia in Corsica (the action for which the government technically moved Hood’s thanks) was neither. Ministers had not initially thought the battle worth even a Gazette Extraordinary. But now they were willing to argue that the achievement at Bastia, combined with Hood’s services in the West Indies and at Toulon, merited parliamentary thanks.²⁰ This coupling together of several lesser actions was seen by the Whigs as inappropriate and unusual—but that was not why they opposed it. For them, Hood’s proposed honours were galling because they involved approving of his conduct at Toulon—conduct that was controversial indeed.²¹ Like the ‘Glorious First of June’, Toulon was problematic because of whether it could be considered a ‘victory’ at all. The French naval port had fallen into British hands in September 1793, but was lost by Christmas. In between, the British occupation was characterized by disagreements and difficulties that created opportunities for the opposition to embarrass Pitt’s government. More crucially, Toulon symbolized what ¹⁸ Ibid., 17 June 1794. ¹⁹ Ibid. ²⁰ Parliamentary Register, 39: 404; Morning Chronicle, 18 June 1794. ²¹ See Jennifer Mori, ‘The British government and the Bourbon Restoration: the occupation of Toulon, 1793’, Historical Journal, 40 (1997), 699–719.

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anti-war Whigs and radicals found most objectionable in the war—the degree to which it was seen to be associated with the restoration of the ancien régime. Admiral Hood had taken the territory in the name of Louis XVII. To many this was conclusive proof that Britain was cooperating with royalists and that the restoration of ‘the old government’ and ‘the revival of monarchy in France’ was the true object of Pitt’s war.²² A war that had a counter-revolutionary purpose would be fought for a different purpose and in a different manner. In this sense, the alliances and commitments made at Toulon between the British, French royalists, Sardinians, and Neapolitans represented a future not only of formal political cooperation with displaced legitimist insurgents, but also of expanded war aims and increased continental entanglement. Toulon, then, had an important ideological and strategic dimension—when this is combined with Hood’s naval patriotism, the opposition to his honours becomes understandable. The thanks to Hood was not just another attempt to validate the Pittite conduct of the war; it was an attempt to elevate the partisan dimension of a national victory. This was viewed by the opposition as an excessively polarizing move, and the thanks to Hood became the most vigorously opposed of the period. Debate in the Lords was ‘carried on with more heat than any we remember among their Lordships’.²³ Whig peers not only voted against the motion, they lodged a rare formal protest against it, while in the Commons the Opposition broke with convention and attempted to amend the motion out of recognition.²⁴ Ministers were indeed guilty, in Sheridan’s words, of ‘com[ing] with the little cock-boat of Bastia into the wake of Lord Howe’s fleet, and under his convoy’ attempting ‘to steer it into the Port of Public Approbation’.²⁵ Importantly—and this was likely the ministry’s design—the vote functioned as a ploy to force the Whigs into open opposition. Given that the session of 1794 had begun with a king’s speech that the Opposition attacked for attempting to represent Toulon as a signal victory and national achievement, any thanks to Hood regarding Toulon was a deliberate provocation.²⁶ In seeking it, the government was acting consistently with the rising loyalist intolerance towards dissent throughout the public sphere. ²² Parliamentary History, 30: 1084. ²³ Morning Chronicle, 18 June 1794. ²⁴ Ibid., 19 June 1794; Parliamentary Register, 39: 413. ²⁵ Parliamentary Register, 38: 437. ²⁶ Parliamentary History, 30: 1045.

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With the government monopolizing the conventional posture of panegyric, the Whig case risked becoming marginalized in relation to popular opinion. Placing limited (but fulsome) qualifications on the thanks to Howe had allowed them to gently advance their views, but Hood’s case forced Whigs into an open dissent which government supporters were keen to dismiss as partisan vendetta.²⁷ The Whigs may have sensed the danger; they claimed to object to the vote in part because it would diminish the honour recently paid to Howe.²⁸ They thus attempted to be the true guardians of national honours, paradoxically enough, at a time when they appeared (through the extraordinary nature of their protests) to be violating the conventions of parliament. The reaction of their parliamentary allies suggests that this strategy was ineffective. For instance, Morris Robinson MP, a Foxite Whig, had followed Sheridan and Charles James Fox in opposing the war and the suspension of habeas corpus. But he distanced himself from them on the motions for Howe and Hood, and voted with the government.²⁹ The Portland Whigs responded similarly. Not one signed the protest of the Whig peers, while Lord Mansfield spoke on the government side during the debate on the thanks to Hood.³⁰ The following day the Duke of Portland met Pitt and began the negotiations that brought them into his government.³¹ These parliamentary votes of thanks reveal that a strong partisan dynamic was at work in the construction of meaning for the ‘Glorious First of June’. And when naval symbolism was contested in other arenas that summer, the partisan dynamic was just as visible. This remained the case, I argue, until 1815. Understanding the particular partisan contexts of these struggles is crucial to our understanding of national identity and the political culture of the period. Equally important, though, is what the following look at patriotic theatricals makes clear—that the partisan fault-line was far from the only cleavage in the patriotic public sphere. Naval docudramas of the ‘Glorious First of June’ show that significant social and political tensions became attached to that naval victory, tensions that have not been ordinarily noticed in discussions of either patriotism or loyalism in the 1790s. Although historians have long ²⁷ Parliamentary Register, 38: 441. ²⁸ Ibid., 39: 406. ²⁹ Ibid., 38: 396; Morning Chronicle, 21 June 1794; Frank O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (London, 1967), 253; R. G. Thorne, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986), v. 30–1. ³⁰ Parliamentary Register, 39: 414. ³¹ Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, ii. 409.

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known of patriotic theatricals, they have not been as quick to make effective historical use of them. Most frequently invoked as straightforward evidence for contemporary patriotism, it is only in recent years that cultural historians have realized the full possibilities of such texts.³² And remembering that the theatricals of 1794 appeared in a public sphere increasingly monitored by an intrusive loyalism, their significance can be argued to have been particularly pronounced. The complete texts of four naval docudramas produced in 1794 and relating to Howe’s victory have survived: Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Glorious First of June, James Roberts’s Rule Britannia, Robert Benson’s Britain’s Glory: or, A Trip to Portsmouth, and William Pearce’s Arrived at Portsmouth. The fact that the ‘Glorious First of June’ was the subject of four plays at London’s patent theatres was due to the effort deemed necessary to invest that battle with ideological meaning, rather than as, in and of itself, evidence for a widely held patriotic consensus on the battle’s meaning. The cultural politics of the ‘Glorious First of June’ do not reveal a confident society relishing naval success, but, rather, a political, ideological, and cultural ascendancy determinedly, even desperately, engaged in an effort to propagate a sense of victory.

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN’S THE GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE The first naval docudrama of Howe’s victory by a London patent theatre was Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Glorious First of June. First performed at Drury Lane on 2 July 1794, this production continued the debate over naval patriotism and the meaning of the battle. All four plays of that battle attended to particular dimensions of victory culture. Sheridan’s play, though, raised the most fundamental objections— questioning, at heart, the social costs of Pittite war. To emphasize the disruptive effects of war, profits made were directed towards the relief fund for the widows and orphans of those who had fought in the battle. The drama of the play itself raised dissonant issues, particularly with respect to the controversial practice of naval impressment. ³² Compare Kathleen Wilson, ‘The island race’, and The Sense of the People, 147.

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In arguing, as I do, for a discernibly anti-war and oppositional interpretation of The Glorious First of June, I am working against previous understandings of the play. For years The Glorious First of June was overlooked in Sheridan studies. It lacked canonical status and, moreover, was not held to be a ‘work of Sheridan’. Authorship of the only extant version of the play has been assigned to James Cobb—and it is as a product of Cobb’s pen that the play received its first important examination by Gillian Russell.³³ Russell’s reading stresses the manner in which the play attempted to resolve civil dissension, and The Glorious First of June emerges as a loyalist text. The following discussion comes to the opposite conclusion, as a result of a different understanding of the play’s provenance. Put simply, the text of the play Russell examined was not the text of the play performed. Newspaper reviews of The Glorious First of June indicate that the actual production differed significantly from the version submitted to the government censor prior to the première (the manuscript of which was compiled in The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and consulted by Russell), and thus we are forced to reconsider the ‘play-as-performed’. This performed version of The Glorious First of June had been substantially rewritten by Sheridan and the Drury Lane company on the very afternoon of its production.³⁴ The following reading of The Glorious First of June draws exclusively from the detailed descriptive reviews that appeared in the daily press. Comparison of these newspaper accounts with Cobb’s text reveals that three major alterations had been made— the play now included a scene concerning a press gang, featured an elaborate re-enactment of the naval battle itself, and closed with a representation of a village fete or victory celebration.³⁵ Of these changes, the first can be taken as particularly significant. Indeed, it requires that The Glorious First of June be understood as another enunciation of Whiggish patriotism. Impressment—the recruiting practice in which seamen were forced to surrender their economic freedom and enlist in the navy—had a special ³³ Cecil Price (ed.),The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1973), ii. 753–8; Russell, Theatres of War. ³⁴ London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794; Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1794. ³⁵ Reviews of The Glorious First of June are to be found in the London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794; Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1794; Oracle, 4 July 1794; St. James’s Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794; The Times, 3 & 5 July 1794, and the Morning Post, 3 July 1794.

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place in Whig arguments concerning patriotism.³⁶ They saw it as representing the triumph of the state’s coercive authority over the rights of the individual. As such, it spoke strongly to Whiggery’s traditional constitutional sensitivity to the crown’s encroachments upon English liberty. Whigs made repeated efforts to abolish the practice, with Sheridan himself introducing one such bill in April 1787.³⁷ Given this, the inclusion of impressment in his play must be read in politicized terms. The mere fact that impressment is raised, though, is not enough to sustain an argument for The Glorious First of June’s critical politics, for alternately sympathetic and critical presentations of press gangs can be found throughout eighteenth-century drama.³⁸ In order to understand that domestic dislocation, rather than loyalist celebration, is the theme of Sheridan’s work, the press gang in The Glorious First of June has to be compared to those in other plays of the year, in order to determine what exactly Sheridan was saying. The plot of The Glorious First of June concerns William, a former tar working as a labourer for the farming family of a deceased fellow shipmate. In this situation he is discovered by a press-gang that violently ‘seize upon him’. The family, who would be unable to run the farm on their own, ‘implore the kindness of the gang, and beseech them to release William’.³⁹ It turns out that the lieutenant of the press-gang is also a former shipmate of William’s, and when he hears that William’s labour is necessary to the family’s survival, he ‘owns the reasons to be good’.⁴⁰ However, the lieutenant’s professional obligations ‘declare it is impossible for him to violate his duty’ by releasing William.⁴¹ Announcing ‘every thing must give way to the call of their country’ the lieutenant clears the way for William’s re-enlistment by giving the family a gift of money sufficient to enable them to survive without him.⁴² Witnessing this act, ³⁶ For a discussion of impressment as an issue relevant to Whigs and the London radicals of Wilkes, see Nicholas Rogers, ‘Opposition to Impressment in Britain during the American War of Independence’, in Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (eds.), Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour (Fredericton, 1991). See also Daniel Baugh, British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965), ch. 4, and Christopher Lloyd, The British Seaman, 1200–1860 (London, 1968), chs. 7–9. ³⁷ See Parliamentary Debates, Series II, 25: 342. ³⁸ Terence Freeman, Dramatic Representations of British Soldiers and Sailors on the London Stage, 1660–1800 (Lewiston, 1995), 195–209. ³⁹ London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794. ⁴⁰ Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1794. ⁴¹ London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794. ⁴² Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1794.

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William, ‘feeling a glow of patriotism, enters as a volunteer, and departs with the gang’.⁴³ It is significant that William is not, either in a technical sense or in spirit, ‘pressed’ into the navy. Many men recruited by press-gangs were given the opportunity to enlist as volunteers in order to avail themselves of the bounty for enlistment, but the extent to which William is a volunteer goes beyond that.⁴⁴ He is a willing recruit kept out of the navy by the knowledge that his absence would imperil the family unit. Both William and the lieutenant are men with a well-developed sense of duty. What they discover is that the recruiting system for naval manpower is not amenable to their situation. Given their sense of conflicting loyalties— each apparently honourable in its own right—the men find themselves in a common situation which can only be resolved by an exceptional act—the lieutenant’s gift to the family. The Glorious First of June thus presents contrasting objects of patriotism and loyalty, only partially resolving the challenge they pose. Sheridan’s point—that individual loyalties are potentially compromised by impressment—embraced a larger political critique. Individual Britons are inclined to be steadfast and loyal, but it is the existing structure of certain institutions of the state that contain the seeds of alienation. If we compare Sheridan’s presentation of impressment to that rendered in two other plays where impressment surfaces in 1794, the dissonant nature of his posture becomes manifest. Three weeks before Howe’s engagement with the French, Love and Honour; or, Britannia in Full Glory at Spithead, a naval docudrama relating to the departure of Howe’s Channel Fleet, was performed at Covent Garden.⁴⁵ Its plot featured a press-gang that was presented as behaving responsibly, appropriately, and even altruistically. Sympathetic to the circumstances of the individuals it meets, and selective in terms of the men it seeks to recruit, this press-gang imparted a favourable view of British seamen and the circumstances of their recruitment. The lieutenant leading the gang instructs his men not to treat recruits roughly and claims he is not interested in pressing men engaged in legitimate economic pursuits. When the gang meets the play’s ⁴³ London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794. ⁴⁴ N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1986), 178. ⁴⁵ Unattributed Cuttings, Playbill Collection of the Theatre Museum, Covent Garden.

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hero—another William who has just returned from sea, and seeks a reunion with his family and sweetheart—the tar readily consents to be re-enlisted. ‘And hard is my present situation, I freely submit.’⁴⁶ Later, when it turns out that William’s sweetheart Mary—dressed as a man— has already enlisted with the gang, the lieutenant, impressed with their proofs of honour, lets them depart home together, imploring them never to forget the favour done to them by a ‘gang of the Tars of Old England’. In the manuscript version of the play submitted to government censor, the word ‘press’ is crossed out in the line above, suggesting that the author wished to finesse the association with impressment. A similarly flattering interpretation appears in another commemorative theatrical of the ‘Glorious First of June’, Robert Benson’s Britain’s Glory; or, A Trip to Portsmouth. The political content of this naval docudrama is pronounced enough to deserve a separate treatment below. For now it is salutary to note that its representation of impressment effectively endorses loyalist intimidation, because it implies that only disloyal and socially suspect persons are the objects of gang violence. In the play a gang of tars set upon a young man they have discovered abusing a woman. On the basis of his perfidious character, they are initially unwilling to recruit him, but upon discovering him to be a milliner, they decide they can correct his effeminacy by pressing him as a sail-maker. The unjust aspects of impressment are thus elided, as emphasis is placed on its role as a mechanism to deal with trouble-makers. Rather than being a feared institution, impressment is presented as a form of communal justice. Such treatments reveal the way in which Sheridan’s The Glorious First of June was unique. Alone among the theatricals of 1794, it linked the threat of impressment to domestic hardship and illustrated an almost irresolvable clash between familial and national identities. The play contained loyal statements, but its characters discovered that loyalty was more complicated than simple obedience to ‘king and country’. The last minute revisions moved impressment to the heart of the play—this was done so that Sheridan could criticize the Pittite direction of the war at the same time that he advanced his own brand of naval patriotism. It is important to understand that Sheridan was not simply presenting generically patriotic images that were, in any sense, ‘above politics’. ⁴⁶ Love and Honour; or, Britannia in Full Glory at Spithead (1794), Larpent Collection, Act I, scene III.

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Conceptions of transcendent patriotism (that is, aspects of national identity to which everyone could adhere, regardless of their politics) were a fiction, as the behaviour of ministerialists and loyalists showed. They constantly questioned the loyalty of their Whig opponents, seeking to paint Fox, Sheridan, and others with the Jacobin brush. Fox and other aristocratic members of the party considered themselves relatively immune from such attacks, but Sheridan, whose roots were in the middling ranks and who depended upon public approval for his professional survival, was arguably more attuned to the need to actively contest patriotic ground. The issues over which he split with his colleagues reflect this fact. Unable to join the Foxite secession from Parliament because he felt it could not be reconciled with the idea of a loyal opposition, Sheridan famously parted with his party over their response to the naval mutinies of 1797. He mounted The Glorious First of June in order to exhibit Whig patriotism publicly, and to prevent loyalism from appropriating all the glory itself. For Sheridan the navy was the patriotic sign he could most usefully occupy. British naval supremacy had a special place in the anti-war posture of the Whigs. It was not just that the navy was a national symbol available to all, but that it was a national symbol capable of sustaining their views on the war and criticisms of the Georgian state. Interpreting the politics of The Glorious First of June in a contingent manner also makes the reaction to the play more understandable. The published reviews were favourable, but for Joseph Farington (a member of the Royal Academy who was sensitive to the need for public art to present politically appropriate viewpoints) the play was too ‘heavy and ill-suited . . . to work on the people properly, it dwells too much on the consequences of war’.⁴⁷ Clearly elements of the Drury Lane audience could pick up on the play’s critical posture. Similarly, few of Sheridan’s critics on the militant wing of loyalism were satisfied. He continued to be seen as ‘the Political Dramatist’, delighting in the military misfortunes of his country.⁴⁸ Loyalist critics questioned Sheridan’s motives, complained that he had rejected a poem offered by the Pittite poet laureate Henry James Pye, and claimed the theatre’s failure to sing ‘God save the King’ as ⁴⁷ Kenneth Garlick and Angus Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, 16 vols. (New Haven, 1978–84), i. 211. ⁴⁸ See Thomas James Matthews, The Political Dramatist, in November 1795; a poem (London, 1796).

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proof of his ongoing Jacobinism.⁴⁹ Satirical verses published in The Times reveal a ministerial desire to see the play as an opportunistic expression of insincere patriotism. The paper mocked the profusion of Whig candidates who ‘wished to adorn the new Dramatic Piece of “The Glorious First of June” ’ by presenting several lyric spoofs supposedly proffered by members of the Opposition. In one, a leading Whig was made to declare ‘This First of June | Has changed our tune.’⁵⁰ The tune, in fact, had not changed. Sheridan’s play contested naval patriotism from a traditional Whig perspective, and in this sense, it maintained a coherent position for Whigs within the patriotic public sphere. But, as has already been suggested, partisan contexts were not the only contested aspect of patriotic culture. Sheridan himself had served notice of social and political difficulties. And broader problems existed within victory culture, problems to which three loyalist playwrights would now attend.

‘ VIRTUOUS RIOT ’ OR ‘NATIONAL HONOUR’? ILLUMINATIONS IN JAMES ROBERTS’S RULE BRITANNIA News of Howe’s victory was greeted in London by illuminations The Times claimed were the greatest since Culloden.⁵¹ Historians have tended to view illuminations as indicators of public opinion. Contemporaries, though, were unsure of their meaning and, consequently, illuminations’ political significance was disputed. For some observers, the illuminations for the ‘Glorious First of June’ achieved little in terms of social harmony. In their minds the mobs that broke widows in Marylebone proved the need for vigilance against mobs of a different order—those that had beset revolutionary France.⁵² Considerable unease, then, attended the crowd’s place in victory celebration and their place in the patriotic public sphere. Reservations concerning plebeian revelry notwithstanding, illuminations occupied a firm enough place in the urban victory ritual that they could not be ignored, and scenes of illumination appeared in three of the four ⁴⁹ Morning Chronicle, 8 July 1794; St. James’s Chronicle, 8–10 July 1794; The Times, 9 July 1794. ⁵⁰ See ‘Probationary Songs’ in The Times, 26 July 1794. ⁵¹ The Times, 12 June 1794. ⁵² Ibid., 13 June 1794; Oracle, 13 June 1794.

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patent theatre naval docudramas of the ‘Glorious First of June’. This afforded playwrights the opportunity to comment upon them, an opportunity taken most vigorously in James Roberts’s Rule Britannia, which premièred at the Haymarket Theatre on 18 August 1794. Roberts was particularly qualified to comment in this regard; he lived at Duke Street, Westminster, in the part of town that was the focus of victory celebrations.⁵³ Rule Britannia served as his attempt to reclaim the navy for loyalism, whilst providing direction on how the patriotic crowd might be accommodated. Rule Britannia contained the kind of pro-war and loyalist statements that were absent from Sheridan’s production. Unlike The Glorious First of June, Roberts’s play was dedicated to Lord Howe. In one scene, a procession of naval figures entered the stage, bearing banners, trophies, and the royal standard, and ‘dragging the French tricoloured Flag’.⁵⁴ But like most naval docudramas, Rule Britannia did more than simply advertise a naval victory as a national achievement and invest it with political significance. Audiences were specifically enticed by the prospect of participation in the re-enactment of significant moments in the victory celebrations. Advertisements promised a first act concluding with ‘A Grand View of the British Fleet and French Prizes entering Portsmouth; and an appropriate Procession. The Piece to conclude with a Representation of the Town, &c. of Portsmouth, as illuminated on the Glorious Occasion. With a transparency of Earl Howe.’⁵⁵ And the play itself focused its thematic energy on normalizing illumination activity. It follows the antics of a baronet, Sir Tremor Hectic, and his Lady, who have come down from London to witness the victory celebrations in Portsmouth. The couple serve as foils for contemporary attitudes on illumination. Despite his rank, Sir Tremor is a ‘true-born Englishman’ and a vulgar fan of the Royal Navy. By contrast, Lady Hectic is a cultured Francophile—a fact rendered as necessarily compromising her patriotism. Events conspire to introduce a naval captain and his sailor-servant fresh from the battle. Both seek to be restored to the arms of their girlfriends. ⁵³ Entries for James Roberts in the Dictionary of National Biography, 21 vols. (London, 1921–2) and Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, 4 vols. (London, 1970 edn.). ⁵⁴ James Roberts, Rule Britannia! A loyal sketch, in two acts, as performed with universal applause at the Theatre Royal Haymarket (London, 1794), Act I, scene III. ⁵⁵ Oracle, 18 Aug. 1794.

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The sailor’s turns out to be his captain’s long-lost sister. He marries her, while the captain marries the daughter of Sir Tremor and Lady Hectic. The play opens on the morning after a night of illumination, with Lady Hectic complaining bitterly of the revelry that surrounds her. Sir Trevor, reading the Gazette with his breakfast, testily responds that ‘This glorious hurly burly is my delight: it is a national honour!’ Illumination festivity, he declaims, is a ‘universal joy that pervades all ranks of people,’ that ‘plainly evidences our steady loyalty to a King who is the father of his people,’ and exhibits ‘our unshaken attachment to a constitution’. Undeterred, Lady Hectic contrasts the popular cacophony of the street to the foreign singers at the opera—‘It is the noise, not the occasion of it, offends me. . . . the sweet cadences of the Morichelli, and the soul dissolving, heart-thrilling warblings of the Banti, can alone give me pleasure.’ (This qualified patriotic declamation was meant to ring hollow, since the singers named had been particularly celebrated for their condescension in joining in the singing of the royal anthem when news of Howe’s victory was first conveyed to the Opera.⁵⁶) She goes on, distancing popular street festivity from the more refined celebrations of fashionable persons: ‘But what business had we to come to this scene of obstreperous joy? You might have been contented with the Gazettes, and the dinners, and the merry-makings of the metropolis.’⁵⁷ Importantly, Lady Hectic’s identification of the preferred elite elements of victory celebrations explicitly echo those outlined by the Morning Chronicle when it criticized the illumination activity of 1794.⁵⁸ The paper had called for limitations on illumination activity, asking that formal celebration be limited to a small number of appropriate forms. The concurrence between the critiques of Lady Hectic and the leading Whig journal are not coincidental, for these scenes were direct attacks on the francophilic sentiments of the Whigs. Those who adopted a cosmopolitan and primarily French aesthetic cultural orientation were often identified as ‘Others’ within the British nation. In the second half of the eighteenth century, this was particularly the case for the Foxite Whigs, who were often seen as effeminate and dangerous francophiles.⁵⁹ Roberts’s achievement in ⁵⁶ The Times, 12 June 1794; Gentleman’s Magazine, 75 (1794), 573. ⁵⁷ Rule Britannia, Act I, scene I. ⁵⁸ Morning Chronicle, 14 June 1794. ⁵⁹ Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism; see also, Robin Eagles, ‘Beguiled by France? The English aristocracy, 1748–1848’, in Laurence Brockless and David Eastwood, A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c.1750–c.1850 (Manchester, 1997); Wilson, The Sense of the People, 185–205.

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Rule Britannia was to conflate francophilia and Whig patriotism with those who had reservations about illumination revelry. This was achieved through Lady Hectic, who expresses her disdain for British illuminations at the same time as she announces her preference for foreign music. Rule Britannia identified illuminations as a national honour and labelled critics of illuminations as effete. Importantly, it linked hostility to illumination to aesthetic concerns, signifying a larger concern with popular tastes and activities. But rather than envisioning the elevation of tastes of the lower orders through reforms to illumination practices, Roberts’s play advises necessary toleration as the price of harmony in society. The incongruous spectacle of a baronet caught up in the festivity of the street was a principal source of humour in the play. And as it was a vehicle for humour, it may be taken as a reminder that Roberts was not advocating a society united in manners and tastes, but rather celebrating one capable of accommodating the pleasures of all ranks. Rule Britannia gave an interesting picture of Britons’ response to Howe’s victory celebrations. It exhibited an explicit awareness of dissonant voices, attempted to efface them, and suggested that an overarching elite concern for manners—or ‘French-plated politesse’—inhibited communal ebullition and national solidarity.⁶⁰ Roberts’s call for appropriate condescension to popular festivity differed from the commentary on illuminations in The Glorious First of June. There Sheridan had included an idealized representation of a village fête whose harmony, critics sensed, contrasted sharply with the recent experience of the metropolis. As the reviewer in the Morning Chronicle described it: ‘The scene of rejoicing is rapturous. There are all kinds of frolics, and mirth delights itself in a thousand whimsical ways, truly characteristic of the buxom humour of Englishmen.’⁶¹ The paper’s choice of language was extremely significant, for it was almost identical to the vocabulary the paper had earlier used to complain of the absence of these characteristics in the illuminations for Howe’s victory.⁶² Thus, for critics of these disturbances, Sheridan’s play realized the harmony absent in the event itself. In presenting victory celebrations—and patriotism in general—as a plebeian wave that the upper classes did best to surf, Roberts was not undermining elite cultural or political authority. Because his prescriptions were couched in the conventions of the eighteenth-century stage and balanced by constant invocations of the Constitution and the king as ‘the ⁶⁰ Rule Britannia, Act I, scene I. ⁶¹ Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1794. ⁶² Compare Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1794.

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father of his people’ throughout the play, they did not call the ownership of the nation into question.⁶³ Still, privileging the place of the plebeian crowd in the patriotic public sphere contained contemporary political implications beyond those Roberts could deal with—let alone resolve— in the limited scope of his after-piece.⁶⁴ The manner in which he sought dramatic closure is again significant for what we have observed about the navy’s special role as a national symbol. In the play, class differences are resolved through the character of Sir Tremor Hectic, but since Sir Tremor is a comedic character who acts in a manner inappropriate to his station, he cannot convincingly be, in the dramatic sense, the hero or model of the play. This role was performed by the naval figures Captain Anchor and the sailor Thomas, who truly transcend the class politics of the piece as their naval relationships are used to license marriages that now link the baronet, officer, and common seaman. ‘We shall all be sailors!’ Sir Tremor tells them at the play’s close, thus drawing British subjects and seamen together into a common image of identity in which there was a place for all.⁶⁵ At a time when theatrical endorsements of Pittite war were facing criticism as artifice, Roberts produced a play in which the patriotic thirst came primarily from below. Loyalist attempts to emphasize the spontaneous and popular aspects of victory celebrations came when several officially sanctioned forms of recognition were being criticized. Focusing on the link between forms in which the crowd played a role— illuminations, royal reviews—underlined, from the loyalist perspective, the degree to which these tributes were genuine and consensual, not artificially imposed by the elite.

THE CRIMP RIOTS: BRITAIN’S GLORY AND THE DEATH OF POOR HOWE August 1794 witnessed the ‘Crimp’ Riots, one of London’s most serious disruptions of the wartime period. Twenty-three persons were arrested, and four executed, after a week of demonstrations by crowds chanting ⁶³ Rule Britannia, Act I, scene I. ⁶⁴ For an exploration of these implications, see Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution’. ⁶⁵ Rule Britannia, Act II, scene II.

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‘No war—no soldiers.’⁶⁶ These riots set the context for the reception of the third naval docudrama of the summer—Robert Benson’s Britain’s Glory; or, a trip to Portsmouth, which commemorated Howe’s victory in a re-enactment of George III’s 26–7 June visit to the victorious fleet at Portsmouth.⁶⁷ Crimp houses were private recruiting-houses, long rumoured as places where the unsuspecting were kidnapped into military service. The unrest began on 15 August, when rumours spread that a young man (coincidentally enough named George Howe) had jumped to his death from the window of a London crimp house. Howe’s death, and the belief that the local magistrates were covering up for miscreant crimpers, led to the rioting and sparked an investigation into allegations of illegal activity, an investigation in which Sheridan played a prominent role. He led a Whig delegation that investigated the local magistrates (one of whom was Pye, the Poet Laureate). Once again, Sheridan was opposing discretionary encroachments upon the rights of individual Englishmen. The concurrence of the riots and Britain’s Glory allowed for the continuation of the struggle concerning naval patriotism. While Sheridan continued his campaign against coercive military recruitment, radicals satirized the crimpers’ offences in drama. Henry Martin Saunders’s The Crimps; or The Death of Poor Howe serves up the text of a play that the repressive political circumstances of 1794 prevented from ever being performed. The Crimps was primarily concerned to advertise the injustices of crimping, which it achieved by dramatically presenting the story of George Howe. But it also sought to disassociate a naval symbol from loyalist discourse. The play included a story concerning a veteran of the ‘Glorious First of June’ who was alleged to have fallen victim to a crimp house scheme. The idea that a recently discharged ‘hero’ could be so unfairly treated was an obvious conceptual affront, and thus radicals circulated the story in an effort to combat the patriotic myth that military service earned veteran sailors and soldiers a special place in the affections of their countrymen. Elsewhere, the crimps are shown scoffing at the sailor’s ‘palaver | of having served his country, of a wound | Got on ⁶⁶ John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1832 (London, 1992 edn.), 208–12. ⁶⁷ Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, 280–90; An historical account of the review of Lord Howe’s fleet at Portsmouth. Honoured by the presence of the King, Queen, and Royal Family. (London, 1794?).

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the first of June’⁶⁸—another example of Saunders’s effort to distance the coercive state from the popular image of the navy. By contrast, Britain’s Glory baldly attempted to reclaim the navy for loyalism. Since its manuscript was submitted to the government censor on 16 August, the day after news of George Howe’s suicide broke, Britain’s Glory cannot be interpreted as a direct response to the crimp riots.⁶⁹ But it did address the rumours concerning crimping circulating that summer. For, along with the favourable treatment of impressment (noted above), the play depicted military recruiters in a flattering light. A recruiting gang attempts to persuade a country boy to enlist in the army. When he reveals that he and his friends are on their way to the royal review at Portsmouth, the soldiers relent, and decide to accompany them, proclaiming that after the review they will have a drink with the rustics. The fact that the latter is offered with convivial and festive intentions is important, because the allegation that recruiters purposefully got men drunk in order to take advantage of them was central to the crimping controversy. Britain’s Glory was performed during some of the most intense nights of the rioting, and such issues would have been prominent in the minds of the audience. Britain’s Glory sought to finesse the negative representations of recruiting parties by presenting them as friends to those plebeians who proved themselves loyal. An aspect of intimidation was still present, but this was entirely consistent with the overall purpose of the play—the recovery of the ‘Glorious First of June’ for a militant loyalism that could not tolerate plebeian deliberation.⁷⁰ That this was Benson’s major goal is easily understood when one realizes that Britain’s Glory was a rewritten version of The Trip to Portsmouth, George Alexander Stevens’s 1774 tribute to George III’s naval review of that year. Both the scenes discussed so far (of impressment and recruiting) were original additions made by Benson, indicating that his object was a play which delineated a specifically ⁶⁸ Henry Martin Saunders, The Crimps; or the Death of Poor Howe. A tragedy, in one act, as lately performed at a house of ill-fame, or, what is called a Recruiting-Office (London, 1794), 13–14. This anecdote was also reported in Politics for the People, 2 (1794), 209–12. ⁶⁹ Dougald MacMillan, Catalogue of the Larpent Plays in the Huntington Library (San Marino, Calif., 1939); Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 209. ⁷⁰ See Dickinson ‘Popular conservatism and militant loyalism’, 103–25; Mark Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism, 1792–93’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 60–3; and Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution’.

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loyalist understanding of the obligations of citizens in a society at war. This was to counter the dissonant issues raised in Sheridan’s play. War’s disruptive effect on the domestic unit was dismissed. The subscription relief fund was advertised, but the civilian complaints and distress that The Glorious First of June presented were crudely stamped out, often in the dialogic style pioneered by Hannah More. One scene featured an aunt asking her niece whether she would reconsider her commitment to her intended, a sailor, who has left her ‘behind to go on the salt seas’. The young woman’s response—‘Well aunt, I like him the better for it, for you know his King demanded his assistance, and I should have deem’d him unworthy of my esteem, hadn’t he cheerfully obey’d the call’—idealizes the easy subordination of personal concerns to public duties. Naval symbols were pressed into the service of loyalism: a British tar drinking in a pub declines a shot of brandy saying, ‘I do not approve of applying French remedies to an English constitution.’⁷¹ The conservative case for British perfectibility of the constitutional status quo is presented in similarly powerful naval metaphor. A tar claims ‘Britannia is as noble a vessel as was ever launched, and I think the Constitution is a well-built little frigate too’, and a naval captain gives the toast ‘May the English Constitution never have a rotten plank, but live in spite of the squall of faction, and sail down the current of time, the wonder of the world.’⁷² In such ways Britain’s Glory reclaimed the naval victory for the ministry that wrought it and associated the navy with the political goal of continuing the war. The final line of the play is particularly significant in the latter respect. The naval captain declares ‘Since our foes have roused the British Lion, they shall find, that though an Englishman is too just to draw his sword without reason, he is too brave to sheath it without honour.’⁷³ This was a reference to the Pittite policy of continuing the war until the Revolutionary Government could be overthrown and a riposte to Whig arguments that ‘the Glorious First’ offered the opportunity for an honourable peace. The very fact that the king’s visit was being presented in the first place had direct political significance, since Pitt, Chatham, and Dundas took part in the proceedings.⁷⁴ The king’s popularity with his people, their instinctive attachment to him, and his ability to acknowledge ⁷¹ Robert Benson, Britain’s Glory; or, a trip to Portsmouth. A Musical Entertainment. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-market (London, 1794), Act I, scene I. ⁷² Ibid., Act I, scene II. ⁷³ Ibid. ⁷⁴ Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, ii. 349.

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and reward those loyal subjects were all suggested and the whole effort underlined his status as patron of the navy.

HONOUR, MERIT, AND REWARD: WILLIAM PEARCE’S ARRIVED AT PORTSMOUTH For loyalists, both Roberts’s Rule Britannia and Benson’s Britain’s Glory addressed discomforting dimensions of plebeian behaviour in the public sphere (specifically, a popular street revelry that threatened the elite’s patriotic hegemony, and a political deliberation that might explode into revolutionary activity). William Pearce’s Arrived at Portsmouth was no less a loyalist play, but the concerns it addressed were more patrician in origin. This was reflected even in the staging of the play, which avoided presenting the audience with a stock character they had come to expect—the comic common seaman, ‘Jack Tar’. Arrived at Portsmouth traced the adventures of three gentlemanly naval captains upon their return to Portsmouth after the ‘Glorious First of June’. Pearce required characters of respectable social status because the two concerns he wished to address—the allegedly unsatisfactory nature of the navy’s promotion and honour system, and the untoward conceptions of individual celebrity that characterized the emerging victory culture of the day— were issues for the elite to resolve. This was because the problems that Pearce identified had their origins in the dynamics of the literary culture of the ‘field of mars’. Thus, before we turn to Pearce’s play and see how it validated the honours structure and established norms of naval comportment, it is necessary to examine how those had become problematic by the fall of 1794. The received view among historians is that the fleet honours handed out after Howe’s victory were well handled. A new award, the naval gold medal, was instituted and granted to all the captains—an act which has been seen as heralding the arrival of a well-functioning honours system that lasted until the wars’ end in 1815.⁷⁵ This may have been the case in the long run, but contemporaries believed otherwise. The sense that Howe had been appropriately rewarded unravelled as the summer ⁷⁵ Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 223; see also, Oliver Warner, The Glorious First of June (London, 1961), 155–64.

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advanced. It became widely known that Pitt had withdrawn his initial promise of the Garter, prompting Howe to refuse the less prestigious marquessate that was offered in its place.⁷⁶ Moreover, it was not just that the honours to the victorious admiral were bungled. There was also frustration in the intermediate ranks with the very patterns of naval promotion and interest. Naval historians have tended to emphasize the degree to which institutionalized examination requirements and nascent professionalism offset the biases inherent in the scramble for commissions.⁷⁷ But in the intense atmosphere of the early 1790s, the system was particularly open to criticism. The French Revolution had two effects. It made the necessity of handling awards satisfactorily more pressing than before (because loyalty was more pressing than before), and it provided examples of alternate methods for arranging honours. For instance, in the summer after Howe’s victory the Morning Chronicle contrasted Revolutionary France’s practice of promotion from the ranks to the promotional bottleneck occasioned by the operation of ‘parliamentary interest’ in the Royal Navy.⁷⁸ Similarly, an exchange of letters in The Times the same year criticized the Admiralty for its failure to award meritorious promotion to ordinary seamen and for its neglect of the contributions of the merchant marine.⁷⁹ It was partly to address such concerns that George III had travelled to Portsmouth, where he presented the fleet’s admirals with gold chains, announced that captains would get the new gold medal, and condescended to allow the crew of the Queen Charlotte (rather than his royal servants) to row the royal barge.⁸⁰ These royal acts may have been successful in associating the monarchy with naval patriotism; but they were unsuccessful in placating the larger frustrations that circulated within the fleet and naval service. The Admiralty’s inability to resolve this situation was one reason why, throughout the war, there were repeated calls in patrician circles for the institution of a new order of military and naval knighthood.⁸¹ Although the British ⁷⁶ Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, ii. 349; Warner, The Glorious First of June, 157; Morning Chronicle, 21 July 1794. ⁷⁷ Michael Lewis, A Social History of the Navy, 1793–1815 (London, 1960), 99, 141–227; G. J. Marcus, Hearts of Oak: A Survey of British Sea Power in the Georgian Era (Oxford, 1975), 73–98. ⁷⁸ Morning Chronicle, 22 Aug. 1794. ⁷⁹ The Times, 16 Aug. 1794, 21 Aug. 1794, 2 Oct. 1794. ⁸⁰ St. James’s Chronicle, 26–8 June 1794. ⁸¹ See for example, St. James’s Chronicle, 1–3 Aug. 1797; Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 340; Monthly Mirror, ns 4 (1808), 207.

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honours system could prove flexible, there remained those who felt the navy did not go far enough in acknowledging the sacrifices of unattached men who embodied the spirit of disinterested national service.⁸² It is important to understand that fundamental tensions were created by the manner in which the dynamics of naval promotion were intrinsic to the dynamics of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. This created a problem, since promotion had to be controlled and managed. Victory culture, though, was susceptible to enthusiasms that could work against these aims. The Admiralty’s treatment of Howe’s gazetted dispatch stands as a case in point. When released as the Gazette Extraordinary of 10 June, this spread dissension in the fleet because Howe had unconventionally avoided naming individual meritorious officers. Howe did this because the particular circumstances of the four-day battle prevented him from observing the conduct of all his officers and he had serious questions about the apparent reluctance of some of them to engage the enemy. Knowing that his account would be intensely read, Howe pled that he be ‘excused for postponing the more detailed narrative of the other transactions of the fleet thereon, for being communicated at a future opportunity.’⁸³ But at the Admiralty, the Earl of Chatham was so desirous of laying a full dramatic account before the public that he insisted Howe provide names, deeds, and further details.⁸⁴ Howe conceded, although he feared ‘disagreeable consequences’—and he was right.⁸⁵ Those named turned out to be those promoted, and dissent pervaded the fleet. Dissatisfaction spread from the officer corps into the public sphere—and the means of this transmission was significant. Accusations that certain captains had been ‘fighting shy, and at long bowls’ were first ‘publicly talked of on board the Fleet, and by naval officers in the coffee-rooms of Portsmouth’ and then found their way into the newspapers.⁸⁶ Thus Howe’s circumspection assisted several problems. In their eagerness to exploit the victory, officials at the Admiralty precipitated dissension in the fleet and increased the likelihood of that tension becoming public. And since the reasons most frequently given for ‘fighting shy’ were the poor state of the ships and the inexperience of the officers commissioned, any discussion that questioned the fleet’s performance reflected on the Admiralty’s competence in the administration of ⁸² ⁸³ ⁸⁴ ⁸⁶

St. James’s Chronicle, 21–4 Mar. 1795. London Gazette Extraordinary, 10 June 1794. Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, 247. Oracle, 20 June 1794.

⁸⁵ Ibid. 248.

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the navy.⁸⁷ Howe’s desire to keep some details of the engagement private led him to lose control of the battle narrative. The propagandists of the ministry stepped into the breach with embarrassing results. Dundas, when introducing the vote of thanks to Howe, had proclaimed the unanimity in the fleet (‘this brilliant victory was singular in one respect, that no one man had to call another to account of his conduct’).⁸⁸ Considering that one of Howe’s captains was eventually court-martialled and dismissed from his command, Dundas’s speculative descant was regrettable. Dissatisfaction reigned and became worse when the Admiralty shunned several of Howe’s patronage requests for individuals in his interest.⁸⁹ Although an effort to improve the situation was taken in September when the Admiralty announced that Howe’s officers would be noticed ‘in the next promotion that takes place, in preference to any other consideration,’ a good deal of the damage had been done.⁹⁰ An episode like this saw concerns for naval promotion and institutional imperatives clash with impulses to public celebration. The balance achieved herein was not appreciated by all, particularly by William Pearce, whose naval docudrama Arrived at Portsmouth, appearing as it did in the autumn of 1794, was well positioned to pass comment on the tension in the patriotic public sphere. The play was not dedicated to Howe or to the families of those who had served, but rather to RearAdmiral Sir Alan Gardner, the most political of Howe’s divisional commanders, government MP for Plymouth, and, significantly, a serving lord of the Admiralty. This was consistent with the play’s purpose of vindicating the conduct of the government and the Admiralty, while combating enthusiastic tendencies rising in proximity to naval patriotism. Arrived at Portsmouth performed its critical work in scenes that explored the issues of merit, virtue, and honour by contrasting the characters of three of Howe’s naval captains with those of a country squire. The squire, Mr Wildfire, a comic gentry figure and exuberant devotee of the navy, is stereotypically the same character as Sir Tremor Hectic in Rule Britannia—with a crucial difference. While Sir Tremor was the dramatic vehicle for the idealized resolution of the class tensions in Roberts’s piece, Squire Wildfire (as the symbolic representative of the Georgian public) is the target of Pearce’s criticism in Arrived at ⁸⁷ Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, 246–7. ⁸⁸ Parliamentary Register, 38: 394. ⁸⁹ Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, 264.

⁹⁰ The Times, 6 Sept. 1794.

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Portsmouth. When Wildfire first encounters two of the captains, he enquires after his brother, who has been promoted to captain as a result of the action. The naval officer’s response—that the brother ‘has acquired reputation in the action, as well as rank,’—indicates they place a higher premium on the presence of personal virtue, rather than on its institutional recognition.⁹¹ This was a pointed comment in the context of the honours controversy. Pearce’s criticisms gain force when the play goes on to ridicule the Squire as being unable to conceive of military service in terms other than those of publicity and material reward. During a discussion of heroic death with two of the play’s female characters, the Squire reveals himself obsessed with the external forms of heroism, but blind to its necessary virtues. When one of the women reflects that not everyone passes through life as honourably as the deceased hero Captain Seaford, the Squire misunderstands her. He mistakes approbation for the character of the dead hero for adoration of the circumstances of his death, proclaiming his regret that ‘every man can’t jump in the way of a cannon ball;—How enviable the end.’ Should he be so fortunate to die in battle, he declares, a parliamentary vote of thanks ‘would be the first thing I shou’d look after.’ He then slips into a reverie about the monument that might be erected to him in Westminster Abbey.⁹² This fevered language contrasts sharply with the modest behaviour of the three naval captains. One captain will not admit to his action in the battle and claims no personal glory at all. Since this is moral drama, such sentiments are rewarded; at the play’s end he inherits the estate that the Squire had been anticipating. Pearce’s point is clear—the experience of victory culture in 1794 was compromised by an excessive and unseemly public interest in military fame. LORD HOWE AND THE BRITISH FLEET Contrary to the conventional view then, naval docudramas could articulate serious concerns about Georgian political and cultural issues. These four theatricals have proved particularly rich in the ⁹¹ William Pearce, Arrived at Portsmouth; an Operatic Drama in Two Acts, performed at the Theatre-Royal Covent Garden. Written by the Author of Hartford Bridge, Netley Abbey, The Midnight Wanderer, &c. (London, 1794), Act I, scene I. ⁹² Ibid., Act I, scene II.

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dialogues they reveal, both among Whiggery, radicalism, and loyalism, and within loyalism itself. And assertions of heroic celebrity were appended to these productions, in the form of representations of Admiral Howe. The Glorious First of June closed when ‘a tent appeared with the portrait of Lord Howe in front, decorated with variegated lamps, part of which formed his name.’⁹³ Rule Britannia concluded similarly. While the orchestra struck up the eponymous anthem, a transparency of Howe descended, accompanied by a large illuminated label reading ‘Rule Britannia’.⁹⁴ These were iconographic efforts, as necessitated by the convention that forbade the representation of living figures in speaking roles. Consequently, these productions do not assist an exploration of Howe’s public image. Such an examination is desirable, because the personas of Georgian naval heroes were another major site of patriotic contestation. Other cultural venues prove more helpful, and reveal that Howe’s image came under pressure from two (now) familiar directions; from those interested in presenting the navy as a harmonizing symbol of the nation at war, and from those seeking a decidedly loyalist interpretation of the ‘Glorious First of June’. Licensing restrictions prevented Astley’s amphitheatre and Sadler’s Wells Theatre from employing spoken dialogue. Ironically, this meant that Howe and other living heroes could be represented physically, which made possible the staging of historical naval tableaux. Sadler’s Wells thus mounted ‘a Historical and Scenic Display of the most renowned British Admirals, from Lord Howard of Effingham, who defeated the Spanish Armada, to that brave Defender of his Country’s Fame, Earl Howe.’⁹⁵ Its ‘explanatory banners contain[ing] a neat compendium of English Naval History, very happily introduced, and easily read and remembered’ served a didactic purpose, locating Howe’s victory in Britain’s history of naval supremacy.⁹⁶ This assertion was intended to bolster confidence in the direction of the war, to consecrate present efforts with the mantle of past success, and to present naval achievements as a seemingly natural historical inheritance. Given the extreme economic and ideological dislocations of 1794, however, loyalist propaganda had to be considerably more ambitious. That work was continued in the anecdotal reportage ⁹³ London Chronicle, 1–3 July 1794. ⁹⁴ Rule Britannia, Act II, scene II. ⁹⁵ Oracle, 1 July 1794. ⁹⁶ Ibid., 18 July 1794.

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found outside the ‘official’ texts of battle. In mid-August, the Oracle related that: Lord Howe, in the ever memorable action of the first of June, ordered his flag to be nailed to the staff. His cool intrepidity infused itself to every officer and seaman on board. ‘You have conquered, not I, my brave fellows’, said he, and cheered them three times.⁹⁷

In fact, this was a conflation of two events—one of which did not even involve Howe. The colours of the Marlborough were nailed to the mast by a lieutenant of that ship.⁹⁸ The other part of the story—Howe’s words to his ‘brave fellows’—had circulated in several different forms.⁹⁹ The appeal of the Oracle’s version was that it combined a defiant posture of aggressive leadership with generous self-abnegation and an image of a harmonious and happy ship’s company. Anecdotes that indicated the fraternity of naval life were particularly common in this genre. Before the battle, Howe was reported to have asked his men not to drink until the action was over: ‘Wait my lads, until the glorious business is finished, and then we’ll all get drunk together.’¹⁰⁰ This seems to have been responsible for the images of alcoholic conviviality that accompanied many of the songs and short poems on the ‘Glorious First of June’. More generally, these spoke to a desire to project the naval fellowship held to exist between patrician officers and plebeian seamen. This was important to contemporaries as a socially harmonious image, and it assisted the navy’s ability to function as an effective metaphor for the nation at large. Its use by James Roberts in Rule Britannia has already been noted, and subsequent chapters provide further examples of its role in perpetuating national self-confidence. A major purpose to which Howe’s victory was put consisted of efforts to attach partisan (especially loyalist) inflections to the image of the nation that the navy was held to represent. Romaine Joseph Thorn’s heroic poem, Howe Triumphant! or, the Glorious First of June, is representative of this spirit.¹⁰¹ Indeed Thorn’s pursuit of an anti-revolutionary poetic precluded a particular interest in Howe as a character of emulation, ⁹⁷ Oracle, 11 Aug. 1794. ⁹⁸ Barrow, The Life of Richard Earl Howe, 275. ⁹⁹ Ibid. 269; St. James’s Chronicle, 14–17 June 1794. ¹⁰⁰ Oracle, 20 June 1794. ¹⁰¹ Romaine Joseph Thorn, Howe Triumphant! or, the Glorious First of June. An Heroic Poem (Bristol, 1794).

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the poet preferring the more immediate political tasks of vindicating the admiral’s conduct and countering revolutionary ideas. The poem presents Howe as strategically aggressive, professionally astute, and in a close and inspirational relationship with his tars. But little attention is given to personal adulation. Instead, Thorn’s main theme is to shape the ‘Glorious First of June’ into an allegory for the fate of those who flirt with revolutionary ideas. Perhaps the best example is his presentation of the fight of HMS Brunswick and the French warship La Vengeur du peuple. Both sides held this clash to be the highlight of the battle: the British, because La Vengeur represented the only ship sunk by them; the French, because they claimed the 900 men on board had defiantly refused assistance and gone to the bottom waving their tricoloured cockades.¹⁰² Another Republican ship, the Jacobin, was briefly engaged by HMS Defence, but was not taken. In Thorn’s poem, the two incidents were conflated to create a convenient metaphor for the House of Brunswick defeating the Jacobin threat. Thus the ‘murdrous’ republican crew of ‘Sedition’s sons’ went to the bottom as a form of moral judgement to ‘meet their destined fate’. Howe’s name serves as the naval emblem through which both domestic and external dissent is confronted, as the poet tells George III that ‘whilst a HOWE is thine’ neither ‘Treason vile, [nor] Jacobinic rage’ can ‘E’er shake the basis of thy solid throne’. The poem concludes, not with panegyric on the figure of Howe, but with an affirmation of loyalism’s ability to stave off sedition and the jacobinical threat. Contemporaries did not find a wealth of material suitable to relate Howe’s personal qualities to the intense demands of 1794, and this explains the restrained nature of his public image when contrasted to those of some later naval heroes. As a result of the partisan contests of 1794, Howe’s name became practically a loyalist touchstone. The loyalist gang that paraded about Royston, Hertfordshire, prevailing upon those they encountered to ‘drink to the King’s health, and that of the gallant Earl Howe’ (and who killed the horse of one who ‘impudently’ substituted the health of Tom Paine) certainly employed it as such.¹⁰³ But by the fall of 1794, Fox could rise at the anniversary dinner for his victory at the Westminster election and drink to the health of ‘the Duke of Bedford, Mr. Grey, ¹⁰² E. H. Jenkins, A History of the French Navy (London, 1973), 215. ¹⁰³ Oracle, 17 June 1794.

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Lord Derby, Lord Howe, and the British Fleet; Mr. Byng, Lord John Townsend, Alderman Sawbridge, &c, &c.’¹⁰⁴ Fox and his supporters were toasting Howe, not because convention dictated acknowledging a national naval hero, but because they clung to a particular interpretation of his significance. The invocation of Howe at a dinner celebrating the Westminster election was a riposte to the other sitting member for Westminster—the less deserving, and more political, Lord Hood. Fox’s toast notwithstanding, the battle over the meaning of the ‘Glorious First of June’ was beginning to resolve in loyalism’s favour. Two years later, when Fox stood again for re-election in the Westminster election of 1796, the whigs had all but surrendered the significance of Howe’s victory. That election saw the continuation of the loyalist effort to present the navy as the embodiment of both British political stability and military supremacy—but it also saw naval patriotism vigorously resisted by the radicals of Westminster.

THE SECOND ‘GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE’: THE WESTMINSTER ELECTION OF 1796 The Westminster election of May–June 1796 was the next major episode in the struggle over the meaning of the ‘Glorious First of June’.¹⁰⁵ The borough was already a familiar venue for naval patriotism, but in 1796 even greater opportunities for the ministerial exploitation of the navy arose from the fact that the polling period in Westminster (27 May–13 June) spanned the second anniversary of Howe’s victory. This was the opportunity that Pitt seized when he invited Admiral Gardner to be Hood’s replacement as the government candidate for Westminster. Gardner’s political nature has been mentioned above. In 1796 he faced Fox (the Whig incumbent), and John Horne Tooke (the radical candidate). This made it possible for links to be made between Gardner’s naval position and the necessity of electing a loyalist candidate. Moreover, the presence of three candidates representing a broad spectrum of opinion made the ¹⁰⁴ Oracle, 11 Oct. 1794. Emphasis added. ¹⁰⁵ Many of the incidents and analysis presented in the following are discussed at greater length in Timothy Jenks, ‘Language and politics at the Westminster election of 1796’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 419–39.

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Westminster election one of the most fully realized contemporary debates over patriotism, and, as a result, makes it possible to uncover the discursive importance of naval symbolism and patriotic rhetoric in the 1790s. The repressive political contexts of the 1790s help explain why the struggle at Westminster in 1796 was inordinately focused on ministerial and radical (rather than Whig) constructions of patriotism. This reversed the situation of two years before. The ‘Glorious First of June’ of 1794, as we have seen, gave Whigs like Sheridan the opportunity to make their patriotism clear; however radicals were almost silent on that occasion. This was because popular radicalism was being actively repressed. With much of their leadership in jail, and even their very thoughts the subject of state policing, opportunities for political action were severely circumscribed.¹⁰⁶ Two years later, after the disastrous government efforts to judicially expand the law of treason and permanently foreclose republican activity, popular radicalism was in a position to contest the meaning of the ‘Glorious First of June’ at the Westminster election. The nature of that challenge was powerfully expressed in the candidacy of John Horne Tooke, himself a celebrated survivor of the treason trials. In November 1794, Tooke’s formidable debating skills were defending fundamental political rights of association and conscience; May and June of 1796 saw him using the freedom of the hustings to contest the patriotic constructions being advanced by the wartime British state. In so doing, Tooke (judging by the length and content of his speeches) eclipsed the effort made by Fox on behalf of Whiggery. Throughout the campaign, Fox rarely gave lengthy addresses. He declared his politics sufficiently known and ‘he had nothing new to state. They all knew the grounds on which he solicited the suffrages of the Electors of Westminster.’¹⁰⁷ Content to yield the platform to his rivals, he was unaffected by the patriotic salvos Tooke and Gardner trained on one another. Precisely why Fox declined to actively contest naval patriotism in 1796 is unclear. His behaviour may have prefigured the thinking that governed his later secession from parliament; he may have been strategically unconcerned given the existence of the cross-party pact with the Pittites that guaranteed his (and Gardner’s) return; tactically he may have ¹⁰⁶ For accounts of these events, see John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide, 1793–1796 (Oxford, 2000). ¹⁰⁷ Morning Chronicle, 31 May 1796.

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enjoyed the fact that his rivals were focusing their energies upon each other.¹⁰⁸ The deeper possibility exists that, as an aristocratic Whig confident of his place in the nation, he was disinclined to indulge in the condescension required to both address (or exploit) the popular impulses surrounding naval patriotism (perhaps there was too much of Lady Hectic in him). These conjectures aside, it is more productive to focus on the debate between Gardner and Tooke. The vigour with which those two contested patriotism in 1796 suggests that it was the plebeian remit of naval and patriotic imagery that was the heart of the issue. Ultimately the struggle concerned whether loyalism or radicalism could claim to be truly ‘popular’. The primary dynamic of the election saw Tooke attacking Gardner, and vice versa, in a clash of patriotic postures. Gardner was perhaps the consummate admiral of the ‘Pitt system’, his loyalist credentials cemented with his campaign proclamation that he was opposed to Britain’s ‘enemies, whether foreign or domestic’.¹⁰⁹ His campaign at Westminster was characterized by extensive efforts to link his candidacy with his naval career and, by extension, to link the ‘Glorious First of June’ exclusively to the government of William Pitt. Naval figures, imagery, and slogans were deployed alongside those of loyalism. On the first day at the hustings in Covent Garden, Gardner was accompanied by several naval officers, including Admiral Ommanney, who seconded his nomination. The admiral was introduced to the electors of Westminster by the ministerial activist Sir Thomas Turton in a speech that dwelt almost exclusively on his naval record. Turton described ‘the various and important services performed by the gallant Admiral, which could not fail to secure to him, the admiration, protection and gratitude of every true englishman. . . . [T]hey could . . . not find a person throughout the kingdom, more qualified in every respect to succeed their late distinguished Representative, Lord Hood.’¹¹⁰ Gardner also received considerable support from other Pittite MPs and naval figures who accompanied him to the hustings and attended the three major banquets held during the campaign. The first of these, ostensibly held to commemorate the ¹⁰⁸ Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754–1790, 3 vols. (London, 1964), i. 337. On Fox in this period, see L. G. Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford, 1992), 136–57. ¹⁰⁹ Morning Chronicle, 21 May 1796; Westminster Election (London, 1796), 4–5. Emphasis added. ¹¹⁰ Oracle, 28 May 1796. Emphasis in original.

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anniversary of the ‘Glorious First of June’, was attended by Admirals Ommanney, Braithwaite, and Milbanke; Captains Major and Alexander Hood; and the MPs Thomas Metcalfe, John Hiley Addington, George Canning, Lords Stopford and Hawkesbury.¹¹¹ On the same day, the Oracle and Public Advertiser, which was supporting Gardner, published a commemorative edition bordered with the slogans ‘Howe and Gardner For Ever!’; ‘The King and Constitution!’; ‘Britannia Rules the Waves!’; ‘The Glorious First of June!’; ‘Rule Britannia!’¹¹² The battle’s anniversary was used to organize a formal running-up of Gardner’s poll, with electors ‘invited to mark their sense of that glorious event, by giving their votes to Admiral Sir Alan GARDNER . . . in testimony of the gratitude they feel towards the gallant admiral for the very distinguished part he took on that occasion . . . ’¹¹³ For his part, Tooke was one of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Patriots’ and, as such, able to appeal to the symbolic arsenal of radical patriotism. He was supported at the hustings by John Thelwall, the radical poet and scribe of The Tribune, who had assumed the persona of the ‘Patriot’ and linked himself to Hampden and Sydney in his Poems Written in Close Confinement in the Tower and Newgate (1795).¹¹⁴ On the first day of the poll, Tooke also received the sole vote of John Wilkes, then chamberlain of London.¹¹⁵ By this point Wilkes was a ceremonial City figure increasingly associated with loyalism; his appearance in his former colleague’s interest was a significant attempt to sustain the radical view of patriotism as champions of popular rights and heirs of a historical movement.¹¹⁶ The mantle of patriotism, then, was a garb in which both Tooke and Gardner attempted to appear. It is necessary to underline, at this point, that although the examples so far have tended to be overt and visual, patriotic symbols were being used both figuratively and metaphorically. The constructions of patriotism Gardner and Tooke offered up not only differed in content but also extended to the manner in which they functioned as candidates. Moreover, the patriotic arguments of both candidates cannot be separated from the discursive strategies in which ¹¹¹ Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ii. 566. ¹¹² Oracle, 1 June 1796. ¹¹³ Ibid., 31 May 1796. Emphasis in original. ¹¹⁴ E. P. Thompson, ‘Hunting the Jacobin Fox’, Past and Present, 142 (1994), 97; Thompson, Making, 149. ¹¹⁵ Alexander Stephens, The Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, 2 vols. (London, 1813), ii. 229. ¹¹⁶ John Sainsbury, ‘John Wilkes, debt, and patriotism’, Journal of British Studies, 34 (1995), 195.

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they were presented. Understanding the manner in which both candidates—but particularly Tooke—exploited the ‘politics of language’ is necessary in order to understand the true sense in which these patriotic idioms clashed at Westminster in the spring of 1796. John Horne Tooke was one of the leading philologists of his day. In 1786 he had published the first volume of his major contribution to the study of language—The Diversions of Purley. Although recent biographical sketches have tended to overlook his philological studies, it is necessary to view Tooke’s philology and politics as fundamentally interconnected.¹¹⁷ This was first done by Olivia Smith, who showed that Tooke’s theories of language constituted an effort to create a new radical language of politics along the lines of Paine’s vision of ‘transparent’ social relations.¹¹⁸ Other radicals had tried, but it was Tooke, through his attack on the orthodox theory of language, who was most successful. These ideas—and a contemporary sensitivity towards them—were at play in the election at Westminster in 1796. Tooke’s philology challenged the belief that the only suitable language of politics was the learned and cultivated discourse of ‘gentlemen’. The precept upon which this argument rested was the idea that the complexity of spoken and written language was indicative of the superior abilities of the mind. Thus the classically influenced syntax, conventions, codes, and rhetorical devices of gentlemanly discourse could be juxtaposed to the ‘vulgar’ tongue of the lower orders.¹¹⁹ With grammatical complexity linked to the intellectual ability of the mind that used it, this theory justified elite hegemony in the public sphere. Tooke’s work attacked the theoretical basis for this elite conception of language and he did so as a consequence of his ‘discovery’ that words, rather than being analogues of intellectual acts, were signs with their own history.¹²⁰ Illustrating the historical etymologies of what his forebears had seen as innumerable ‘parts of speech’ (but which Tooke preferred to understand as one of only ‘two sorts of words’), through extensive illustration by example, was the manner in which The Diversions of Purley proceeded.¹²¹ ¹¹⁷ See for example, A. V. Beedell and A. D. Harvey, The Prison Diary of John Horne Tooke (Leeds, 1995), 20–1; Christina and David Bewley, Gentleman Radical: A Life of John Horne Tooke, 1736–1812 (London, 1998), p. xi. ¹¹⁸ Smith, Politics of Language, 116–17. ¹¹⁹ Ibid., 1–67. ¹²⁰ Ibid., 110–53. ¹²¹ Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, ii. 53–67 is a useful summary of the major contentions of The Diversions of Purley; see also Smith, Politics of Language, 119.

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A crucial point to make is that Tooke’s rhetorical posture addressed the very questions of plebeian agency that loyalist naval symbolism sought to efface. To loyalist observers, Tooke’s speeches were threatening because he defied the exclusivity of the language of politics in two ways: by addressing his remarks to non-voters and by the very deployment of his rhetorical talents in the radical cause. His speech was, by definition, irresponsible and constitutive of an incitement to riot because it was directed at the ‘vulgar sort’. In this sense Tooke was a demagogue, his speeches were considered ‘harangues’, and his speaking ‘stile’ extensively commented upon.¹²² As the loyalist Oracle, noted: Mr Tooke is remarkably dextrous in addressing a Mob. Every sentence is an artful excitement of their passions, seasoned by the most illiberal abuse, and the boldest personality. It is, however, calculated to lead men equally violent, and not equally guarded, into extreme danger of heavy punishment.¹²³

Tooke’s offence was not so much the ideas he presented, but the fact he presented them to an unlearned audience that through its inability to understand political language properly was considered ‘not equally guarded ’. By the same logic, the Oracle was able to justify their printing of ‘Tooke’s seditious speeches from the hustings’. ‘We wished not to suppress the ungentleman-like language, adopted by Mr. Tooke, fully persuaded, that it would expose him to the contempt of every man who valued rational liberty.’¹²⁴ There was no danger in reprinting Tooke’s words, since his words would expose him in the eyes of a learned readership capable of discerning such ‘errors’. But even the Oracle had its limits and some of Tooke’s more potent attacks were significantly edited. An individual with as well-developed views on language as John Horne Tooke approached speech-making from a particular perspective and with particular skills. Vagueness and the imprecise use of words confused political debate and allowed conservative writers to argue with apparent authority from a position of manifest error. This idea was at the core of Tooke’s thinking and impelled his researches.¹²⁵ Consequently, explication and detailed argument formed a considerable theme of his ¹²² Oracle, 28 May 1796; 7 June 1796; 9 June 1796. ¹²³ Ibid., 2 June 1796. ¹²⁴ Ibid., 3 June 1796. Emphasis in original. ¹²⁵ Smith, Politics of Language, 150; see also Tooke’s comments in his chapter on the correct meaning of the ‘rights’ in John Horne Tooke, The Diversions of Purley, 2 vols. (London, 1798–1805), 1–14.

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speeches. It appeared primarily in two ways: in a particular rhetorical attention to the significance of his opponent’s words and phrases; and in an explicit attention to his opponent’s failings as a public speaker. Crucially, loyalists defended Gardner by underlining his naval associations and presenting the navy as a symbol capable of finessing a central loyalist paradox—the existence of what one might term the ‘thinking vulgar’.¹²⁶ In Admiral Gardner’s first speech, he informed the electors of Westminster that it ‘could not be expected that he should be qualified to express himself with any eloquence. This he must therefore leave to others.’¹²⁷ Gardner proved true to his word: he was largely unable to complete a speech for the remaining fifteen days of the poll. His oratorical inability (which contemporaries would not have found surprising in a naval officer) became a significant theme of the election because Tooke used it to question Gardner’s suitability to represent Westminster, a constituency with a tradition in public debate. On ten of the fourteen days on which speeches were made, some degree of reference was made to Gardner’s inability to ‘make himself heard’.¹²⁸ The Morning Chronicle: never saw a man more plagued . . . he is no more qualified for an Orator, than Horne Tooke is for an Admiral. While he was speaking, Lord Hood’s son stood behind with a written speech in a hat, and prompted him in every word. Some of the Electors saw this, and christened him dummy.¹²⁹

In fact, it was never Gardner’s intention to say much at all, and the speeches he gave consisted largely of perfunctory thanks and declarations to his supporters.¹³⁰ Rather than give long speeches, he preferred to campaign in more traditional, discreet, and ‘gentlemanly’ ways. Because he refused to speak, Gardner did not engage Tooke in debate or address his criticisms. The admiral’s approach did little to mollify those determined to answer radicalism publicly. Significantly, the terms in which loyalists covered Gardner’s honourable retreat sought recourse in the cultural associations of the Georgian sea officer. While the admiral made the excuse that, as a naval officer, he was unfamiliar with public speaking, his supporters went further, and supplied a heroic gloss. The ¹²⁶ On this paradox see Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism’ and Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution’. ¹²⁷ Oracle, 28 May 1796. ¹²⁸ Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, ii. 180. ¹²⁹ Morning Chronicle, 28 May 1796. ¹³⁰ See Westminster Election.

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Oracle described his speech as delivered with ‘all the plain and manly eloquence peculiar to a British Seaman’; it also reported that his words at the close of that day’s poll were effected ‘with all the bluntness and brevity of a seaman’.¹³¹ In this formulation, the mere fact of Gardner’s naval career substituted for his personal abilities and allowed him honourably to disclaim any public speaking skills. Loyalist rhetoric sought refuge within the supposed stereotypes of sea officers and constructed a rationalization of Gardner’s habit out of the available material. Gardner’s supporters went so far as to eschew oratory in general: Admiral Gardner, it is true, has none of the claims upon the Electors of Westminster derived from long speeches. Yet his actions may convince them that he thinks with integrity; and this is adequate to the performance of trust. If every Member of the Commons was an Orator, skilled to dazzle plain sense by all arts of controversy, how should we ever decide and act?¹³²

The expectation that oratory was the province of the politician has a long (some would say obvious) pedigree. But in Georgian Britain it was closely related to elite education and the orthodox theory of language. Aristocratic education focused upon the argumentative rhetoric and oratorical talents of the ancients. Naval officers, however, did not share this education. The necessity of spending adolescence at sea precluded the opportunity for extensive classical schooling. It was said that Admiral Lord Hood, Gardner’s predecessor as MP for Westminster, was ‘bred to the study of naval tactics’ which left him ‘but little leisure to cultivate the art of public speaking’. In spite of this, Hood managed to ‘nevertheless deliver his sentiments with ease and correctness’ and achieved ‘an unembarrassed freedom in his manner not always to be found in gentlemen of the same profession’.¹³³ Hood was apparently exceptional. For others, contemporary assumptions about language meant that they could be seen as speaking something closer to the common tongue. This was a perception strengthened by the long observed peculiarities of sea slang. At this point contemporary views of high-ranking naval officers began to feed off wider assumptions about the British tar. What might have been a vice, became a virtue. Lacking words was irrelevant, given a penchant for decisive action. Unfamiliarity with the conventions of public speaking ¹³¹ Oracle, 28 May 1796. ¹³² Ibid., 2 June 1796. Emphasis in original. ¹³³ George Chalmers, Parliamentary Portraits, 2 vols. (London, 1795), ii. 144.

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was replaced by a ‘peculiar eloquence’ and ‘an apt and forcible manner’.¹³⁴ As politicians, then, naval figures could claim to be—with what contemporaries viewed as legitimacy—representative of the nation at large. As the Oracle put it in their defence of Gardner: The Admiral is indeed a stranger to that sort of palaver in which his adversary so much excels, and by which he is enabled to captivate the affections and the roar of the mobility. The Admiral speaks but little to the people, but from them, and in their behalf, he speaks to the enemies of his country in a voice of thunder! ¹³⁵

At this point, the inability to speak a language of politics had become the ability to share the simple, unspoken assumptions of the people. The Gardner campaign’s flight to the stereotype of the plain-speaking English seamen was not an isolated instance. It also used the symbolic value of his naval position to counter the perception that, as the repeated victim of outrages from the urban crowd, he lacked popular support. The ‘indecency of the Electors towards Admiral Gardner’ was noted from the start.¹³⁶ On Friday night, 3 June, his coach was pursued by a hostile mob that pelted the admiral with mud and damaged his carriage.¹³⁷ The following Monday, the scene was repeated when a mob prevented the admiral’s coach from proceeding home along Oxford Street, at which point ‘The Gallant Admiral . . . determined, with a few friends, to force his way on foot.’¹³⁸ Gardner and his attendants were showered with mud and stone and forced to take refuge in a nearby shop until constables arrived to escort him home to Portland Place.¹³⁹ Tooke’s response, upon hearing of the attacks, was that ‘he thought an English mob good natured,’ the implication being that those who were of ‘the people’ had nothing to fear from a mob.¹⁴⁰ Gardner’s run-ins with the mob underlined his separateness from them at a time when Tooke was denouncing him as a ‘stranger’ to the borough.¹⁴¹ The encounters were humiliating; in the admiral’s concern for his own safety he ran the risk of being seen as a coward. Allegations of cowardice on the admiral’s part had already been raised in the context of his earlier decision to have ¹³⁴ ¹³⁶ ¹³⁷ ¹³⁸ ¹³⁹ ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹

Oracle, 30 May 1796. ¹³⁵ Ibid., 2 June 1796. Emphasis in original. Morning Chronicle, 28 May 1796. Oracle, 6 June 1796; Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ii. 568–9. Oracle, 8 June 1796. Ibid.; Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ii. 572. Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ii. 572. Oracle, 28 May 1796.

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the parish beadles canvass in his place.¹⁴² Given that, as Frank O’Gorman has pointed out, independent electors were coming to expect the opportunity for a face-to-face exchange with candidates, Gardner’s reluctance could have been seen by critics as ‘yellow’.¹⁴³ The loyalist response was to reintegrate Gardner by presenting him as a member of a different community, one deserving of special status, and by raising the spectre of a special kind of violence of their own. Loyalists drew on these events in a way that further defined Gardner’s image and provided simultaneous commentary on domestic dissent. The admiral’s tars rushed to his defence, and the symbolism of their ‘intervention’ was attached to the discourses of loyalty operating in the summer of 1796. Gardner received a letter from the captain of his flagship in which the officers and seamen of his ship expressed their desire to come up to Westminster and defend their admiral against his tormentors. Their letter was brought to Covent Garden by the First Lieutenant and Surgeon of the Queen (the admiral’s flagship), who read it out to the crowd.¹⁴⁴ In the end, the crew of the Queen never came to Westminster during the election, but their invocation by the admiral’s supporters bore extraordinary similarity to an incident that did take place. The day after the first attack on Gardner, two unlucky souls ‘who had been for several days most forward in menacing the worthy Admiral, with clenched fists and opprobrious language, were taken before a Magistrate’ and convicted of assault. In a punishment that maximized their humiliation and pointed to the almost treasonous nature of their offence, the two unfortunates were sentenced to service in the Royal Navy, with the magistrate particularly recommending that they serve ‘on board Admiral Gardner’s flagship, who no doubt, will recognise them, and put them under proper discipline when he resumes his command’.¹⁴⁵ Referring the punishment to the parameters of naval discipline injected a degree of personal retribution that some found fitting—and wished could be extended. The next week, when the same sentence was passed on a second group of rioters, the Oracle revelled in the idle hope Tooke and Fox might be ‘ordered upon the same service’, and declared itself ¹⁴² Morning Chronicle, 28 May 1796. ¹⁴³ O’Gorman, ‘Campaign rituals and ceremonies: the social meaning of elections in England 1780–1860’, Past and Present, 135 (1992), 84–5. ¹⁴⁴ Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ii. 575. ¹⁴⁵ Oracle, 6 June 1796.

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‘convinced that the crew of the gallant Admiral would check their insolent palaver by the application of the cat of nine tails’.¹⁴⁶ On the one hand, the vision of a brash body of Tars ready to fight for their admiral constituted a literal threat to the ‘rabble’ supporting Tooke. Symbolically, though, such threats established sailors as the loyalist counterpoint to the popular mob. And as such, they connoted the (allegedly) unpatriotic and disloyal nature of the crowd’s actions. The seamen’s letter was a political endorsement: Jack Tar had come down on the side of the government candidate. Drawing upon these particular images of naval culture allowed Gardner’s supporters to counter the perceptions that he lacked popular support and that his actions implied any character weakness. It associated him with an image of the navy as being opposed to domestic disorder and as a bulwark against mob rule. Predictably, loyalist accounts denied the Covent Garden crowd agency, but granted the sailors a popular representativeness. By establishing the national icon ‘Jack Tar’ against the plebeian supporters of Tooke, the gesture counterpoised ‘king and country’ patriotism against the perceived disloyalty of ‘English Jacobins’. Moreover, it accommodated plebeian action in a manner that finessed the fundamental paradox of loyalism—the fact that it sought to mobilize the very class of people conservatives were committed to excluding from politics altogether.¹⁴⁷ Loyalists could see seamen’s political intimidation as legitimate popular action, not just because they sympathized with its object, but because the actions were seen as instinctive and deferential, rather than deliberative and democratic. In making these associations, ministerial activists appealed to the idea of naval figures as disciplinarians who meted out summary justice to unwise civilians at home. Crucial here was the notion that military service conferred extraordinary rights of citizenship—a special status closer to the national interest than could ever be achieved by those who did not serve. This was strongly echoed in the Oracle’s puff for Gardner—‘No men are so worthy of british honours as those who have fought and bled in the cause of their country. They are indeed true patriots!’¹⁴⁸ By pointing to the loyalty of ¹⁴⁶ Oracle, 13 June 1796. ¹⁴⁷ Philp, ‘Vulgar conservatism’, 42–69; Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution’; see also Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 212. ¹⁴⁸ Oracle, 10 June 1796.

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Gardner’s men to him, loyalists were effectively consecrating his candidacy with the endorsement of popular fighting heroes. Gardner’s gentlemanly response to those who harassed him in the streets was also filtered through the prism of the image of a British seaman. The manner in which he treated ‘all the scurrility, abuse, and low invective’ with ‘becoming indifference and contempt’ was proof that the admiral ‘possess[ed] the spirit of an English sailor’. While he ignored the rogues who confronted him on the domestic front, ‘were an enemy of his attention brought forward, the resentment of the British Lion would be roused within him, and the thunder of his cannon would quickly annihilate the presumptuous foe who dared insult the sovereignty of the british navy’.¹⁴⁹ It is significant that the most potent challenges Gardner faced at Westminster—his inability to speak capably, his effort to appear as a candidate with supporters among ‘the people’, and the danger to his person—were overcome by the invocation of his place in naval society. Gardner was never in danger of not being returned for Westminster yet, when it became necessary to define him as a candidate, this was done by pressing into service conventional images of the British seaman, both officer and tar. For loyalists, this was an effective use of naval patriotism. But how did Gardner’s rivals respond? The pervasiveness of Gardner’s invocations of the navy at the Westminster election force consideration of the manner in which Fox and Whiggery, Tooke and popular radicalism, reacted. Consistent with his posture throughout the campaign, Fox declined to address the substance of his rivals’ dispute. It was Tooke, then, who was left to cope with a ministry that sought to associate itself with the navy and the ‘Glorious First of June’. His particular challenge was to sever this connection without opening popular radicalism to the perception that it was traitorously disrespectful of Gardner’s naval achievements, achievements that were a source of national pride. Initially Tooke sought to divorce Gardner’s professional reputation from the politics he avowed. To combat the significance of the admiral’s naval background, he linked Gardner to the rapacity and peculation of the Pittite system, calling attention to the admiral’s sinecures and political offices.¹⁵⁰ And by playing off the naval stereotypes Gardner was using to advance his candidacy, Tooke continued to undermine the admiral’s political capabilities. Membership in parliament was not something for ¹⁴⁹ Ibid., 8 June 1796.

¹⁵⁰ Morning Chronicle, 31 May 1796.

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which an admiral was qualified. He may know a lot about the ‘rigging of a ship’, but he knew little ‘about the rigging of a constitution’.¹⁵¹ Tooke’s confrontation with the symbolism of naval victory that was threatening to defeat him reached its peak on the anniversary of the battle. He appealed to the crowd, asking them ‘What has the Glorious First of June to do with the election of a representative for Westminster?’ Tooke’s answer was ‘nothing’, except further to prove that ‘the minister has made this [anniversary] a shameful pretence for the influence of corruption’, and thus he called on electors to be mindful of another ‘anniversary most dear to Englishmen’, that of ‘the birthday of our liberty, the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688’.¹⁵² Tooke wrapped his critiques of Gardner’s naval service in available critiques of the Pitt system. And although, in so doing, he surrendered the significance of the ‘Glorious First of June’, he took refuge in the alternative narrative of national history that was the defence of liberty and popular constitutionalism. Here, a calendar of naval victories, with its attendant vocabularies of personal service and martial glory, were replaced by a calendar of popular constitutionalism, with its vocabularies of personal liberty and collective endeavour. The ‘Glorious Revolution of 1688’ was substituted for the ‘Glorious First of June, 1794’. This substitution did not occur because loyalism had succeeded in advancing a privileged notion of the navy that radicals were unwilling or powerless to oppose. Tooke’s supporters parodied their opponent’s invocation of the navy at the same time as they tried to contest it. An election song, ‘Horne Tooke and freedom of election, against bribery and corruption,’ was circulated, to be sung to the tune of the unofficial naval anthem, ‘Hearts of Oak’.¹⁵³ Such a transposition was consistent with the radical tradition of parodic satire, but it was also the appropriation of a popular tune from Britain’s naval repertoire. John Horne Tooke, then, felt few reservations about confronting the fact of Gardner’s naval service, actively questioning the relevance of a national naval victory, and criticizing the personal character of a national naval ‘hero’. Tooke’s arguments apparently resonated with the Westminster electorate. The best evidence available concerning plumping and ¹⁵¹ Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, ii. 191–2. ¹⁵² Ibid. 191–3. ¹⁵³ Horne Tooke and freedom of election, against bribery and corruption. Tune Hearts of Oak. &c. (London, 1796).

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splitting suggests that slightly over 700 voters plumped for Tooke (about the same number that plumped for Fox), while a further 1,500 split their votes between Tooke and Fox. Crunching the numbers further reveals that Tooke earned votes from 33 per cent of the individuals who voted.¹⁵⁴ When the support Tooke had with non-voting members of the crowd is remembered, it becomes impossible to escape the conclusion that popular radicalism was more successful than usually granted in occupying the language of patriotism in the 1790s. Turning to consider loyalism’s popular remit, it is necessary to remember that elements of naval symbolism were intended to have Gardner appear representative of the wishes of the people. Whether Gardner’s posture had any purchase with plebeian electors is difficult to know. What does become clear is that even though loyalists felt the plebeian audience was incapable of political deliberation (and thus immune to their oratory), there was a strong plebeian drift to Gardner’s posture of political admiralship and his invocation of the navy. This was most frequently articulated as a loyalist conceit, possibly because loyalism was extremely conflicted about their vulgar audience. Even so, Gardner’s symbolic posture reached out to middling and plebeian constituencies by subsuming them in the category of ‘the people’. The loyalist press assisted, policing the assignation of ‘the people’ by devaluing Tooke’s supporters as the ‘mob’. Gardner’s supporters pressed him to go even further in pursuit of popular approval, desirous that the struggle between the loyal people and the radical ‘mobility’ play out to the fullest extent permitted in the landscape of urban politics. As the end of the election approached, they urged him to participate in the ritual chairing of the winning candidates. Doing so would have enabled loyalists to challenge the space that Fox (who was rumoured to be making elaborate plans for his chairing), and Tooke (whose supporters planned to chair him even in the losing cause), were bound to occupy.¹⁵⁵ Citing concerns for public order, Gardner refused to attend the chairing, a decision his critics presented as ‘an acknowledgement . . . that he was not the choice of the people’.¹⁵⁶ Loyalists, now denied the opportunity to contest the popular associations ¹⁵⁴ Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, ii. 220–4; the final result at the end of the final day of the poll was Fox, 5,160; Gardner, 4,810; and Tooke, 2,819. The Westminster Election in the year 1796 (London, 1796), 53. ¹⁵⁵ St. James’s Chronicle, 11–14 June 1796. ¹⁵⁶ Morning Chronicle, 14 June 1796.

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offered by the rites of election-tide, claimed approval in another form.¹⁵⁷ The election night illuminations, the Oracle claimed, testified to widespread gratitude for Gardner’s return (this was a spurious interpretation, given the return of Fox).¹⁵⁸ This quest for popular sanctioning of Gardner’s win was primarily an elite condescension, and concomitant with the general loyalist desire to represent their politics as expressive of the larger national will. Like the celebrations for naval victories whose form it shared, the illumination ritual was valued because it could be taken to confirm the salutary political instincts of the people. And, as was also the case with illuminations, the episode revealed tensions within loyalism concerning whether plebeian impulses should be exploited, ignored, or suppressed. Naval symbolism was crucial to the electoral appeal of loyalism at Westminster in 1796. Admiral Gardner’s campaign reveals that the electoral posture of the ‘political admiral’ was an important vehicle through which loyalism attached itself to plebeian currents. Political admiralship gained its effectiveness from an ability to mediate class tensions and subsume them into a conservative concept of the national will. Given that, for 34 of the 38 years between 1780 and 1818, one of Westminster’s members was always a high-ranking naval officer, it cannot be said that political admiralship was unique to 1796.¹⁵⁹ But it can be argued that the role all naval symbols performed changed because of the particular stresses to which they were subjected in the Revolutionary period. Moreover, the importance of political admiralship needs to be recognized in its own right, for, as we shall see, its use in Westminster continued to influence the manner in which the navy was constructed as a political imaginary for the remainder of the French Wars. But it also requires that we re-conceptualize our understanding of the place of patriotism in the political culture of the 1790s, and for the following reason. The political admiral had a civilian cognate—the political style of the ‘gentleman leader’ (of which Tooke was one).¹⁶⁰ Throughout the ¹⁵⁷ On chairing, see O’Gorman, ‘Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies’. ¹⁵⁸ Oracle, 14 June 1796. ¹⁵⁹ Moreover, it had an earlier oppositional history, as the career of Admiral Vernon shows. See Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 202–11; Wilson, ‘Empire, trade and popular politics in mid-Hanoverian Britain’; ead., The Sense of the People, 140–65. ¹⁶⁰ See John Belchem and James Epstein, ‘The nineteenth century gentleman leader revisited’, Social History, 22 (1997), 174–93.

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period, these styles—represented at times by different liberal or radical candidates—(along with Fox’s aristocratic leader posture) coexisted and combated one another at Westminster. The relationship of political admiralship to naval heroism has been well established in the foregoing discussion; what is equally necessary to realize is that the radical posture of the gentleman leader was also informed by understandings of a patriotic and heroic masculinity. Admiral Gardner personified ‘king and country patriotism’, a brand of loyalty that emphasized unquestioning personal service, privileged the concept of ‘duty’, and posited the ideal patriot as one who had bled for his country. To share in ‘king and country patriotism’, electors were simply asked to display their personal sense of virtue by acknowledging the importance of Gardner’s sacrifice. Perhaps predictably, Tooke’s patriotism was qualified by a stronger sense of constitutionalism: ‘I love my King according to the law; but I Love my country better.’¹⁶¹ But, interestingly, it retained the heroic elements of a personal, individualized vision of virtuous participation in a noble endeavour. One theme of Tooke’s speeches was to paint himself—and his followers—as victims. Tooke’s campaign described him as ‘a Gentleman known to the public by his sufferings’ and an ‘inflexible disposition’ to support the true principles of the constitution.¹⁶² In a period when political repression was a significant concern, the radical identity was expressed by Tooke in heroic terms. ‘In our present struggle between liberty and slavery, who are the persons starving for want of bread? . . . Who are the persons oppressed, beggared, dishonoured, vilified, and ruined? . . . Who are sent as felons to Botany Bay? Who are cast into dungeons, and treated and tried as traitors? Gentlemen, you say true, it is so. It is we; we, the privates in the ranks.’¹⁶³ Thus did Tooke (to turn a phrase of Linda Colley’s) invite his followers to see themselves as ‘heroes in their own epic’.¹⁶⁴ The fact that Gardner’s supporters appealed to the same ennobling sense of conflict when they published lists of the ‘compleat defeats of the French [in which the admiral] particularly distinguished himself ’ underlines the point that Colley was originally making, but also serves to highlight what was crucial in making the patriotic posture so important—the fact that a commonly shared sense of the importance of heroic masculinity to ¹⁶¹ Morning Chronicle, 31 May 1796. ¹⁶² Westminster Election, p. iv. ¹⁶³ Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, ii. 200–1. ¹⁶⁴ Colley, Britons, 177.

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politics was underpinning it all.¹⁶⁵ The ability to project oneself as capable of representing the popular will in this period seems to have been intrinsically located in some form of suffering, or struggle against the odds—struggles which were the stuff of heroism, whether politically or militarily constituted. Loyalist discourse predominated in the public sphere by 1796—but it was not confident, not unassailable, and not inattentive to wider social and cultural dissonance. This chapter began with a look at the parliamentary effort to wrest political advantage for the Pitt government and loyalism out of the ‘Glorious First of June’, an effort that was significant and sustained, and which attempted retroactively to vindicate earlier counter-revolutionary moves by the government. The Whig opposition made significant efforts to challenge the government’s perspective on the victory, an opposition that was eventually taken up by Sheridan on the stage of the Drury Lane theatre. As a close reading of Sheridan’s play and three other naval docudramas of the ‘Glorious First of June’ reveals, contemporary opinion recognized palpable partisan and social tensions in the meaning the victory held for Britons. Loyalist opinion sought to erect the battle as a triumph over the revolutionary threat, aware that the victory had an important alternative meaning for those who opposed the continuation of the war. The degree to which these naval docudramas were deeply engaged with contemporary experience of victory celebrations and their concomitant tensions underlines that this form had a currency and relevance of a more immediate nature than has been previously held. The effort to invest the battle with a particular political message was so strong—and so privileged within the loyalist project— that it determined the manner in which Howe himself was projected. Few of Howe’s actions could be read for discernibly partisan or counterrevolutionary significance. The result was that his personal image was collapsed into the comfortable image of British naval supremacy. This was sustained, in part, by an awareness—presented to the public through anecdote and battle reportage—that conceived of Howe and his men as the militarily steadfast and politically loyal defenders of an island people. The importance of the navy as a political imaginary continued in the Westminster election of 1796, an election that maintained the struggle ¹⁶⁵ Oracle, 3 June 1796; see also 1 June 1796.

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over the battle’s meaning in domestic politics. The anniversary commemoration of the ‘Glorious First of June’ became a litmus test of support for the war and of satisfaction with domestic policies. In this sense, the very partisan and counter-revolutionary usage to which Howe’s image was placed was maintained in an effort to derive concrete political gain out of Howe’s victory (and the symbolism of Gardner’s role in it). The radical strategy, articulated by Tooke, aimed to construct an alternative category of popular constitutionalism, with its own version of heroic political masculinity. This latter point was a noteworthy strategy, and one, as following chapters will illustrate, which was to become very important in late Georgian Britain’s wartime political culture. This effort was to be sustained in the next few years, when heroic masculinity was to be deployed in a significant series of ways, even extending to challenges posed to traditional framings of the military hero. The style of aggressive political masculinity that was articulated in ‘political admiralship’ and the stable images of plebeian acquiescence and commitment that were contained in the stereotype of ‘Jack Tar’ were fundamental features of loyalism’s self-validating image of British society. And although many within the loyalist community were likely to have been comforted and pleased with the manner in which the cultural politics of Howe’s victory had played out, there was also reason for concern. The facility with which patriotism was contested by the oppositional groupings, and the fissures and tensions discernible within patriotic culture, showed that the effort on all parts was to be one of constant struggle. Moreover, as has been noted, the navy performed an effective role for loyalism primarily because it served as an image capable of containing plebeian agency. The next chapter reveals what could happen when that agency suddenly revealed itself.

2 Patriotic Instabilities Be it our constant endeavour and our pride, to frustrate their insidious designs; haul down the Flag of Discontent, hoist the victorious British Union in its stead—Conquest shall again salute its well-known Colours, and our Enemies will soon be compelled to prefer an equitable Peace to that ignominy and defeat which has ever attended them in a War with the glorious, the invincible, the united Navy of Britain. True Briton, 10 June 1797 Let us follow the example of the brave Duncan, and let every man consider himself one of the crew of the good ship Britannia, nail the Flag to the mast, and give every support to our Noble Commander and his Officers. Oracle, 28 November 1797

The ability of the navy to stand as metaphor for the nation—‘the good ship Britannia’—was perhaps the key to its importance in late Georgian patriotic culture. Loyalists valued it as an image of social harmony and effective hierarchy. Importantly, as this chapter reveals, oppositional and radical groupings increasingly invested it with accretions of their own. This chapter explores a period in which the certitudes that surrounded naval imaginings of national unity were dissolved by the mutinies of 1797. It maintains the developing focus on the British officer and common tar, and explores the interlinkage of naval masculinity, heroism, and national identity. It begins by tracing an oppositional effort to construct patriotic affect for a ‘forgotten’ hero of the war, Captain Robert Faulknor. Faulknor’s fame was the result of his image as a deserving hero of modest social rank, and as a figure capable of transcending social

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tensions within the fleet. A discussion of Faulknor’s heroic death, and the instabilities that attended it, serve as the necessary preliminary for a look at the mutinies. The following examination demonstrates those mutinies represented a crisis for naval patriotism and the masculine images that underpinned it, by fracturing the bond that linked admiral-heroes to the common seamen. Comfortable and unchallenged assumptions about naval identities and loyalty unravelled as the newspaper press of the day struggled to confront a display of plebeian politicization. No identities or assumptions were immune from this questioning, as the textual representations of the death of Richard Parker, the leader of the mutineers, dramatically revealed. The events of Parker’s execution demonstrate that radicals could appropriate aspects of heroic identity to their cause. In this sense, Parker’s death was one event that manifestly revealed the contingent nature of loyalist signs and patriotic symbols. This was a blow to loyalism and led to a serious questioning of British naval heroism. Admiral Duncan’s subsequent victory at Camperdown provided loyalism with the opportunity to reclaim the navy and British seamen as patriotic icons. In Duncan’s case, this meant that the victorious admiral’s personal character was upheld to a greater purpose than had been customary. Nor was this the only detectable shift. The victory celebrations and, in particular, the Naval Thanksgiving ought not to be considered as straightforward manifestations of national spirit. Rather, the Camperdown victory celebrations display a real loyalist concern to reform patriotic culture and to consecrate it with edifying and sacral qualities. In this sense the mutinies emerge as a transitional moment in the 1790s after which a more determined and designed effort in the theatre of patriotism was made. THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN FAULKNOR As the previous chapter showed, attempts to translate the ‘Glorious First of June’ into a proud accomplishment for Pitt’s government had not gone particularly smoothly. But neither the Admiralty, the editor of the Gazette, the newspaper press, nor admirals themselves made any effort to avoid making the same mistakes again. In April 1795, news of an engagement between the Mediterranean fleet headed by Vice-Admiral William Hotham, and the French fleet based at Toulon, reached London.

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The government and the ministerial press immediately launched a campaign to elevate the action into an important victory: Hotham’s action (in which he lost one ship, while capturing two French prizes) was claimed to have checked a major French expedition, and a parliamentary vote of thanks was sought.¹ This, as modern historians accept, and as Whigs pointed out at the time, was a pretty grand response to an indecisive encounter that displayed the same tentativeness for which Hotham was eventually replaced as commander of the Mediterranean squadron.² Allegations that Hotham was reluctant to engage the French were significant, given that they reprised the controversy over ‘fighting shy’ raised by Howe’s victory—just as the ministry, in its attempt to seek a vote of thanks, reprised their parliamentary strategy of 1794. The parliamentary opposition opposed the thanks to Hotham, but in so doing, pursued a tactic different from that used in 1794. Then, their attempts to qualify Howe’s victory and deny laurels to Hood were followed by Sheridan’s theatrical effort to stake out an understanding of Whiggish patriotism. These efforts amounted to the defensive articulation of patriotism on the fly, and allowed loyalists to dismiss Whig patriotism as self-interested appropriation. In 1795 though, in the debates over Admiral Hotham’s ‘victory’, the opposition discarded this approach. Rather than solely contesting victory, or qualifying plaudits, they responded by advancing a hero of their own—one capable of being aligned to their critique of the Pitt system. Thus, Hotham’s vote of thanks led directly into an oppositional effort to construct Captain Robert Faulknor into a national naval hero. That this occurred illustrates not only the continuing confidence of the Whigs in contesting patriotism, but also their strong awareness of the importance of that struggle. Robert Faulknor’s was the first heroic death of the 1790s to which significant contemporary attention was paid. This was due, in part, to timing, but primarily to the fact his posthumous image could be invested with important political inflections. While it is not in itself surprising that oppositional groupings attempted to attach their own constructions of patriotism to the different heroes of the period, what is significant is recognition of the broad resonance these associations could claim. In the following analysis, Robert Faulknor emerges as a character whose fame ¹ The Sun, 8, 9, 10 Apr. 1795; Morning Post, 9, 11 Apr. 1795. ² Marcus, A Naval History of England, vol. ii: The Age of Nelson (London, 1971), 62–3.

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was primarily attributable to the meritorious associations that coalesced around the fact of his apparent ‘neglect’. An officer of modest social origin killed in battle in January 1795, Faulknor’s posthumous meaning diverged significantly from the reality of his service career. But it is not simply to make such a hagiographic analysis that a look at Faulknor’s case is merited. It is equally required because the episode prefigured so many issues and tensions that characterized the process of heroic construction throughout the war, in particular the analogic relevance (strongly felt) between naval hierarchy and social structure. More broadly, Faulknor’s death was the period’s first encounter with the heroic body—the display and commemoration of which was crucial for contemporary understandings of naval and patriotic masculinity. An important cultural code—that of heroic death—was operating here, and Faulknor’s death reveals the manner in which that code was used in efforts to meaningfully represent the military aspect of national identity. To speak of cultural codes is not to adopt a static or deterministic analysis. On the contrary, Faulknor’s case points to the flexibility and agency observable in the process, and also the degree to which heroic construction was contested (at times hotly) and along partisan lines. In these respects, the tensions imbricated in Robert Faulknor’s contemporary hagiography serve as the necessary preliminaries to an examination of the events of 1797, a year in which naval identities and patriotic subjects became unravelled in particularly extreme ways. In the second week of February 1795—nine weeks before news of Hotham’s engagement with the French fleet in the Mediterranean reached Britain—the London press reported Faulknor’s death. Faulknor captained the frigate Blanche, which, on the evening of 4 January 1795, pursued and engaged a French frigate. Although this isolated encounter was strategically unimportant, because of the nature of the hand-to-hand combat (a kind of combat which was, in actuality, relatively rare), it became the opportunity for the celebration of British heroism. Faulknor’s death received immediate attention, due in large part to his personal share in the action. ‘Captain Faulknor was shot through the heart by a Frenchman . . . having previously himself lashed the bowsprit of La Pique to the capstern with his own hands.’³ The Sun canvassed support for a pillar to be erected to his memory, while the Haymarket ³ The Sun, 13 Feb. 1795.

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theatre advertised ‘Bannister’s tribute to the Memory of Captain Faulknor’.⁴ This initial celebrity was relatively muted, however. Faulknor owed his enduring fame to the shift in the opposition’s strategy for contesting patriotic discourse, and to their desire to use him as a foil to Admiral Hotham. That Faulknor came to be advanced as an oppositional hero who articulated a broadly ‘popular’ critique of the Georgian elite was also ironic, and illustrates that a kind of collective amnesia could factor into the process of constructing a hero. For Faulknor had been in the heroic spotlight before, as the leading figure in a series of events that led Michael Duffy to call him ‘the villain-turned-hero of the siege of Fort Royal’.⁵ In 1794 he rose to national attention during the taking of Martinique, when his actions obtained the surrender of the fort. Admiral Jervis’s gazetted dispatches recounting the storming of the inner harbour of Fort Royal singled out Faulknor’s conduct, and presented it as an unproblematic moment of personal intrepidity and patriotism. In reality, Faulknor’s behaviour—and his ‘patriotic’ motivation—was quite different. Far from being the ideal gallant officer, Faulknor was a troublesome and reckless individual. His careless direction of British troops during an early stage of the siege on Fort Royal had created needless casualties for an already beleaguered force. Worse still, days before the fort was taken, he had accidentally killed a British seaman while flailing his sword during a furious argument with a fellow artillery officer. The passions generated by this killing created a crisis for the expedition, as the dead seaman’s fellow tars demanded a court-martial. Faulknor was acquitted, but tensions were high enough for him to be removed from shore duty and confined to his ship. Days later, it was from this ship that he seized the opportunity to play the decisive role in the storming of the harbour. It seems likely that the ‘mighty purpose’ which ‘swell’d [his] daring soul’ on this occasion, was a baser desire to restore his reputation in the fleet, rather than a pious ‘love of country’.⁶ Jervis featured Faulknor prominently in his dispatches to restore the captain’s credibility within the fleet.⁷ ⁴ The Sun, 28 Feb. 1795; Morning Post, 3 Mar. 1795. ⁵ Michael Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower: The British Expeditions to the West Indies and the War against Revolutionary France (Oxford, 1987), 141–2 n. ⁶ The lines are from Thomas Trotter’s ‘Elegy on Captain Faulknor’, published in the European Magazine, 27 (1795), 274–5. ⁷ Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower, 83–8.

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A year later, after he died in heroic battle, Faulknor’s actions were selectively viewed in the most favourable light, and the memory of the common seaman’s death was finessed, if not actively suppressed.⁸ Faulknor’s gazetted actions were celebrated for the individual decisiveness and strong personal courage they displayed. Even so, questions arising from his court-martial may explain why his commemoration was initially so circumspect. Later in the spring, when a familiar cohort of naval propagandists took up the task of memorializing Faulknor in painting and portrait, they were responding to a revived interest in Faulknor, one generated by a commemorative struggle that Whigs had launched in his name.⁹ In April 1795, when Pitt’s government introduced a motion of thanks to Admiral Hotham, attention returned to Robert Faulknor. Dundas’s motion to vote the thanks to Hotham passed the Commons without opposition, but the moment it did, General Smith MP, a Portland Whig who was becoming increasingly critical of Pitt’s military policies, rose to raise an objection. Smith wished ‘not to express his dissatisfaction [but] . . . he took this opportunity of expressing his surprise, that a gallant Officer who was known to the world of having deserved so well of his Country [Captain Faulknor], should pass unnoticed.’ Faulknor ‘had attempted an enterprise of the most hazardous issue, and [had] succeeded in it, much to the advantage of his Country’. Ironically, Smith pointed out, Captain Faulknor was neglected, while Hotham and his men were thanked. Fixing on the practice whereby governments celebrated Fleet actions that justified the Admiralty’s wider naval strategy, Smith painted the disjunction in political terms, asking ‘what difference there was between an Officer acting in conjunction with a Fleet or executing separate enterprises?’ The result was that ‘the eminent services of a solitary individual were overlooked, while the fame of a group is trumpeted forth to the world’.¹⁰ The following week, Smith formally introduced a motion to place a monument to Captain Faulknor in Westminster Abbey. The resulting debate registered important shifts in Faulknor’s meaning, as his life was expanded into a critique of the dynamics of naval promotion and the capacity of the naval service to recognize individual merit. For Smith, ⁸ Compare The Sun, 24 Apr. 1794 and Oracle, 14 Feb. 1795. ⁹ Oracle, 25 Apr. 1795; 6 June 1795. ¹⁰ Morning Post, 11 Apr. 1795.

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Faulknor’s action was ‘unprecedented’ in that ‘it was an Action wherein the task at once devolved to a single individual both to plan and execute’. He further ‘lamented that three months should have transpired without any public notice of Captain Faulknor’s bravery on the part of the house of Commons’. Leading Whigs (especially Fox and Grey) supported Smith’s motion, assisted by several independent members. One of these MPs, William Pulteney, addressed the central issue: ‘He was at a loss to know why officers belonging to the fleet should alone be entitled to honours, for the situation of an officer, commanding a single ship, seemed to him much more difficult . . . In other Countries any extraordinary act of skill or bravery was constantly rewarded with preferment; in this country nothing could obtain promotion but seniority or money . . . ’¹¹ Debate over the monument to Faulknor reopened questions about the uneven distribution of honours and the absence of merit-based promotion, questions that were largely unresolved in the spring of 1795, at a time when Revolutionary France stood for many as a powerful alternate model.¹² This explains why the political inflections the opposition lent to Faulknor’s memory at this point were so vigorously resisted by loyalists in the government. For Whigs and their allies, Faulknor’s case signalled the government’s unwillingness to recognize men below the commanding echelon who tended to be of moderate social status. Government members opposed this interpretation. The comments of William Windham, the secretary at war, spoke to their concerns. He opposed any special honour to Faulknor, citing a parliamentary ‘rule in use to the contrary, which confined such distinguished honours merely to Officers who fell in a great and General Engagement’. But he went on to point out that ‘if [honours] were due to Captain Faulknor, they were also due to other Officers whose courage, although less signally displayed, was no less great or noble’. This had to be opposed, for if it came to pass, ‘every Midshipman or Lieutenant, who manifest much personal valour, has a similar claim upon the gratitude of his Country.’¹³ Windham revealed that the real concern was for the inflation of honours—not by undeserving cases, but by lesser ranks (midshipmen and lieutenants). ¹¹ The Sun, 15 Apr. 1795. ¹² See St. James’s Chronicle, 21–4 Mar. 1795; Oracle, 18 June 1795. ¹³ The Sun, 15 Apr. 1795.

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Importantly, this admission fed into the case the opposition was making—that together, the treatment of Faulknor and Hotham revealed a bias towards rank (otherwise Faulknor would have been honoured) and the nakedly political nature of the honours system (otherwise Hotham would not). Still, the ministry stuck tenaciously to its position, despite the potential offence that their resistance risked giving to Faulknor’s supporters and other officers in the service. The motion for Faulknor’s monument passed only after the government lost (by a vote of 25 : 29) an attempt to defeat it.¹⁴ Faulknor’s monument, then, ostensibly intended to show the universal gratitude of his country, owed its existence to the continuing partisan debate over the government’s direction of the honours system and its administration of the war. And, in this sense, it is significant that the only effort to commemorate Faulknor in a theatrical representation was made after the opposition had selected him for special treatment. On 28 April, exactly one week after the Commons had approved his monument the Theatre Royal Covent Garden advertised a forthcoming production of The Death of Captain Faulknor; or British Heroism.¹⁵ This anonymously authored play, which premièred on 6 May 1795, was a loyalist response to oppositional efforts in the patriotic sphere. Patriotic theatricals are conventionally viewed as ‘natural’ celebratory responses to naval victory; the timing of the appearance of The Death of Captain Faulknor however, reveals that Faulknor earned a stage treatment because loyalism was interested in using his image to respond to the specific issues that had arisen after his death and victory. The Death of Captain Faulknor was initially advertised on 28 April, the same day that the court-martial of Captain Molloy for failing to ‘exert himself to the utmost of his power’ during Howe’s victory in 1794 opened at Portsmouth. Molloy’s trial, which ended in his conviction, lasted until 15 May, thus providing a two-and-half-week window in which the internal politics of the Channel Fleet were aired in the public prints and discussed in Britain’s coffee-houses.¹⁶ With this in mind, the play reads equally as a response to the criticisms that Molloy’s trial was bound to elicit, and as an effort to paper over the controversy concerning Faulknor’s monument. As we have seen, claims that admirals like ¹⁴ See ibid.; Oracle, 15 Apr. 1795; St. James’s Chronicle, 14–16 Apr. 1795. ¹⁵ Oracle, 28 Apr. 1795. ¹⁶ European Magazine, 27 (1795), 355–6.

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Hotham and Howe were reluctant to engage the enemy were a consistent feature of oppositional attacks on the Pittite war effort. The Death of Captain Faulknor attempted to neutralize the concerns over ‘fighting shy’ that this trial raised in the public mind, by combating them with selfaggrandizing hyperbole. Three explicit references to British sailors’ willingness to seek combat with the enemy appeared in the first fifteen lines of the play. Faulknor’s lieutenant claims his captain detests ‘damn speechifying’ as much as ‘engaging at Distance’; toasts are drunk to ‘The Navy of Old England, and a quick sight of the Enemy’; while Faulknor himself asks rhetorically, ‘when did English Tars meanly skulk off in the face of the foe!’ When Faulknor and his officers learn that ‘the French frigate that we want so much to speak with’ has made sail, they dash off to pursue it.¹⁷ The resulting battle (in which Faulknor falls) showed ‘English and French frigates . . . in the act of engaging.—Engagement continues until the French flag is seen to strike.’¹⁸ By staging such dialogue, the unknown author of The Death of Captain Faulknor firmly established the loyalist direction of his play. And given the play’s loyalist remit, it is necessary to note that it also confronted Whig suggestions that those who died like Faulknor were neglected. The Death of Captain Faulknor determinedly constructed a harmonious vision of the hero’s social commemoration, one that effaced partisan biases and established remembering Faulknor as a national rite. After the representation of the battle, a lieutenant calls upon the crew to attend the funeral and ‘join in the procession to pay [Faulknor] the last honours’. To which another officer replies: Pay his the last honours! No Oakley,—Our Nation will continue to honour the name and memory of Captain Robert Faulknor, while an English plank of oak swims on the Ocean, or a British sailor glories to die for his King and his Country.¹⁹

Brusquely, defiantly, the closing funeral scene claims a popular consensus for the necessity of memorializing Faulknor, and does so in the context of effacing the contemporary confusion over whether he had been fittingly commemorated. The playwright boldly erased any sense that Faulknor had ever been neglected at all. The confident hope that, far from being ¹⁷ The Death of Captain Faulknor; or British Heroism (1795), Larpent Collection, Act I, scene I. ¹⁸ Ibid., Act I, scene III. ¹⁹ Ibid., Act I, scene IV. Emphasis in original.

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his ‘last honours’, the nation would ‘continue to honour the name and memory of Captain Robert Faulknor’ highlighted the consensual sense of his fame, and mitigated the controversy his monument had engendered. The fact that the final tune of the play (which followed a specially composed funerary march) was taken from Arrived at Portsmouth is significant, since it is the only other naval docudrama of the war so far in which the subject of heroic death was specifically broached.²⁰ Both plays, in their representation of funeral processions for British heroes, were concerned with placing particular definitions on heroic death—and both confronted, in different ways, the claims the people made to their heroes. Popular interest in heroic death was strong—strong enough, as we have seen, that in Arrived at Portsmouth William Pearce found it necessary to elevate the memory of the death of Captain Seaford above the vulgar and misplaced sense of celebrity with which Squire Wildfire viewed it. The particular context of 1795, focusing as it did on Faulknor’s popular image and his neglect by the elite, saw the author of The Death of Captain Faulknor working his hero’s death from the opposite angle, and underlining the sense in which the people and the politicians were marching in the same line. The popular alignment made for loyalism by the author of The Death of Captain Faulknor was not sustained. Instead, an effort was made to appropriately tone down the significance of Faulknor’s monument, and an official insistence upon the need to relativize achievement and merit characterized later efforts in this area. Parliament did not vote money for Faulknor’s monument until 1798; by that time his monument had been attached to a larger project in which a number of British heroes of varying ranks were commemorated, not in Westminster Abbey, but in St Paul’s. Faulknor was now merely one of several naval captains honoured with an official monument, and the system for commissioning these projects maintained a strict attention to the relative rank and achievement of the individual being commemorated, as well as of the relative cost of the individual projects.²¹ Loyalist and ministerial resistance ²⁰ Playbill, The Death of Captain Faulknor; or British Heroism, Theatre Museum, London. ²¹ Alison Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero 1800–1864: Monuments to the British Victors of the Napoleonic Wars (New York, 1988), 61–4.

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to the case of Captain Faulknor was, of course, largely explained by the proximity of the Whigs’ commemorative desires to the meritocratic principles of the French Republic.²² And although the ministry was subsequently successful in insulating the honours system from such pressures, they could not, of course, control public discourse. Consequently, the official effort to contain Faulknor’s meaning appropriately did not become the dominant view, and the struggle continued. A biographical sketch highlighted his modest background and emphasized his affability with all ranks of men in an attempt to view his life through a meritocratic prism, while artists rendered politically rooted perspectives of his death in battle.²³ The ongoing contestation of Faulknor’s image is significant, because it shows that the cultural code of heroic death—sometimes assumed to have been politically hegemonic and interpretatively static—was laden with representational opportunity, and hence, instability. This was a significant concern for contemporaries, for as Sarah Knott has recently reminded us, heroic death was heavily informed by elite understandings of sensibility.²⁴ Thus, in the 1790s, when audiences were presented with numerous opportunities for engaging with heroic death (whether through prints they purchased or viewed in shop windows, or tableaux vivants they witnessed at the theatre), the possibility existed that the genre could become demeaned through its very popularization. As William Pearce indicated in Arrived at Portsmouth, there was a suspicion that heroism as celebrity might replace heroism as the expression of embodied virtue as the locus of popular assent for military heroes. This concern equally informed contemporary assessments about the potentially differentiated function of patriotic prints, which popular and educated audiences could not be expected to read in the same way. Inculcating the possibility of emulation was the commonly recognized task heroic death ²² Rafe Blaufarb, The French Army, 1750–1820: Careers, Talent, Merit (Manchester, 2002), esp. 101–32; William S. Cormack, Revolution and Political Conflict in the French Navy, 1789–1794 (Cambridge, 1995), passim. ²³ European Magazine, 28 (1795), 75–6; for contrasting prints see Thomas Stothard, The Death of Captain Faulknor, National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD5485), and Woodriff, The Death of Captain Faulknor, National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD5486). ²⁴ Sarah Knott, ‘Sensibility and the American War of Independence’, American Historical Review, 109 (2004), 19–40.

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was expected to perform. But as Edward Orme (one of London’s leading producers of quality prints) suggested, there was more to the visual representation of military heroics than straightforward readings of individual emulation. The ‘popular ebullition’ of a ‘patriotic ardour’ was but one response. Orme aimed at another, observing that ‘it is the peculiar province of the painter, the sculptor [i.e. engraver], and the graphic art, to supply a speaking picture, and, striking and appropriate representations, at once to amuse and instruct mankind, by an illustration of the most splendid actions and events.’²⁵ Orme’s polarization of popular and elite readings articulates an omnipresent tension in patriotic discourse, as well as serving as a reminder of the challenge these artists set themselves. And satisfying the freighted expectations placed upon the genre required not only that artists select subjects particularly suitable to their purpose, but also that they indulge an acceptable degree of representational licence. This was why, as another contemporary critic argued, ‘perspicuity’ rather than verisimilitude was ‘the first essential of historical writing’ and artistic representation. Perspicuity demanded capturing the essence rather than the details of historical acts, and writers and painters alike were exhorted to take ‘liberties within the bonds of history’.²⁶ The point is, that producing a work capable of being deeply read by an elite audience required that artists deploy a range of strategies that licensed a considerable degree of artistic manipulation. This was seen as necessary to create art for consumers of sensibility—but the degree of interpretative freedom it offered contributed ultimately to the instability of the genre. And this was but one of the patriotic instabilities that the events of 1797 were about to reveal. As the death of Faulknor showed, popular tensions could assert themselves in victory culture, and could be fanned by partisan political discourse. Tensions in this patriotic realm, including those surrounding heroic death, were to emerge wholesale in the naval mutinies of 1797. ²⁵ Edward Orme (ed.), Historic, Military and Naval Anecdotes of Personal Valour, Bravery, and Particular Incidents which occurred to the Armies of Great Britain and her Allies in the last long-contest War, terminated with the Battle of Waterloo (London, 1819), 1. Emphasis added. ²⁶ Robert Anthony Bromley, A Philosophical and Critical History of the Fine Arts, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, 2 vols. (1793–5), i. 45, 55.

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The mutinies that occurred between the third week of April and the second week of June 1797 constitute one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Royal Navy. For a seven-week period, the British squadrons based at Spithead, Plymouth, and the Nore were alternately disabled as the sailors of the fleet petitioned the Admiralty to address complaints concerning low wages, poor provisions, care for the wounded, concern for leave, and unpopular officers.²⁷ This ‘great mutiny’—in which the red flag (the symbol of mutiny) was flown by the rebellious ships of the fleet—has attracted the attention of scholars throughout the years, and the general contours of these events, their causes, chronology, and consequences, are well rehearsed.²⁸ Debate has focused on the political nature of mutinies, and the concern has been with calculating the relative importance of radical ideas, occupational interests, and insurrectionary ambitions. Unexplored are the mutinies’ consequences for patriotic culture. This section considers the mutinies of 1797 as a crisis for loyalism—a moment when the comfortable image of the British seaman was revealed to be incommensurate with national identity and martial success. This crisis is traceable through the newspaper press of the day, which registered important discursive shifts in the coverage of the mutinies. An examination of the representational postures pursued by the newspapers reveals not only the destabilizing effect the mutinies had on the loyalist project, but also the strategies employed to resuscitate the navy’s public image. Throughout the spring and summer of 1797, the newspapers (and society more generally) were significantly challenged to reconcile the accepted image of the British seaman with the unprecedented behaviour of the men manning the navy. This was a difficult task, precisely because the image itself was designed to deny, ²⁷ James Dugan, The Great Mutiny (New York, 1965), 64, 102, 148. ²⁸ G. E. Manwaring and Bonamy Dobrée, The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 (Edinburgh, 1935); Dugan, The Great Mutiny; Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience 1795–1803 (Gloucester, 1983); Joseph P. Moore, ‘ “The greatest enormity that prevails”: direct democracy and workers selfmanagement in the British naval mutinies of 1797’, in C. Howell and R. Twomey (eds.), Jack Tar in History (Fredericton, 1991). The present state of the question is outlined in N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 (New York, 2004), 445–53.

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rather than enable, sailors’ agency. The mutinies undermined the image of Jack Tar, but that did not mean the image was discarded. A crisis of representation ensued, in which papers attempted to fit the fact to the image that obtained, and vice versa. The mutinies of 1797 came in a year of extreme military threat and crisis.²⁹ That winter the French twice slipped past the Channel Fleet and made efforts to land forces in Britain, first in Ireland and later in Wales. Public confidence was thus already at a low ebb when news of an impending disruption in the Spithead squadron of the Channel fleet became known by the Admiralty on Thursday, 13 April 1797.³⁰ For several days, as the crisis developed, London newspaper editors held back publication of the sensational news for fear their coverage would adversely influence the Admiralty’s negotiations with the sailors. Indeed, this concern largely determined the manner in which newspaper writers represented the entire period of the mutiny and its aftermath. Once they began actively writing about the mutiny, the London press adopted various representational postures in their coverage. Adjustments were made to these as events unfolded (and became more serious), but generally speaking, they cohered throughout the crisis. The first fissure that emerged concerned the question of what had caused the mutiny in the first place. Some papers (the Morning Post was one) had reported that the source of unrest concerned wages in arrears.³¹ This information was freighted with partisan significance, since it carried the implication that the Admiralty had been negligent in paying the fleet, and thus bore responsibility for the suspension of service. The Morning Post advanced this argument and traduced government ministers for mismanaging the navy’s affairs. The ministerial press strongly denied these allegations, which, the St. James’s Chronicle pointed out, ‘came through the polluted channel of the Opposition Papers’. Their version suggested that seamen demanded an increase in wages—and although this tended (in the early days) to exculpate the conduct of ministers, it did serve to complicate the conduct of ‘our gallant Tars’. Thus, while the paper felt that the seamen sought recourse through regrettable methods, it took comfort in the expectation of a speedy resolution. At the same time, the paper resisted vilifying the seamen. While signifying its disapproval of their peremptory ²⁹ For which see Wells, Insurrection, 64–78. ³⁰ Dugan, The Great Mutiny, 81. ³¹ Morning Post, 18 Apr. 1797.

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demands, it emphasized the ‘general good behaviour and submission of the seamen’ observing further that ‘there was not reason at present to suspect the smallest disaffection in any one man to his Majesty’s service and Government’.³² This latter notion—that the tars remained, at bottom, loyal and immune to political sentiments—was discussed by other papers with a more imaginative vigour. In a report that largely minimized the seriousness of the discontent, and praised the ‘coolness, firmness, and moderation of Lord Bridport’, the commander in chief of the Channel Fleet, the True Briton observed that: During the whole transaction, the Sailors expressed, in the strongest manner, their heartfelt attachment to their Sovereign, and the cause of their country. . . . they thought it necessary, for a while, to throw aside the order and discipline which are the characteristics of the British Navy, yet we are confident, their sense of duty to their King, and love for their Country, were never a moment abated; and that their hearts glowed with those generous and ardent feelings, which rank a British Tar as the first of characters.³³

Such an interpretation of events was possible only because the paper seized upon the conventionally patriotic and humble posture of parliamentary petitions, and used their formulaic components as evidence that the characteristic nature of the sailors remained loyal. Maintaining an image of the British seaman as loyal was important for two reasons. The first recognized the old adage that one gets more bees with sugar than with vinegar. All newspaper writers were aware that their words were being read by the men in the fleet. In this circumstance flattery (mixed with appropriate argument) might best serve the national cause. But the image of the loyal tar was equally retained for the very reason it had arisen in the first place: it was a comfortable palliative to public opinion—what Gerald Lorentz has called a ‘beneficial illusion’.³⁴ In the case of the mutinies of 1797, the situation was particularly pressing. Invasion hysteria existed well before the fleet at Spithead had laid down its portion of England’s wooden wall. Moreover, the revolutionary contexts of criticism of the government needed to be most vigorously repressed, and the image of the British seamen was still seen as a viable arena for this battle. ³² St. James’s Chronicle, 15–18 Apr. 1797. ³³ True Briton, 19 Apr. 1797. ³⁴ Gerald Lorentz, ‘Beneficial Illusions and the “Jack Tar” ’ (Unpublished paper, University of Toronto, 1998).

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The depth of the late Georgian commitment to the image of the loyal tar is perhaps best illustrated by a line of argument demonstrated in the St. James’s Chronicle at a time when—one week into the Spithead mutiny— the paper erroneously thought the dispute was over. Believing the mutiny was ‘settled to the perfect satisfaction of parties concerned’, the paper felt free to address the ‘contradictory accounts’ published in other ‘factious Prints’. Specifically, the paper complained of the reporting of information that had implied there was a political direction to the seamen’s cause. In the early stages, ministerial papers presented the mutiny as a wage dispute. They avoided reporting—and branded as ‘culpable exaggerations’—news that the seamen had instituted a jury system in shipboard discipline and that they referred to their flagship as the ‘Parliament ship’.³⁵ This was information laden with political symbolism, and suggested that the seamen held reformist political opinions. The True Briton (also under the impression the dispute had been resolved) echoed this concern. It was an ‘insult [to] the character of British Tars’ to suggest the ‘many different causes of complaint’ that had ‘been assigned to them. We believe an increase of wages was the principal, if not the only demand they made . . . ’³⁶ Counterpoising ‘loyal Jack’ to the Jacobins, the paper claimed that ‘the Sailors of the Fleet hear with indignation . . . of the malicious and infamous libels which have been circulated in the Jacobin Papers respecting them . . . [not] an atom of disaffection to their Sovereign or his government, was mingled with their complaints.’³⁷ Presenting mutinous Jack as fundamentally ‘loyal’ required careful editorial interventions. In some instances, little more than straightforward censorship and selective presentation of evidence was necessary. For example when reports surfaced that the mutinous ship’s companies submitted individual seamen to corporal punishment, the press was divided on how to respond. The Star constructed this information in the best light, and celebrated the ongoing maintenance of discipline as evidence of the seamen’s upstanding character.³⁸ Other papers sensed that the punishments were related to political intimidation. Both the St. James’s Chronicle and the True Briton refused to credit these reports, claiming they were ‘exaggerated, if not altogether unfounded’.³⁹ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷ ³⁹

St. James’s Chronicle, 18–20 Apr. 1797. True Briton, 21 Apr. 1797. Emphasis in original. Ibid., 22 Apr. 1797. ³⁸ Star, 21 Apr. 1797. True Briton, 21 Apr. 1797; see also St. James’s Chronicle, 18–20 Apr. 1797.

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Simple denials did not advance or bolster the ministerial case in the court of public opinion, and they did nothing to placate the doubts of a paper’s readership, particularly in a context when early rumours—like the outbreak of mutiny itself—kept turning out to be true. More often, then, the existence of ‘loyal Jack’ was constructed through the elaborate rhetorical exploitation of existing images and perceptions of the British seaman. On 22 April the St. James’s Chronicle’s account played with the image of ‘Jack’ to full advantage. Trumpeting that ‘Truth, at length, has cleared away the fog of idle or mischievous misrepresentation, in which the conduct of our gallant Tars was enveloped,’ the paper pointed to the sailors’ published petition to the House of Commons and the Admiralty, the language of which it claimed as evidence that the sailors have preserved, unsullied, that Loyalty to their King, and that Love to their Country, which have ever been the peculiar characteristicks of British Seamen. Some of their requests seem reasonable: there is no more true Rhetorick in the honest simplicity in which they are worded, than in the most laboured flowers of Oratory. Above all, we admire the last paragraph of the Petition to the Admiralty, in which they profess to know when to cease to ask. This alone is a mark of so much moderation and propriety, that it is a call on the liberality at least, if not on the justice of Parliament, to accede to all such requests, so temperately urged, as shall not appear hurtful to the discipline of the Navy. If there are any who hoped to make a dangerous advantage of the conduct of the Sailors, we trust now that they will be completely disappointed in their views . . . ⁴⁰

Here the seamen of the fleet were presented in a standard light—loyal, simple, sincere, and, importantly, immune to the blandishments of those ‘hoping to make a dangerous advantage of [their] conduct’. Moreover, the circumscribed conventions of the petitional form were once again interpreted for their qualitative meaning. They revealed the seamen to speak the simple-hearted honest language that Admiral Gardner had found so helpful in the Westminster election. Not all of the London press subscribed to the posture of the loyal tar. Indeed, rivals criticized the representational approach taken by the St. James’s Chronicle and True Briton. The Morning Post accused ‘Treasury Journals’ of ‘adopting a cringing treacherous language that may produce ⁴⁰ St. James’s Chronicle, 20–2 Apr. 1797. Emphasis in original.

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the greatest mischief . . . calculated . . . to encourage rather than repress the spirit of revolt’. An unwillingness to present the hard facts of the case made the mutiny only harder to resolve: ‘fawning on Seamen, or fawning on Ministers, [was] alike pregnant with mischief.’ Flattering seamen not only gave them an incorrect sense of the public reaction to their demands, but it also bolstered their claims for special treatment and redress because it confirmed their sense of their special place in the nation. The paper contended against the sailors’ notion that they had: a peculiar utility and importance to the country. It is true that our Navy is our glory, as well as our best defence. But it is not our present Seamen that have made it what it is. It is the genius of the country; and if those who are now our Soldiers had been bred to the sea, they would have made as good sailors as those who seem to think themselves born with peculiar qualities.⁴¹

When tarism served to give lowborn sailors an inappropriate sense of the treatment to which they were entitled in a ranked society, it was a ‘beneficial illusion’ no longer. The Morning Post’s general line recognized the complexities of the situation. The paper faulted both parties—the government for maladministration and the sailors for misconduct. Once the initial promise of a resolution had faded because of ministerial mishandling, a situation had been created that, the paper felt, seemed destined to create bad precedents. A negotiated settlement risked legitimizing mutiny as a means of seeking redress, while repression risked a general crisis, not only among those who served their country, but also in the public theatre of loyalty. The Morning Post’s approach accepted the difficulty in making Jack’s image and the seamen’s actions appear congruent. Moreover, the paper realized that the idealized image of British seamen was in itself problematic. Well suited to the panegyrical requirements of victory culture, such images were ill suited to a realistic language of politically representation. Indeed, that was precisely why the image had arisen in the first place—to efface and neutralize what seemed socially and political disruptive about merchant and naval seamen.⁴² This awareness can be discerned in the paper’s attitude to the mutineer’s political demands. As noted, when the seamen’s petitions and demands were published in the press, a significant section of the ministerial press simply praised the document for the ⁴¹ Morning Post, 22 Apr. 1797. Emphasis in original. ⁴² See Lorentz, ‘Beneficial Illusions’.

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expressions of a higher loyalty they chose to see. But the Morning Post—aware of the politics of language—saw it differently. The paper held to its belief in a need for honest negotiation with the disaffected fleet. The problem was how to do this with men unpractised in politics. When it published the petitions, the paper eschewed the hyperbole of the loyalist press, noting instead that it was impossible to ‘examine these Petitions as if they came from men accustomed to express themselves clearly and definitely’.⁴³ Because of this, the paper hesitated to debate the merits and validity of several of the seamen’s demands—it feared causing unnecessary offence by misconstruing meaning in the words of those unpractised in political expression. But, arguing that an open debate was necessary for the seamen to know where their cause stood with the nation/people, the paper went on to assess a few of the petition’s leading elements. Exercising significant caution, the Morning Post held that such language had to be read carefully, with appropriate condescension, and not with rigorously critical attention. The Morning Post considered that its attitude towards the mutineers was a combination of understanding and disapproval. The paper ‘disapprov[ed] of one half the complaints’ (implying that the other half were merited), ‘totally disapprov[ed] the spirit of them,’ and ‘above all . . . disapprov[ed] the steps . . . taken to obtain redress.’⁴⁴ This grudging degree of sympathy was absent among those newspapers and writers who engaged in a posture of vituperative condemnation. Such an attitude was relatively uncommon in the earliest weeks of unrest, but became increasingly more common as the mutiny wore on and was extended to the Nore. The decision to engage in frequently bitter criticism of the tars, though, needs to be seen as distinct from the representational strategies so far outlined. More generally though, these postures were not always perfectly distinct. At times they intermingled, and at times individual papers (or individuals) made conscious changes of tack. Such was the case with the Morning Herald, whose coverage on 9 May was a far cry from the ‘fawning’ treatments that appeared elsewhere: The refractory spirit of the Seamen on the present occasion has been manifested in a manner that reflects very little credit on their boasted loyalty and attachment to their country’s cause. What! the natural defenders of Old England refuse to put to sea, and sluggishly remain in port, under a frivolous pretext, at a time ⁴³ Morning Post, 22 Apr. 1797.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

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when her coasts are menaced by a daring and enterprising foe! Such behaviour is surely unworthy the character of British Seamen; and yet, if we are rightly informed, such has actually been their conduct in the unfortunate instance to which we now allude.⁴⁵

Such blunt condemnation reflected a general frustration, but some ministerial papers (papers which, we must remember, were ordinarily eager to label their opponents ‘jacobin’) continued to resist it. The Oracle still refused to find direct fault with the sailors. Playing to the stereotype of the British seaman, it observed that since ‘our sailors are more remarkable for their quick feeling than for reflection, for irritability and impatience than for calm forbearance and discussion, it is to be greatly lamented that more dispatch has not been used by the Admiralty . . . ’⁴⁶ Two weeks later, with the Nore aflame, the True Briton, which had earlier led the way in flattering British seamen, abandoned its hopeful tone, and demanded repression by force. Crucially, their call was made possible through the continuing manipulation of the image of the British seaman. The paper now became one of several voices arguing that what the nation was witnessing was not the treasonous perfidy of its gallant tars, but their delusion by a small and concerted faction of seditious rebels.⁴⁷ On the third anniversary of the ‘Glorious First of June’ readers of the Oracle were treated to the spectacle of a paper actively imploring British seamen to return to the patriotic fold. Still the paper avoided outright condemnation of the seamen. And still, it did so by employing the images surrounding ‘Jack Tar’. The paper played upon the aspect of Jack’s character that saw him as fundamentally loyal, trusting, and inclined to credulity—continuing the loyalist interpretation that British sailors had been led astray: ‘Have the DARING VILLAINS who have sowed discontent amongst you, ever told you, that if the Summer is spent quarrelling with your officers and your country, you will soon have neither officers nor country to quarrel with?’⁴⁸ Two days later the intensifying situation led the paper to take a harder line and join the swelling chorus of condemnation. Attacking those papers that had attempted to ‘soothe the mutineers’ by ‘[speaking] of the Mutiny in terms the least reprehensible, whilst at the same time they extolled the bravery, the generosity, the patriotism, and the loyalty of the ⁴⁵ Morning Herald, 9 May 1797. ⁴⁶ Oracle, 9 May 1797. ⁴⁷ True Briton, 25 May 1797; 3 June 1797. ⁴⁸ Oracle, 1 June 1797.

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favourite SONS OF ENGLAND—HER HONEST TARS,’ the paper argued the ‘People of England’ saw nothing now but ‘treachery, disloyalty, and at base a sordid selfishness’ on the part of those who were usually ‘the most favoured portion of the community’. But even now the paper did not totally abandon the image of the loyal tar. Instead it made a seemingly logical, but rarely articulated distinction between the ‘degenerate Englishmen’ who manned ‘The Squadron at the Nore [that was] employed in degrading the character of the English tar’ and the squadron of ‘heroes’ under Admiral St Vincent who were currently blockading Cadiz.⁴⁹ The Oracle, which had taken a cautious pro-government line from the start of the mutiny, shared the Morning Post’s belief that the indulgent posture of the still-loyal-tar was ill-advised, but no longer fearing offending the sailors (probably because it recognized the situation could not get much worse), it moved into a pose of outright hostility. Condemnatory language was only inadvisable if it entirely excluded the possibility of exculpatory explanations that might rehabilitate the seamen of the mutinous squadrons. Significantly, by the time the Oracle openly criticized the sailors, the public record already furnished the means by which this rapprochement could occur. From the middle of May, a number of London papers were linking the ‘commotions’ to the increased presence of pressed landsmen in the fleet.⁵⁰ The St. James’s Chronicle alleged that these landlubbers (many of whom it speciously claimed had succumbed to sea sickness) were the malcontents and ‘principal leaders in the mutiny’, and that the ordinary seamen were ‘ruled with a rod of iron’ by a Jacobin cabal of pressed landsmen; the True Briton believed a radical attorney had infiltrated the fleet and caused the mutiny.⁵¹ Importantly, these interpretations preserved the image of the loyal British seaman, because the mutiny was attributed to delicate and designing radical landsmen who could not handle the shipboard life of a seagoing tar. The existence of this attitude was significant—not just because it provides further insights into the manner by which Georgian attitudes to the mutiny were filtered through the prevailing image of ‘Jack Tar’—but also because it provided a possible avenue for reconciliation. ⁴⁹ Oracle, 3 June 1797. ⁵⁰ Star, 13 May 1797. ⁵¹ St. James’s Chronicle, 11–13 May 1797; 1–3 June 1797; 29 June–1 July 1797; True Briton, 12, 13 May 1797. Roger Wells has argued, circumstantially, for the probability of United Irish involvement in the mutinies; see Insurrection, 81–4.

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Once the mutinies wound down stories (possibly prompted by selfinterested seamen seeking to evade punishment) of ‘loyal tars’ who had opposed the mutinous landsmen did emerge.⁵² But they did little to ameliorate the wider confusion. Flattery, shame, bold entreaties—all ultimately failed to bring the seamen of the fleet back into the fold.⁵³ But as time passed, the sailors’ enthusiasm waned—partly because the government successfully interdicted their food supply. The final ships’ companies threw off the red flag, and by the middle of June the mutinies were over. Considering all that had been said about the seamen’s loyalty, it is interesting to note the loyalties that appeared most effective when the disruption in the Spithead squadrons was settled: those within the ship’s company. The sense of loyalty that mattered was a personal loyalty owed to individual captains and admirals in the fleet—a personal loyalty forged in fraternal combat. It was this that made the reconciliation negotiated by Lord Howe at Spithead possible. It was this that had led the seamen to petition the semi-retired Howe (instead of the senior ranking officer at Portsmouth) with their demands in the first place.⁵⁴ The realities of seafaring life determined that a seaman’s loyalties were contingent, relational, and shifting. Primary loyalties were not given to loose notions of ‘king and country’. That was the indulgent fiction of the Georgian ruling class. Nor were primary loyalties owed to an international seafaring proletariat—as those writing in the Marxian frame have been tempted to assert.⁵⁵ While the mutinies were clearly the consequence of an occupational community of interest that formed among the common seamen, it is important to understand that tars’ sense of loyalty was focused on their ship’s company—both below deck and above.⁵⁶ Indeed, it is often forgotten that conflicts relating to shipboard loyalty (as opposed to systemic institutional complaints) had been part of the mutiny from the start. Resolving what the seamen called ‘private ⁵² Oracle, 22 June 1797. ⁵³ For an example of how the seamen responded to efforts to shame them back into service, see Address to the Nation, by the Seamen of St. Helen’s (London, 1797). ⁵⁴ Dugan, The Great Mutiny, 66. ⁵⁵ For which see Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000), 143–73. ⁵⁶ Dening, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language, 142–7; Rodger, The Wooden World, 205–51; Lorentz, ‘Beneficial illusions’.

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grievances’⁵⁷ (the euphemism coined to describe the seamen’s desire to remove objectionable officers who had behaved in a ‘tyrannical and oppressive manner’) was a greater obstacle than the more celebrated question of sailors’ pay. Lord Howe’s negotiations at Portsmouth focused upon questions of shipboard discipline. Parliament had already granted pay increases, improved rations, and, crucially, a pardon.⁵⁸ Howe eventually agreed to the removal of 114 officers in the squadrons at Spithead and Plymouth.⁵⁹ Considering that demands for increased pay and better provisions were generally regarded as legitimate in public opinion, the crew’s once-only right to choose their officers represents their most singular achievement. And while the mutinies have been seen as a kind of open or collective bargaining with parliamentary (and therefore constitutional) authority, it is important to realize that the disruptions were effaced according to traditional patterns of authority and loyalty in the fleet.⁶⁰ Few contemporary observers appreciated that shipboard loyalty was constructed according to existing masculine hierarchies. One exception was a writer in the True Briton, whose exhortation to the mutinous sailors reminded them of the bellicose solidarity they shared with their commanders, the Lords of the Admiralty, men who were essentialized examples of manly force—the ‘Delegates of the Naval Power of [the British] Empire’. Crucially, the writer appealed to a sense of masculine fraternity. Loyalty was owed, not because society demanded it, and not because of the deference owed to superiors. The Lords of the Admiralty deserved a ‘higher claim’ to sailors’ loyalty, partly because their commitment to the interests of the men was proven by the uncommon exertions they had made to negotiate fully and fairly with the Nore fleet ‘by holding a Board at Sheerness’, but also because they had earned it in battle and service. It was ‘under [their] direction . . . [that] the glory of the British Flag has been raised to a degree unknown before. Selected by them, our illustrious Admirals have called forth into Action the innate valour of our Officers and Seamen, and obtained the most brilliant and important Victories . . . ’⁶¹ Fraternity and combat experience were esteemed in shipboard life. Thus the sailors’ appeal to Lord Howe, who, ⁵⁷ Address to the Nation, by the Seamen of St. Helen’s, 3–4. ⁵⁸ Dugan, The Great Mutiny, 159. ⁵⁹ Ibid. 168. ⁶⁰ Moore, ‘Direct democracy and workers self-management in the British naval mutinies of 1797’. ⁶¹ True Briton, 10 June 1797. Emphasis added.

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in their words, ‘wore the laurels of the GLORIOUS FIRST OF JUNE and was represented as their Friend’;⁶² thus too their dismissive description of Admiral Colpoys, whose bungled effort to force a mutinous crew back to work led to an episode of bloodshed that was sarcastically described by the tars as ‘the first action that ever the brave Admiral Colpoys, as some are pleased to call him, was in’.⁶³ These were the connections, though, that many loyalists missed. And in their failure to grasp the sense in which sailors’ loyalty was re-established, loyalism missed an opportunity to resolve the fears, concerns, and uncertainties that its loss had generated. For this reason, the conclusion of the naval mutinies at the end of June 1797 did not end the representational fissures that had rent the Georgian public sphere. Indeed, the challenges posed by the oppositional forces broadly aligned with Whiggery and popular radicalism became more pronounced, as the death of Richard Parker, the leader of the mutineers at the Nore, revealed. His death merits discussion for two reasons. First, it continued the debate over the question of ‘who was Jack Tar?’ Secondly, the circumstances of Parker’s execution, and the manner of his death, are important to the larger theatre of loyalty and heroism that was operating in the late 1790s. The strange death of ‘Admiral’ Parker served as a challenge to the period’s understanding of virtue, loyalty, heroism, and heroic death, ultimately revealing that radicalism was as capable as loyalism of occupying these sites and signs. This discovery perpetuated the uncertainty of 1797, and explains—as we shall see—the nature of the final loyalist response.

THE DEATH OF ‘ADMIRAL’ RICHARD PARKER The news that the seamen at the Nore were being led by an individual referred to as the ‘President of the Fleet’ became widely known during the second phase of the mutinies. Interest in the individual—named as Richard Parker—who held sway over a fleet of British seamen was high. Initial reports attempted to demonize the ‘President of the Fleet’, to present him as a republican agent, and to distance him from the ideal of ⁶² Morning Post, 25 Apr. 1797. ⁶³ Address to the Nation, by the Seamen of St. Helen’s, 6.

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the average British seaman. On 9 June 1797, The Times reported Parker was ‘originally a weaver at Perth; that when the Government found it necessary to adopt strong measures in Scotland to suppress sedition, he fled from thence, and became Under Secretary to the Corresponding Society in London . . . he has debauched his own sister, who lived in the family of an Honourable Baronet. Such is the naval character and manly accomplishments to which 20 ships of Britain pay homage. Shame to English stupidity and subordination!’⁶⁴ (Apart from Parker’s Scottish origins, none of this was true.) Days later, the paper described Parker’s ‘manners and behaviour . . . as the most vulgar and ferocious imaginable’.⁶⁵ Such information fit well with the interpretation of the mutiny advocated in those papers that blamed the disruption on an intimidating cabal of seditious revolutionaries and disaffected landsmen. In fact, Parker had a solid naval pedigree. He had been a midshipman in the navy, and later served as a mate on an Indiaman. Financial troubles in the mid-1790s landed him in debtors’ prison. He was released as a quota man, gaining his freedom on condition of enlisting in the Royal Navy.⁶⁶ Parker did not conform to the ideal of the happy volunteer, but he had a naval background that lent credence to the seamen’s claims regarding their mistreatment and conditions of service. The interrogation of Parker’s character reached its height after the courts-martial, in which Parker and several of his partners were convicted and sentenced to death. The True Briton published an assessment of Parker’s character. Here, Parker was a villain—unrepentant, surly, and sarcastic. He was also a charlatan. Although his behaviour in court had been ‘generally respectful . . . the moment he retired from it, he assumed the manners by which he had supported his short-lived, and, to him, most fateful authority’. In reporting Parker’s conduct immediately after receiving his sentence, the paper described an episode that supposedly typified his violent disposition and deceitful conduct. Addressing the provost martial (the officer responsible for his imprisonment and execution), Parker swore and threatened to ‘kick [his] gut out if I can’. Such behaviour, the paper explained, was simply a transparent artifice ‘to appear the Hero’ before the seamen who had followed him. The reaction ⁶⁴ The Times, 9 June 1797. ⁶⁵ Ibid., 14 June 1797. ⁶⁶ Morning Herald, 15 June 1797; Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1885–1901), xv. 268.

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of Parker’s fellow-accused to this action was also included. Some, the paper ‘was concerned to say . . . expressed a wish that they had likewise been condemned, that they might die with him.’⁶⁷ Although such defiance coincided with the view that the mutineers were a dastardly lot, it did not fit particularly well with the expectations and assumptions of the role executions played in late Georgian society. Public executions were part of the eighteenth-century spectacle of authority. Ideally, they served as reintegrative rituals in which the supremacy of the state and the legitimacy of the punishment were demonstrated. As the pamphlet literature of these ‘last dying speeches’ reveals, authorities circulated a view of public executions that fit a useful ritual type—the penitential gallows performance.⁶⁸ In this ideal, the condemned presented themselves as contrite, penitent, and guilty. They frequently enumerated their crimes, confessed their guilt, acknowledged the justice of their sentence, and appealed to God for forgiveness. In this way, the authorities that circulated these selective versions of executions felt the public was best served. In 1797 there was still the expectation that executions would conform to the ritual of the penitential gallows performance, and hopes were high that the executions and punishments meted out at the Nore would be instructive and exemplary. Consequently those seeking restorative justice began a search for the penitential Parker, with the obvious aim that it would bring explanatory closure to the mutinous crisis. It was rumoured he was ‘writing a kind of history of his life’—a work the True Briton hoped would ‘be a beacon for all Sailors to avoid Mutiny, as the rock upon which they must inevitably be shipwrecked and lost’.⁶⁹ The St. James’s Chronicle muted its account of Parker’s post-sentence behaviour, choosing instead to close with the hope that Parker’s ‘behaviour within the last two days, has manifested some marks of penitence and devotion, although he continues to speak of death in terms most contemptuous’.⁷⁰ The next day the True Briton reported that Parker was ‘very decent and composed’, information consistent with the view that impending death was appropriately concentrating the mind.⁷¹ ⁶⁷ True Briton, 28 June 1797. ⁶⁸ See J. A. Sharpe ‘Last dying speeches: religion, ideology and public execution in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present, 107 (1985), 144–67. ⁶⁹ True Briton, 28 June 1797. ⁷⁰ St. James’s Chronicle, 27–9 June 1797. ⁷¹ True Briton, 30 June 1797.

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Parker’s execution on 30 June was an event keenly followed in the national press. Although it was publicly reported, it was not a public event. The execution occurred offshore on board the Sandwich, the ship he had commanded as putative ‘Admiral’ of the Fleet. Some shorthand reporters may have been present; some may have viewed via spyglass from Sheerness. In either case, the accounts of the execution that appeared in the London press followed the same original source, an account clearly written by a first-hand witness to the event. In this originating version,⁷² Parker faced his death on the forecastle of the Sandwich with a Christian forbearance, a manly fortitude, and a respectful recognition of the authority by which he was put to death, but he was not penitent for the crimes of which he had been convicted. When the chaplain attended upon him for his final prayers, Parker impressed the writer with his biblical knowledge (he volunteered an appropriate psalm of his own, and recited it by heart). Parker did not receive final communion on board, but, even so, he requested a glass of wine, which he then lifted up as a host, and drank ‘to the salvation of my soul! and next to the forgiveness of all my enemies’. Parker did not apologize for his crimes. Instead, he stuck to the argument presented at his defence—that he had not been the instigator and that he had saved his country by preventing the ships from being carried away to enemy ports. He cultivated the sense that he was protecting guilty men and actively presented himself as a willing scapegoat—declaring, in his final words, that he ‘acknowledged the Justice of the Sentence . . . [and] hoped [his] death may be deemed a sufficient atonement, and save the lives of others’. He attempted to refuse the hood necessitated by protocol, and jumped from the forecastle seconds before the signal gun was fired for the ship’s company to run him up the halyards (an action that has been seen as part of an intention to kill himself by hanging, and thus absolve his shipmates from the responsibility for his death).⁷³ In light of the partisan and diverse nature of the coverage of all other aspects of the mutiny, the fact that newspaper editors had no choice but to accept the same version of Parker’s execution is noteworthy. No significant changes were made to the body of the original narrative, but some ⁷² This version appeared (with the small changes discussed below) in St. James’s Chronicle, 29 June–1 July 1797; Star, 1 July 1797; True Briton, 3 July 1797; Morning Post, 3 July 1797; The Times, 3 July 1797; and Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1797. ⁷³ Dugan, The Great Mutiny, 358.

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papers altered the ending in interesting and significant ways. This was not surprising, since the original account provided a version of Parker’s last moments that (by faithfully reporting the last words and symbolic declarations of the condemned man) leant towards a martyrological interpretation. Parker had successfully presented himself as a Christian, disavowed the treasonable interpretation placed upon his actions (but not the actions themselves), protected the identities of other seamen not accused, and declared himself willing to take the punishment on behalf of the fleet. But he still did not cooperate in the penitential theatre of punishment in the manner that was expected. Moreover, his fortitude and gentlemanly deportment impressed many observers, and led them to speculate that there was more to Parker’s character than initially believed. Parker’s death narrative cunningly exploited the conventions of heroic death, thus captivating a society well versed in its conventions. The ‘intrepidity’ and ‘calm unruffled dignity’ with which Parker ‘performed his part’ in the ‘awful theatre’ of punishment, enabled sympathizers to read his death scene for some familiar proofs of character.⁷⁴ Parker’s ‘general deportment’ and stoical conduct indicated for some evidence of an ‘elevated mind’, and served in some degree to ‘rebate the extent of his offences’.⁷⁵ The Morning Chronicle saw the ‘whole scene of his last hours’ exhibiting those traits ‘which had led him to pre-eminence in the choice of [his] fellow seamen’. The condemned maintained a ‘proper awe of the dissolution that awaited him, and therefore met it with those progressive traits of heroism which best demonstrate a firm and gallant mind!’⁷⁶ Sectors of the press cavilled at the efforts of those who ‘actuated by the worst motives, affect to lament the fate of Parker’.⁷⁷ Their rebuttal clearly revealed an understanding that it was conventions regarding heroic death that were being exploited and destabilized. ‘What good purpose can it answer to represent his fortitude as heroic? . . . Heroism does not consist in a contempt of death; the most profligate, and the most criminal, have often met it with as much coolness as firmness, as the most virtuous and innocent of mankind.’⁷⁸ It was ‘criminal to render the conduct of the Government unpopular, by exalting the just objects of punishment to the rank of heroes by theatrical accounts of their ⁷⁴ Morning Chronicle, 12 Oct. 1797; Star, 13 Oct. 1797. ⁷⁵ Monthly Mirror, 4 (1797), 17–20. ⁷⁶ Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1797. ⁷⁷ The Times, 5 July 1797. ⁷⁸ Oracle, 6 July 1797.

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conduct’.⁷⁹ The problem had arisen with the originating account of Parker’s death, which, read as an unmediated text, invested the execution with the sympathies ordinarily directed towards heroic death. Defusing it required the identification of the selective strategies of the text: A theatrical account has been given of the death of Parker; but it is quite common for men to die with fortitude, and an account of the last moments of any of those unfortunate Seamen who may yet suffer, could be rendered just as interesting, if the individual had performed as conspicuous a part, and his last words and actions were as minutely recorded, and with as high a colouring.⁸⁰

This effort to define Parker as an oppositional hero reached its zenith in October 1797, with the publication in the London press of the ‘Original and Authentic Anecdotes of Parker the Mutineer’. This item (which appeared in the Morning Chronicle, 12 October 1797, and The Star, 13 October 1797) claimed to be a first-hand reminiscence of Parker’s life and last days. The ‘Original and Authentic Anecdotes of Parker the Mutineer’ attempted to elevate the mutineer as a tragic hero for radicalism—as much a victim of the oppressive state as Horne Tooke and the Scottish Martyrs. In this effort, Parker’s classical education and the refinement of his gentlemanly character were emphasized. No savage mutineer, Parker was a reasoning, reflective, and intellectual individual whose ‘diction even in common conversation was bold and original’. Parker was revealed to have once duelled with a fellow officer, an act which revealed his sense of honour, ‘proper sensibility of character’, and social rank. Readers were invited to consider Parker ‘A hero by nature, though traitor by fate’—one who had only been alienated from his ‘affection for [the naval] service’ by ‘nothing but disappointment and hard usage’.⁸¹ This effort to heroicize Parker, however, collapsed in contradiction. Elevating Parker to the status of a gentleman distanced him from the tars with whom his ‘popular’ affect lay. Descriptions of Parker as a gentleman traitor ‘whose education was in some degree superior to the generality of his comrades’, facilitated the rehabilitation of the common tar since they allowed the mutiny to be seen as the fault of a ‘bold aspiring man . . . desirous of establishing himself in the possession of an unconstitutional sway’.⁸² Efforts to heroicize Parker along the pattern of Horne Tooke’s ‘privates in the ranks’ eschewed aspects ⁷⁹ Morning Post, 4 July 1797. ⁸⁰ Ibid., 5 July 1797. ⁸¹ Star, 13 Oct. 1797. ⁸² Critical Review, 20 (2) (1797), 574.

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of his significance as a plebeian folk hero, preferring instead to present him as a symbol of middle-class dissatisfaction. For loyalism, Parker’s death showed how the conventions of heroic death could be exploited for radical usage, and raised the prospect that the mob might misread both patriotic spectacle and heroic narratives. If a traitor’s death could be for the London mob a spectacle of interest, and for radical opinion a figure of ‘sensibility’, the cultural problematic of divergent and differentiated readings was once again inconveniently revealed. That heroic death was not the only loyalist discourse that was available to the political dissenters of 1797 only exacerbated the problem. Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth century, poems and prints that imagined British seamen as absent men rooted to their local communities by strong emotional ties and familial bonds were standard in the representation of the sea. Affective tales of ‘Jack and Nancy’, separated by naval service only to be happily reunited at the voyage’s end, conveniently idealized the effects of naval service on British society. These happy images served as a foil to the salacious anecdotes of tarism that emphasized the social marginality and moral liminality of seamen’s lives.⁸³ The domesticated tar was a metaphor of social harmony; his belonging in the local community effected by the simultaneous conflation of romantic love, patriotism, domestic interests, and national pursuits. Because of the manner in which these images powerfully encapsulated national, local, familial, and patriotic sensibilities, they were a preferred poetic device for raising subscriptions for the widows and orphans relief funds in the period.⁸⁴ These representations acknowledged the unrest that naval service caused, but most often it was the emotional, rather than the economic, hardships that were emphasized. (Sheridan’s The Glorious First of June reversed this focus, with the effect already noted.) In the crisis of 1797, all sides realized the degree to which the disaffection of the nation’s defenders was related to understandings of the domestic sphere. Early in the mutiny, the seamen tried to advance their case through a sympathetic poem ostensibly written ‘by the widow of a ⁸³ See for instance, anecdote of Jack Tar and his twins, Oracle, 18 Oct. 1797. ⁸⁴ See the poems published in the Morning Post, 16 June 1797; True Briton, 1 Nov. 1797; Bath Journal, 6 Nov. 1797; and the transparency described in the True Briton, 19 Oct. 1797.

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seaman’.⁸⁵ It was an attempt to exploit the special hearing that would be given to the plea of a seaman’s widow.⁸⁶ Loyalists understood the mutiny in terms of the threat it posed to the bonds upon which domestic affections depended. A Letter to the Tars of Old England (just one of several published loyalist remonstrations) warned seamen of the likelihood of being forever cut out of their domestic sphere of passions. ‘Your mistresses . . . will desert you! Where is the honest hearted girl who will trust a sailor false-hearted to old England? Your wives will blush for you . . . you will more than bastardise [your children].’⁸⁷ The most notable example of the manner in which the seamen’s sympathizers could exploit the domestic dimension of tarism to political effect, concerned, once again, Richard Parker. After his execution, his body was buried in an unmarked grave in the naval cemetery at Sheerness, from whence it was illicitly retrieved by his widow, and taken to London.⁸⁸ Once in London, Parker’s body became a plebeian sign. His widow, whose intention was ‘To have him interred like a Gentleman, as he had been bred,’ was solicited by persons of ‘other motives’ who encouraged her to inter ‘her husband in a manner suitable to his condition’.⁸⁹ A large crowd assembled, and Parker’s body effectively ‘layin-state’ for part of a weekend. This ‘funeral’ was part of an ongoing attempt, apparently fostered by the ‘many persons’ who ‘affect to lament . . . [his] fate’, to heroicize Parker.⁹⁰ Crucial here was the use of ‘the interesting machinery of an afflicted widow [brought forward] to work upon the feelings and compassion of the multitude’.⁹¹ Loyalism had been sensitive on this point for a while, as opponents of the war had long focused on making domestic disruptions of the family unit a focus of their propaganda.⁹² By the fall of 1797, a writer in George Canning’s Anti-Jacobin decried the trend towards this excessively sympathetic posture, the verse of which he castigated as ‘Jacobin Poetry’.⁹³ ⁸⁵ Morning Post, 25 Apr. 1797. ⁸⁶ For the role the image of the war widow played in wartime discourse, see Mary A. Favret, ‘Coming home: the public spaces of romantic war’, Studies in Romanticism, 33 (1994), 539–57. ⁸⁷ Analytical Review, 26 (1797), 308. ⁸⁸ Star, 4 July 1797. ⁸⁹ Ibid., 6 July 1797. ⁹⁰ Times, 5 July 1797. ⁹¹ Oracle, 6 July 1797. ⁹² See for example the literary vignettes and poems published in Politics for the People, 1 (1794), 8–9, 235–7; 2 (1794), 46–7, 78–9, 232–8. ⁹³ The Anti-Jacobin; or Weekly Examiner, 27 Nov. 1797, 69–71, and 11 Dec. 1797, 168–70.

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By this point in its engagement with loyalism, then, popular radicalism could marshal the aid of some representational currents within late Georgian literary culture. From the perspective of loyalism, radical efforts in this vein underlined the sense in which the crisis they faced that year was not only social and economic, but cultural as well. This realization led to the founding of the Anti-Jacobin to act as a loyalist policeman in the literary sphere. Aspects of loyalism’s long-term response to this situation will be considered in the next chapter, but for now it is necessary to examine the effort to put the hero and the tar back in their proper partisan sphere.

‘A SUBJECT AT PRESENT PECULIARLY INTERESTING’ After the conclusion of the mutinies, all aspects of British naval organization and maritime supremacy were held up to scrutiny. Pamphleteers, anonymous naval officers, writers, and editors contributed to a debate in which there was more than enough recrimination to go around. The navy was described in unprecedented terms. Now ‘but a shadow of the proudest bulwark of the country’ it was characterized by ‘confusion, disorder, irregularity, discontent, and oppression’. It was seen as a venal preserve where honest and virtuous officers and seamen were denied the ‘equity . . . justice . . . and promotion . . . that would have wedded them to the service.’⁹⁴ The character of the British sailor was particularly investigated in this debate. Thomas Trotter’s Medicina Nautica appeared in the mutiny’s aftermath. Its lengthy observations on seamen—‘a subject at present peculiarly interesting’—led to its being reviewed in the periodical press, and invested this medical treatise with an unanticipated cultural relevance.⁹⁵ While ‘Jack Tar’ was never an entirely comfortable image, the mutiny highlighted his disruptive qualities. From loyalism’s perspective, the ‘extreme credulity’ and ‘ignorance’ of seamen combined with their uncontrolled aggression to pose a potent social threat ‘when ⁹⁴ A Fair Statement of the Real Grievances Experienced by Officers and Sailors in the Navy of Great Britain with a Plan of Reform . . . in a letter to the Rt. Hon. Henry Dundas, Treasurer of the Navy, by a Naval Officer (London, 1797), 1. ⁹⁵ Monthly Review, 23 (1797), 323. See also, British Critic, 9 (1797), 663–5.

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stimulated into a rage’ by their ‘seducers’.⁹⁶ Pamphlets appeared describing sailors as ‘worse than the pirates—the monsters of the sea’.⁹⁷ Once a figure ‘treated as the favourite children of the public . . . whilst Soldiers were considered as bastards,’ events of the spring of 1797 had reversed the services’ standing ‘in the public estimation’. This reversal of public affection had the potential, some feared, to upset the constitutional balance, undoing the parliamentary brake that kept a standing army out of executive hands.⁹⁸ Considering that ships often featured in patriotic discourse as metaphors for the state itself, the challenge that the very public appearance of ‘nautic sedition’ posed extended to the terms in which British national identity and the British state were conceived.⁹⁹ Fears for the overall stability of the social order materialized in publications which, rather than celebrating the seamen’s eventual return to the fold, called for ‘unrestrained severity’ in the restoration of naval discipline. For many writing in this vein, the seamen’s actions could not be placed within the customary frame in which they were viewed— sailors ‘never can recover their lost fame’.¹⁰⁰ Rehabilitating British sailors was significantly related to the articulation of national self-confidence and a loyalist discourse capable of setting contemporary events and struggles in a framework that allowed for the envisioning of ultimate victory. This was recognized in a song that appeared in the Oracle at the mutiny’s conclusion. Its prescription for national healing called upon Britons simply to forget the mutinous events and seek comfort in the prospect of future battles exhibiting British naval glory. This song—which explicitly acknowledged disturbing facts and events of which it was now best not to speak—was set to the tune of a well-known patriotic anthem.¹⁰¹ Such a formulaic inversion ⁹⁶ British Critic, 9 (1797), 666. ⁹⁷ Analytical Review, 26 (1797), 308. ⁹⁸ Oracle, 28 July 1797. ⁹⁹ Critical Review, 20 (2) (1797), 575 (quote); for examples see Benson, Britain’s Glory; or, A Trip to Portsmouth; James Stanier Clarke, Naval Sermons; preached on board H.M.S. Impeteux. To which is added, A Thanksgiving Sermon for Naval Victories (1798), 70–2; Oracle, 28 Nov. 1797. ¹⁰⁰ Monthly Review, 23 (1797), 346–7. ¹⁰¹ ‘A Song.’ (Tune—I sing the British Seaman’s praise). I will not sing the Seamen’s shame | Be hush’d the dreadful story | They once deserv’d a better name | Then tarnish not their glory | Let dark oblivion veil a deed | So foul, so past believing | Which make’s each honest heart to bleed | the Nation’s hope deceiving | Yet still respect the British Tar | Remember his past merit | And once again in hottest war | He’ll shew his daring sprit. Oracle, 22 June 1797.

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suggests recognition of the immediate necessity to turn away from contemporary events, into the familiar comforts of collective memory. As such writing reveals, the assumptions and images surrounding British naval supremacy were fractured in the late summer of 1797. Whereas before threats had come in the form of Whig contestation and radical critique, the mutiny revealed the insubstantial nature of the discourse itself, particularly as it approached questions of plebeian agency. The crisis offered the possibility of seriously rethinking the contemporary understanding of British sailors—and some steps in this direction were made.¹⁰² But in the end, a meaningful public assessment of the place of ‘Jack Tar’ was precluded by precisely what had given rise to it in the first place—victory culture. ‘DUNCAN FOR EVER!’ Those who hoped that British seamen would once again prove deserving of their country’s affections did not have long to wait. On 11 October 1797, the Dutch fleet came out of the Texel, and was defeated off Camperdown by the British under Admiral Adam Duncan. This victory—which, by precluding the junction of the Dutch and French fleets significantly reduced the immediate invasion threat—was cause for considerable celebration. Ministers appear to have learnt lessons from their earlier forays into the commemorative politics of naval victory. The fleet promotions were generous and speedily arranged.¹⁰³ The king planned a special visit to the Nore to distribute honours, Duncan was ennobled as Viscount Camperdown, and all the first lieutenants of the fleet were advanced to the rank of masters and commanders. For the first time in the war, the device of a general religious thanksgiving was instituted, with Howe’s and St Vincent’s victories being retroactively attached to the celebration of Duncan’s triumph at St Paul’s Cathedral. Crucially, the mistakes of the Faulknor affair and the ‘Glorious First of June’ were not repeated. The parliamentary vote of thanks to Duncan (which the Whigs, now in their period of secession, did not oppose) was immediately followed by the voting of a monument at St Paul’s for Captain Burgess, the highest-ranking officer killed in the battle.¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰² See for example, Critical Review, 20 (2) (1797), 452. ¹⁰³ Oracle, 18 Oct. 1797. ¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 4 Nov. 1797.

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Attempts to recognize lower-ranking officers of merit did not end there. The crown revived an obscure distinction—the dignity of knight banneret—an uninheritable title granted solely for military service.¹⁰⁵ Captain Henry Trollope (who had led the breaking of the Dutch line) received it in a move calculated to recognize the merit of lesser men while avoiding the pollution of honours. Taken together, these measures represent a significant expansion in the official forms of victory celebration. This expansion, and the concomitant loyalist investment in victory culture, was particularly pronounced in reference to the public image of the commanding admiral, Adam Duncan. To this point in the war, the celebrity image of such figures had been circumscribed and curtailed, with earls Howe and St Vincent simply being positioned as the latest members of the ‘chapter of admirals’—that historic cohort symbolic of naval superiority.¹⁰⁶ In Admiral Duncan’s case, the mutiny’s effect in fracturing the codes of British naval supremacy combined with particularly favourable structural conditions, to facilitate the construction of a cogent celebrity image. More than his predecessors, Duncan’s career and personal character were read for broader ideological purposes. The first effort to invest Duncan’s image with partisan significance came from the opposition corner. The Morning Chronicle presented a biographical sketch that attempted to distance the admiral from the ministry, by investing him with politically independent attributes. Forgoing the usual description of the admiral’s previous career, the paper noted that ‘Admiral Duncan never achieved any very brilliant object before.’ This ‘detracts nothing from his name,’ since it was attributable to his being passed over through the operation of naval interest. ¹⁰⁵ Bath Journal, 20 Nov. 1797; St. James’s Chronicle, 18–21 Nov. 1797. ¹⁰⁶ For Howe, see above, Chapter 1. The failure of a vibrant contemporary heroic affect to develop for the earl of St Vincent after his eponymous victory in February 1797 is worth mentioning. In terms of official and ministerial recognition, St Vincent’s fame was appropriately advertised: an earldom was granted, and a special thanksgiving rite was mandated for use in Sunday services. St Vincent’s Whig-leaning political career may partly explain why loyalist versifiers did not press forward, but the muted nature of the illuminations and other voluntary celebrations suggest that broader cultural dynamics worked to suppress his celebrity. Prime among these was the fact that the battle of St Vincent was of only tangential relevance to the far greater invasion threat that was then preoccupying the nation. Also significant was the fact that the victorious fleet remained at sea, thus precluding a celebrated arrival with captured prizes, and diminishing the scale of information and anecdote that the fleet itself could circulate about the battle.

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‘[N]o adventurer and no quack . . . [Duncan] was never a levee-hunter nor a Parliament man. He was not therefore, put upon exploits calculated either to raise his fame or to fill his purse.’ Rather than play the political game of naval preferment, Duncan had remained aloof. This view positioned Duncan as symbolic of the effect of Pitt’s system on the efficiency of the British state. The Admiralty’s failure to provide Duncan with regular wartime commissions indicated that naval patronage networks excluded the meritorious, while advancing the well connected. Duncan’s eventual appointment, it was implied, occurred only through the combined effect of Dundas’s connection and Pitt’s romantic designs on Duncan’s daughter.¹⁰⁷ Duncan represented the talent and virtue that the Pitt system failed to recognize. He was independent, incorruptible, and (as a result) underused by the administration. Such an effort was consistent with the overall Whig strategy of distancing naval victories from the ministry. On this occasion, however, the argument was made, not just through an appeal to the strategic supremacy of a blue-water strategy, but with an examination of the character of the admiral concerned.¹⁰⁸ Subsequent editions of the paper continued the effort, and Duncan became the subject of a discourse upon merit and reward. It was believed that the Admiralty had been so ignorant of Duncan’s talents that he had only received his deserved admiral’s flag because it was desired to promote the officer named immediately behind him on the post-captain list.¹⁰⁹ Ordinarily sympathetic papers questioned whether a viscountcy was enough, while the Morning Chronicle pointed to the ‘indecency of making Admiral Duncan a Peer in the same manner’ as ‘the herd of Lordlings whom [the Prime Minister] rears every year for the Upper House.’ ‘The person who can command a Borough, or command a fleet, ’tis all one with him.’¹¹⁰ Rivals in the loyalist press identified this posturing as constituting the usual spectacle of ‘Republican Writers . . . affect[ing] to be Patriots,’ and the most offensive elements of the opposition’s case were rebutted.¹¹¹ Although the Morning Chronicle’s biographical sketch of Duncan was widely cribbed and reprinted by other papers, the significant elements ¹⁰⁷ Morning Chronicle, 17 Oct. 1797. ¹⁰⁸ For arguments that Camperdown justified a limited blue-water policy, and ought to lead to negotiations for peace, see Morning Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1797. ¹⁰⁹ Monthly Mirror, 4 (1797), 343. ¹¹⁰ Morning Chronicle, 18 Oct. 1797. ¹¹¹ True Briton, 19 Oct. 1797; Oracle, 17 Oct. 1797 (emphasis in original).

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were edited out.¹¹² As repackaged by loyalism then, Duncan’s image mollified the dislocations of the mutiny rather than underlining the failings of the government. His ‘bravery and management of the Action [off Camperdown], though splendid, [were] the least titles to our praise. The patience and constancy with which he maintained his difficult and painful station . . . and still more, the gallantry with which during the critical period of the Mutiny, he kept his post in the blockade . . . when abandoned by all the rest of his squadron, are proofs of his heroism, zeal, and virtue, which will be long remembered with gratitude by his Country.’¹¹³ Here the focus had shifted from Duncan’s personal incorruptibility to his exemplary loyalty and sense of duty. Loyalist efforts to reconstruct Duncan extended beyond the selective parsing of the Morning Chronicle’s sketch. In the following days the Oracle provided what it called ‘a more correct Sketch of the gallant Admiral, than has as yet appeared in any of the Newspapers’. It provided a context for understanding Duncan’s ability to lead and discipline men—thus keeping the focus on his heroic services during the mutiny. This emphasized his physically imposing presence, and hinted at his abilities to speak the honest language of a seaman. Duncan possessed a ‘countenance . . . agreeable and commanding; he is considerably upwards of six feet high and is remarkably well proportioned. His manners are simple, easy, and obliging, equally free from affectation and roughness—the natural expression of unfeigned goodness of heart.’ A precedent for Duncan’s conduct during the mutiny was presented in the form of an anecdote that recounted his disciplined and generous dispersal of a Portsmouth mob earlier in his career.¹¹⁴ This sketch was printed alongside another biographical item—a purported ‘Speech of Admiral Duncan’ to his crew during the Nore mutiny—which was also widely reprinted in the loyalist press.¹¹⁵ The speech reported the admiral’s emotional appeal to the loyal instincts of his ship’s company, and it came to be celebrated as a canonical text ‘in no ¹¹² Star, 17 Oct. 1797 reprinted a version which retained most of the original passages. More heavily edited versions appeared in the True Briton, 18 Oct. 1797; Bath Journal, 23 Oct. 1797; European Magazine, 34 (1798), 4. ¹¹³ Morning Chronicle, 17 Oct. 1797; Star, 17 Oct. 1797; True Briton, 18 Oct. 1797; Bath Journal, 23 Oct. 1797; European Magazine, 34 (1798), 4. ¹¹⁴ Oracle, 20 Oct. 1797; St. James’s Chronicle, 19–21 Oct. 1797. ¹¹⁵ Oracle, 20 Oct. 1797; True Briton, 20 Oct. 1797; St. James’s Chronicle, 19–21 Oct. 1797; Bath Journal, 23 Oct. 1797.

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small degree conducive to the late most brilliant victory’.¹¹⁶ It continued the development of an affective relationship that saw Duncan’s character imagined as the means by which naval reintegration and social harmony had been achieved. For, from the start, Camperdown was seen to have performed a penitential role. Formerly mutinous seamen had ‘by their zeal, their loyalty, and their bravery, atoned for their crimes’. The battle was rhetorically inscribed as a collectively transformative moment for the masculine identities involved in the war, regardless of their rank or station. ‘COMMANDERS and MINISTERS’, ‘gallant Officers’, and ‘the no less gallant tars who so bravely followed and executed the commands of their leaders’ had all done their part in preserving ‘our INTERNAL TRANQUILLITY’.¹¹⁷ Ebullition for Camperdown was extended to indulge in elite fantasies in which socially threatening divisions of rank completely disappeared in battle, appropriately overridden by the bonds of aggressive manliness. ‘What pleasing reflections’ were raised in British minds when ‘the very men, who but a few months ago were justly branded with the harsh names of mutineers and insurgents,’ once faced with the nation’s real enemy, saw ‘their hearts became united with the hearts of their commanders like the heart of one man, and they flew on their enemies like a lion on his devoted prey!’¹¹⁸ The sense in which it was Duncan himself who came to symbolize this naval reintegration was further underlined in the reports that claimed that the royal pardon for the mutineers still under sentence of death could be attributed to the personal request of Admiral Duncan.¹¹⁹ Thus Duncan was conceived as having harmonized and reinforced the hierarchical relationships within the navy. The manner in which loyalism constructed Admiral Duncan’s celebrity image, facilitated a means by which middling and elite Britons could imagine themselves united with plebeian seamen. Through the leadership of admirals and officers like Duncan, potentially problematic seamen could be universally rewon to Britannia’s cause. Whereas at the Westminster election, Admiral Gardner’s naval character had allowed ¹¹⁶ Bath Journal, 23 Oct. 1797. ¹¹⁷ Oracle, 14 Oct. 1797. ¹¹⁸ Revd Manley Wood, A Sermon preached at St. Bride’s Church, Oct. 30, 1797 by the Rev. Manley Wood, curate of that Parish; for the Purpose of making a collection towards alleviating the Distresses of the Wounded Seamen, and also the Widows and Orphans of those who bravely fell, in the late Action, on the 11th of October, under the command of Admiral Lord Viscount Duncan (London, 1797), 23–4. ¹¹⁹ Oracle, 4 Nov. 1797.

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him to pass as a representative of the people, after Camperdown, Duncan’s allowed him to represent aristocratic leadership to the seamen (and ‘the people’). An important notion developing around the image of such admirals was a liminal status that facilitated patriotic understandings. Duncan—a noble figure at once deserving of aristocratic honour and obeyed within the ‘wooden walls’—was the conduit for this imagining of national solidarity. Duncan’s public character, though, represented but one aspect of loyalism’s effort to reconfigure victory culture and thus arrest the patriotic fissures of the day. While the preferred presentation of Duncan’s image offered the possibility that plebeian identities could be reattached, recourse was made to the novel device of a general naval thanksgiving in hopes that plebeian impulses might be, in future, appropriately contained.

A FORM FOR NAVAL THANKSGIVING Famously derided by the Morning Chronicle as a ‘Frenchified Farce’, the Naval Thanksgiving held on 19 December 1797 has been seen as a tradition invented as a British response to festivals and pageants of the French Revolution.¹²⁰ Its heritage was advertised, and it was widely viewed as ‘a public and national act, [to be] contrasted with the atheistical rage and blasphemies of the French Directory and Councils . . . ’¹²¹ Contemporary interest in the relative antiquity of the event was complemented, though, by an equally prevalent sense that a divine order of national thanksgiving could be brought to bear upon the extant tensions that attended victory celebrations. This pageant was designed not just to capitalize upon the prospects offered ministers and monarchs for ‘collateral popularity’, but equally to address some of the perceived failings of victory culture.¹²² Formal testimonies of national gratitude coexisted with aspects of victory culture that were less comforting. Duncan’s victory saw ‘The ¹²⁰ Morning Chronicle, 9 Dec. 1797; Colley, Britons, 216. ¹²¹ John Newton, Motives to Humiliation and Praise. A sermon, preached in the parish church of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard-Street, on December 19, 1797, the day of general thanksgiving to Almighty God for our late naval victories (London, 1798), 27; Times, 5 Dec. 1797, 6 Dec. 1797, 8 Dec. 1797; Bath Journal, 18 Dec. 1797; The Anti-Jacobin; or Weekly Examiner, 18 Dec. 1797, 158. ¹²² Morning Chronicle, 15 Nov. 1797.

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farce of the Glazier’s Conspiracy . . . revived, with considerable success, at the West End of the town.’¹²³ ‘Elegantly ornamented’ public offices and private houses featuring affecting and morally ‘pleasing’ transparencies, did not compensate for the disruptive illumination activity.¹²⁴ Illuminations marking Camperdown were particularly violent. An organized charivari against Thomas Hardy prompted a pitched battle between loyalists and radicals in Fleet Street.¹²⁵ Such identifiably partisan violence was a rarity. Most conformed to a more familiar pattern of licensed plebeian carnival. A mob that disdained the formal courtesy of giving ‘the usual notice’ broke the windows ‘of most houses in Upper Brook Street, and the streets adjoining’. Lord Rosebery’s home in Park Lane was damaged at the rate of a guinea a window-pane, and various injuries were sustained, ranging from the master-tailor accidentally thrown under a coach and horse at the Admiralty, and the ‘Lady’ struck with a stone while carrying candles to her window, to the distiller’s child burnt to death by unattended candles.¹²⁶ For all these reasons, Camperdown witnessed attempts to suppress illuminations. In one Surrey village the magistrates and constables worked to prevent an illumination.¹²⁷ At Bath the corporation successfully diverted energies away from illumination efforts into donations for the Subscription Fund— ‘the more lasting and respectable Mode of testifying their gratitude’.¹²⁸ This idea, that subscriptions to the funds established to assist the widows and orphans of those wounded and killed was a more appropriate focus for patriotic attention, was frequently promoted by those interested in curtailing untoward festivity.¹²⁹ Illumination revelry targeted middle- and upper-class homes; as such, it was an assault on domesticity. Diversion of this energy into subscription funds, then, represented a defence of domesticity and traditional gender relations in the face of disorder and anarchy, both domestic and foreign.¹³⁰ The notion was similarly expressed in one of the Camperdown theatricals, ¹²³ Morning Herald, 19 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁴ Star, 17 Oct. 1797;True Briton, 19 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁵ Oracle, 17 Oct. 1797; Morning Chronicle, 18 Oct. 1797; True Briton, 18 Oct. 1797; Oracle, 19 Oct. 1797; True Briton, 26 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁶ Morning Herald, 19 Oct. 1797;Oracle, 20 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁷ True Briton, 18 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁸ Bath Journal, 23 Oct. 1797. ¹²⁹ Morning Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1798. ¹³⁰ On war, revolution, and the public sphere see Favret, ‘The public spaces of romantic war’.

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Andrew Franklin’s A Trip to the Nore. This after-piece, which took as its subject the king’s visit with the fleet and promised ‘an Exact Representation of THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROYAL YACHT’, with a ‘View of the British Fleet, and the Dutch Prizes’, was first performed on 9 November 1797 at Drury Lane.¹³¹ Franklin’s play has been read as a text in which patriotic values unite a heterogeneous and disparate group of Britons.¹³² Without taking anything away from this view, it is necessary to note the commentary Franklin offered concerning victory celebrations. For A Trip to the Nore has as much to say about appropriate manifestations of patriotism, as it does about the potentially harmonizing effect of patriotism itself. The play presents several forms of celebration as tending more to divide and distance the various ranks of Britons. While the notion that all these modes need to be tolerated is suggested throughout the play, it is only though the ameliorative device of philanthropic charity—subscriptions to the Patriotic Fund—that harmony between the characters is finally achieved. The characters of Mr and Mrs Cockney are social parvenus, representatives of the worst features of bourgeois patriotism. He is a common councillor of London, and thus a member of the City body that played a leading role in the elite fêtes for victorious admirals. They are more interested in the opportunities for mixing with aristocrats at Greenwich than in honouring the victorious tars. Their friend Mr Putty, a glazier, remains in the city in order to profit from the illumination. The play’s three leading male characters—O’Thunder, Boatswain, and Donald—distance themselves from the ribald ebullition of the ‘Mob’. Donald, a Scottish seaman, addresses the ‘Mob of People’ asking ‘wull you by noise and riot sully the honour of the day?’ His companion, the Boatswain, agrees, observing, ‘this is not a day for disorder’. Although these men are mariners, their manner of address and language make it clear they are warrant officers, not ordinary seamen. Through them Franklin brings the navy’s patriotic authority to bear upon the propriety of the crowd’s ebullition. Mr Buckram, a tailor, is initially accused by a drunken Greenwich pensioner of being a warprofiteer—but when he makes it clear that he is ‘among the worthy Subscribers at Lloyd’s’ a rapprochement is effected, and soon after, the ¹³¹ Theatre Museum, Playbill Collection; Oracle, 9 Nov. 1797. ¹³² Russell, Theatres of War, 65–6; Glen, ‘ “Nautical docudrama” in the age of the Kembles’, 141–4.

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play concludes.¹³³ Buckram’s trade was a direct reference to the illumination violence. One particularly notorious attack had concerned a master tailor in Prince’s Street, Westminster, who was flung under a coach, ‘the horses of which were frightened by the inhuman rabble nearly opposite the Admiralty’.¹³⁴ Franklin was not alone in his explicit and honest identification of the tensions inherent in the festivity of the patriotic crowd. Concerns about the licentiousness of popular ebullition, as well as resistance to the trend towards celebrity, circulated within the loyalist camp, and fostered support for a more edifying approach to communal observances. Calls for national services of thanksgiving had been heard as early as 1794, when some regretted their absence on the occasion of the ‘Glorious First of June’.¹³⁵ The anonymous author of Camperdown: Eulogy on the Illustrious Admiral also viewed subscription as ‘that happier mode | Of Praise . . . Grateful, humane, and liberal’.¹³⁶ These comments were made in the context of a poem that was, in fact, a critique on the current mode of victory celebrations. The author of Camperdown did not come to praise Admiral Duncan. His stated purpose was, rather, ‘to repress selfconfidence, which too often manifests itself in verses, and songs, and eulogiums on such occasions; and to impress his readers with a sense of the Providence of God, in our deliverances and victories . . . ’¹³⁷ At the present, victory celebrations were not particularly edifying. At worst they articulated the human vanities of celebrity worship and misguided flattery. ‘[C]oarse Print[s]’ and ‘forecastle song’ that advertised admirals’ ‘glory above all others’ were empty amusements. ‘[L]et us not satisfy ourselves with recording or comparing naval skill, naval intrepidity, naval success. Detracting not the very least from our Admirals and Seamen, . . . let us ever remember that all is of GOD.’¹³⁸ In the case of the common British seamen, this ill-advised flattery had led to disaffection; the recent mutinies could be blamed on sailors being ‘rais’d perhaps too high, | intoxicated with celebrity’.¹³⁹ Significantly, then, in Camperdown ¹³³ Andrew Franklin, A Trip to the Nore, a musical entertainment, in One Act, as performed by their Majesties Servants at the Theatre-Royal Drury-Lane (London, 1797), 5–6, 7, 19–20. ¹³⁴ Oracle, 20 Oct. 1797. ¹³⁵ St. James’s Chronicle, 17–19 June 1794. ¹³⁶ Anonymous, Camperdown: Eulogy on the Illustrious Admiral (Edinburgh, 1798), ll. 52–3. ¹³⁷ Ibid., vi–vii. ¹³⁸ Ibid., xxvii–xxviii. ¹³⁹ Ibid., ll. 143–4.

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Admiral Duncan’s heroism manifests itself, not in battle, but in his resolution of the mutiny and in his awareness of the need to give proper thanks for the victory. The author of Camperdown was not an isolated crank, but represented a section of opinion sensitive to what was seen as a misplaced focus on individual agency and national success. The investment that public opinion made in battle outcomes was identified as a source of potential instability. As Lord Howe’s victory had shown, ‘all depression or all exultation, and a quick transition from the one extreme to the other, unhappily too much distinguishes our national character’.¹⁴⁰ Part of what was being reacted to here, was the expansion of the ‘field of Mars’. Patriotic revelry revealed that important national issues, which had been previously restricted to the relatively small world of the literary public sphere, were making their way into the broader public realm. But since the ‘mob’ was considered incapable of reasonably contextualizing gazetted news (especially when it was bad), this development was a source of potential unrest—an unrest loyalists felt opposition papers and Jacobin pamphleteers did their best to stir up. Here arose the value of Providence in loyalist discourse. Reminders of the superior role of Providence in directing human affairs served to mitigate the transient moments of victory/defeat and to postpone their larger significance into a long-term context. Significantly, encouraging faith in a divinely ordered Providence rather than faith in the British navy, was a theme in the sermons delivered on the thanksgiving day itself. These elaborations on the nature of Providence can be seen as frameworks that countered the narratives that constructed British naval supremacy.¹⁴¹ Parishioners attending the thanksgiving service at the church of St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, London, heard the preacher identify the attitudes concomitant with victory culture as ‘national sins’: A proud boasting spirit, and a vain confidence in our strength and our resources, is a prominent part of our national character . . . we still boast in our fleets and our armies. Especially the wooden walls of old England are spoken of as impregnable, and we still suppose ourselves to be sovereign lords of the sea. . . . Some late providential dispensations were well suited to shew us, not only the sin, but ¹⁴⁰ Anonymous, Camperdown: Eulogy on the Illustrious Admiral (Edinburgh, 1798), (xxv). ¹⁴¹ For the general importance of protestantism in fostering a sense of Britain as a specially favoured ‘elect’ nation, see Colley, Britons, 11–54.

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the folly of this spirit; but the impression, if any, was transient, it soon wore off . . . And still we boast. This arrogant spirit . . . is no small aggravation of all our other sins.¹⁴²

Interpretations that view the Naval Thanksgiving of 1797 primarily as a national celebration of restored naval superiority obscure the sense in which significant currents of loyalism desired it most.¹⁴³ The thanksgiving was not just a national fête—the charge that it was, the Morning Chronicle observed, ‘irritated [the courtly writers] to madness’.¹⁴⁴ It was intended as something of a new beginning for victory culture. This distinction (with which even contemporaries had difficulty) can be better appreciated by considering an arrangement made for the procession to St Paul’s, one that has been taken to encapsulate the preferred message of the day. The king’s idea that a delegation of seamen march with the procession to St Paul’s is usually seen as a popular gesture, intended to indicate that the tars had been restored to the bosom of the nation and that no grudges were held. On closer inspection, the characterization of this delegation as a patronizing plebeian sign seems less clear-cut. This was not an exclusive complement of common seamen, but rather, a hierarchically graduated representation of all naval ranks. Each ship’s delegation was composed of five ordinary seamen accompanied by a naval lieutenant, a master’s mate, two midshipmen, and three marines.¹⁴⁵ The intention appears to have been not so much to temporarily elevate and honour one group, but to present the nation with a comforting vision of naval society restored to discipline and united in divine thanksgiving. For its supporters, the thanksgiving day was a rite of reconciliation, something the general tone of the thanksgiving sermons makes clear. And in a certain sense, the thanksgiving approached status as a purgative rite: it was imagined that national religion offered the viable antidote to sedition and anarchy, ‘nautic’ or otherwise.¹⁴⁶ The degree to which the Naval Thanksgiving was seen as a unique and sacred form of national commemoration, to be considered a better ¹⁴² Newton, Motives to Humiliation and Praise, 24–5. Similar sentiments also expressed in Abraham Jobson, The Divine Government considered as the Hope of Britons, in a thanksgiving sermon preached on Tuesday, December 19, 1797, at March in the Isle of Ely, and published at the request of the congregation (Cambridge, 1797). ¹⁴³ Colley, Britons, 216; ‘Apotheosis’, passim; Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 215. ¹⁴⁴ Morning Chronicle, 12 Dec. 1797. ¹⁴⁵ The Times, 18 Dec. 1797. ¹⁴⁶ See for instance, the defence of the Thanksgiving in The Times, 19 Dec. 1797.

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(rather than simply an adjunct) form of victory celebration, can be best glimpsed in the response generated by an attempt to mark the event in naval docudrama. On 8 December, John O’Keefe gave the Covent Garden company a private reading of an interlude that was to become Britain’s Brave Tars; or, All for St. Paul’s.¹⁴⁷ Given the past successes that had attended theatrical efforts in the patriotic arena, O’Keefe’s play was the natural managerial response to the Naval Thanksgiving. Britain’s Brave Tars, however, was not well received—even for a naval docudrama. Alternately denounced as ‘broad nonsense’¹⁴⁸ and ‘despicable farce’,¹⁴⁹ its failure primarily resulted from the sense in which it jostled uncomfortably with the sacred style of patriotism the thanksgiving was designed to privilege. ‘[I]t was never intended’ wrote one of the play’s fiercest critics, ‘that we should testify our gratitude for divine favours by farcical merriment, or by wild and tumultuous expressions of extravagant pleasure’. O’Keefe had represented the thanksgiving ‘as if the people had been running hurry skurry to a horse-race, or a bear-garden . . . ’¹⁵⁰ In contemporary eyes, the mixture of popular festivity, bourgeois attention, and royal presence that accompanied the visit to the Nore meant that its representation on the stage could be seen to ‘afford much room for a diversity and whimsicality of character’.¹⁵¹ The same could not be said for the thanksgiving at St Paul’s. O’Keefe experienced difficulty in navigating his way between naval docudrama’s inclination to recognize ribald festivity, and the loyalist sense that the Naval Thanksgiving be distanced from it. Britain’s Brave Tars employed the stock characters and conventions of naval docudrama, but in so doing it articulated tensions and features that (however customarily acceptable in the theatre) were a current focus of restraint. The play was ‘a sort of effort to harmonize the Theatre with the Church, by making the Entertainment of the evening accord with the spirit of the day of Thanksgiving for our Naval Victories’.¹⁵² This effort failed largely because ‘The plot of this Piece turned upon the prudence of the Citizens, whose mansions were favourable for a sight of the Royal Procession to St. Paul’s, in letting out their apartments.’¹⁵³ ¹⁴⁷ Oracle, 11 Dec. 1797. The play was originally titled Our Wooden Walls, under which a copy can be found in the Larpent Collection. ¹⁴⁸ Oracle, 21 Dec. 1797. ¹⁴⁹ Monthly Mirror, 15 (1798), 47. ¹⁵⁰ Ibid. 15 (1798), 39–40. ¹⁵¹ Oracle, 9 Nov. 1797. ¹⁵² St. James’s Chronicle, 19–21 Dec. 1797; Oracle, 23 Dec. 1797. ¹⁵³ True Briton, 20 Dec. 1797.

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The play followed the travails of the Fleet Street merchant Nutmeg, who sells so many places and tickets for the forthcoming procession that his ‘dwelling house’ is virtually ‘turned into a Sadler’s Wells’.¹⁵⁴ O’Keefe’s attempt to represent such activity was risky, considering the degree to which loyalist opinion was already sensitive to the insinuation that the procession and ceremony were mere spectacles. The Morning Chronicle’s criticisms of the thanksgiving had focused on the problem of rendering a sacred procession. A ‘true object for ridicule’ they observed, ‘would be a man surveying the procession, from a window, and calling it an act of piety’. Their satirical ‘Loyal Song, intended for the Procession to St. Paul’s, on Tuesday, December 19,’ mocked the indecorous nature of the celebration (‘St. Giles’s Nobility all in the Street | With Pickpockets singing, We’ve beat the Dutch Fleet’).¹⁵⁵ O’Keefe’s light-hearted presentation of a convivial festivity that critics were arguing detracted from the utility and validity of the event, led to his play being resented for ‘proclaiming to the world, that the [thanksgiving] was a mockery and a delusion, a political sketch, a piece of superstitious mummery, a sight, a spectacle, a pantomime’ (not to mention a ‘libel on Christianity, and an insult to the Almighty’).¹⁵⁶ Any loyalist hope that the procession to St Paul’s would be the edifying display that pietistic sentiment demanded, was, in the event, dashed by the impossibility of removing it from the customs and conventions of the Georgian street. Precedents here had already been set by the treatment Pitt and Dundas had received a month earlier on the Lord Mayor’s Day. On that occasion the crowd had indicated the higher esteem in which it held Admirals Duncan and Onslow, by taking the horses out and drawing their carriage to the Guildhall themselves, while they stoned that containing the prime minister and his principal secretary of state.¹⁵⁷ Incidents like this, along with the more general political instabilities of the year, ensured that the Naval Thanksgiving would take place in an atmosphere of intense paranoia. There was a real concern that radicals and the extra-parliamentary opposition would conspire to disrupt the event.¹⁵⁸ ¹⁵⁴ John O’Keefe, Our Wooden Walls; or, All for St. Paul’s (1797), Larpent Collection, Scene III. ¹⁵⁵ Morning Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1797. See also, Morning Chronicle, 12 Dec. 1797. ¹⁵⁶ Monthly Mirror, 15 (1798), 39–40. ¹⁵⁷ Morning Chronicle, 10 Nov. 1797. Bath Journal, 13 Nov. 1797. ¹⁵⁸ The Anti-Jacobin; or Weekly Examiner, 18 Dec. 1797, 181.

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Newspaper accounts reveal that the thanksgiving itself probably did little to bolster loyalist spirits.¹⁵⁹ Although ministerial papers made a concerted effort to explain away disruptions as the work of ‘villains’ and ‘hired ruffians’, the vitriolic attention lavished on these incidents indicates the degree to which the entire event was viewed as tentative and suspect.¹⁶⁰ On the eve of the thanksgiving, an effigy of Pitt was discovered hanging in Long Acre; the next day his coach was repeatedly attacked while he was in the cathedral, and the prime minister was obliged to return in the carriage of an acquaintance.¹⁶¹ There were a handful of attempts to disrupt the event that ministerial papers reported in an effort to embarrass and marginalize anti-war opinion.¹⁶² The critics of loyalism appeared to have had the last laugh, however. One of the more heated episodes of the thanksgiving day concerned the appearance of a red flag from a house in Ludgate Hill that over-eager militia and volunteer officers believed to be the red flag of mutiny—‘a sign of disaffection’. Officers of the Tower Hamlets Militia forced entry to the house, but after a dramatic rooftop chase, the occupants escaped. Presumably there was more than enough embarrassment to go around, when it was revealed ‘that the terrible red and white flag, which gave so great an alarm’ was, in fact, one of the red plaid favours being widely sold as a particular compliment to Lord Duncan’s Scottish ancestry.¹⁶³ That an event intended by its advocates to assert the primacy of the sacred within patriotic discourse ended up being practically overrun by elements of the street carnival, is a powerful commentary on the tensions circulating and colliding in the Georgian public sphere. By the end of 1797, victory culture had been revealed to all, as an uncontrollable amalgam of carnival and spectacle, rhetoric and propaganda, sensibility and bombast. The partisan tensions occupying it were higher than ever, while its value was questioned by the war’s opponents and supporters alike. The sermon delivered inside St Paul’s Cathedral on the day of thanksgiving was no confident assertion of loyalist dominance. In fact, the Bishop of London’s sermon contained a blunt acknowledgement of ¹⁵⁹ Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 213. ¹⁶⁰ The Times, 20 Dec. 1797. ¹⁶¹ Ibid., 19 Dec. 1797; St. James’s Chronicle, 19–21 Dec. 1797. ¹⁶² Oracle, 20 Dec. 1797; Times, 20 Dec. 1797; Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 24 Dec. 1797. ¹⁶³ Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 24 Dec. 1797; Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 31 Dec. 1797. Compare to Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 213.

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the public’s divided opinion on the war.¹⁶⁴ The thanksgiving day sermon that William Mavor published contained an extended footnote bemoaning the inherently divisive and confrontational tenor of loyalist discourse.¹⁶⁵ Opposition suspicion at the intemperate and overbearing weight of loyalist victory rhetoric (which had been present since the beginning of the war) was now visible at the same time as aesthetic and moral tensions strained efforts from the loyalist camp. ¹⁶⁴ George A. Pretyman, A Sermon . . . preached . . . Dec. 19, 1797, being the Day appointed for a General Thanksgiving, (London, 1798). ¹⁶⁵ William Mavor, The Duty of thanksgiving; a sermon, preached at the Foundlinghospital, December 19, 1797, being the day appointed for general thanksgiving (London, 1798), 21 n.

3 Naval Triumph and the Public Sphere On Tuesday, 2 October 1798, a crowd assembled at Tower Wharf to witness a salute in honour of Nelson’s just announced victory at the Battle of the Nile. Since military protocols dictated that the guns could not be fired until the royal standard had been raised, considerable delay was experienced as the stiff cloth of a ‘splendid new’ standard initially proved too difficult to hoist. The crowd became ‘very impatient’ until two men pressed forward and ‘inspired with joy at the news, eagerly ran up to the White Tower, and hoisted the flag themselves, giving three cheers, in which they were heartily joined by the populace, and then the cannon thundered forth!’¹ One of this pair was Samuel Dixon, a Common Councillor, and no stranger to the theatre of patriotism. In 1796, Dixon led off for the supporters of Pitt in the City debates over the Loyalty Loan; at the Naval Thanksgiving in 1797 his brother, James Dixon, had been one of the Common Councilmen chosen to escort the king in the procession; in 1805 he assumed the honour of moving the Common Council’s address of thanks for the battle of Trafalgar.² A vigilant promoter of the loyalist cause in the Guildhall, ‘Spectacle’ Dixon (as he came to be called) is worth noting, exemplifying as he does this chapter’s themes.³ As a loyalist, City politician, and member of the capital’s merchant elite, Dixon stood at an intersection of interest and power. Who controlled victory celebrations? Who was entitled to contest and define patriotism? When was the crowd to be flattered (as in his impetuous action at the Tower)? What was healthy spectacle? Did it ¹ Morning Post, 3 Oct. 1798. ² The Times, 6 Dec. 1796; 20 Dec. 1797; 14 Nov. 1805. ³ Morning Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1808.

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involve conformity to officially consecrated protocols or the temporary licensing of collective symbolic actions and popular impulses? And who gained from public displays of patriotism: Dixon as an individual and aspiring politician, the local community, or the nation? For historians of the late Georgian period, these are important questions. They need to be considered because of their significance for assessments of patriotism’s political valence, in particular, their implications for the qualitative interpretation of patriotic evidence. They require treatment at this point, for two reasons: first, because the period after the battle of the Nile has been seen as crucial for the reconfiguration of British wartime patriotism; and second, because for many contemporaries the answers to these questions were held to be disturbingly open. They became particularly pressing in the years immediately after 1798, due to the expansion that was experienced in terms of victory culture. Most historians have been impressed by the rising festivity within victory culture, arguing that it succeeded in transcending partisan divisions, or that it at least redounded to the benefit of loyalism and the status quo.⁴ But the temptation to interpret the period after the Nile as one in which a broadly non-partisan sense of patriotism achieved ascendancy needs to be assessed carefully. When close attention is paid to the symbolic content of victory culture, it becomes clear that there was no diminution in the struggles of the early 1790s. Rather, a shared iconography permitted appropriation and redefinition. As the examination of patriotic display in this chapter’s first section reveals, many of the events and efforts that have been read as celebrations of the nation in the locality turn out to have been less than benign, a finding which casts doubt on assumptions of their generalized patriotic resolution. Social harmony and political agreement did not necessarily reign in these efforts. The chapter’s second section explores the social boundaries that contemporaries established for the patriotic public sphere, boundaries that are further examined in a look at the struggle over the meaning of the battle of the Nile. It reveals that distinct partisan investments were maintained after the Nile, governing even the manner in which poetic representations of the battle were received. The remainder of the chapter ⁴ Colley, Britons, 204–28; Morris, The British Monarchy and the French Revolution, 134–59; Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 209–45; Jordan and Rogers ‘Admirals as heroes’, 213–16.

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is dedicated to two case studies in naval symbolism. The first investigates a periodical, the Naval Chronicle, and its efforts to bind the navy more firmly to the national elite. The second looks at the Naval Pillar project of 1799–1801. Both continue to explore the participatory tensions inherent to the patriotic public sphere and the privileged place accorded literary consumers of the ‘field of Mars’. Taken together, they reveal two important attitudes concerning the patriotic public sphere—one that sought its carefully managed and deliberate extension, and another that sought to preserve the nature of its elite circumscription.

PATRIOTISM AND PUBLIC DISPL AY Patriotic celebration did not enable social or political consensus. On the contrary, the clash of interests, impulses, and motivations was considerable. Social cohesion was compromised, not just because plebeian, middling, and elite actors came into conflict, but also because it was not necessarily the goal of all patriotic activity. The determined exclusivity of patriotic celebration needs to be acknowledged—nowhere more than in the celebratory avalanche of the post-Nile period. As the above-mentioned incident at the Tower reveals, the convention that the royal guns served to ‘announce’ victories was a fiction. A large crowd and an informal delegation of City luminaries had already gathered to witness what was the first in a series of carefully orchestrated public rituals. The firing of the Park and Tower guns only announced the formal commencement of victory festivities; it permitted the public to partake of ‘official’ news that had already been circulated in the corridors of power. The government was, in fact, exceptionally proprietary of these announcements. Partly this was due to its concern for the effect on financial markets, but it also betrayed the interest it took in directing victory celebrations. Although the official announcement of the victory at the Nile (fought 1 August 1798) was not made until 2 October 1798, unofficial reports and rumours had been circulating in London for almost two months. The lengthy delay in the arrival of the official dispatches (occasioned by the capture of the Leander) fostered intense public speculation. On 1 October—the day before Captain Capel arrived at the Admiralty with the duplicate copy of Nelson’s victory dispatch—official confirmation of the Nile had come from another

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source. The secretary of state received a letter confirming extant rumours from Sir Morton Eden, which was ‘transmitted . . . with commendable diligence to the frequenters of Lloyd’s Coffee-House, who of all descriptions of men in the City are most interested in Naval Intelligence’.⁵ Significant credit was attached to the report, coming as it did through ministerial corridors, and some papers went with the story. However, when the news began to spread, the government actively suppressed efforts to launch a victory celebration. A royal standard raised on St Martin’s Church was ordered to be taken down, and a crowd assembling in St James’s Park to witness the firing of the guns was dismissed.⁶ The Gazette Extraordinary was released after Capel had arrived the next day. Then the Admiralty ‘gave the example’ and launched the first night of illumination.⁷ At the same time that the government remained committed to controlling these observances, efforts were being made to expand the opportunities for victory celebrations. Samuel Dixon did not know it at the time, but his emergence at the head of a party of loyalists interested in generating political and symbolic capital out of wartime victories coincided with a significant expansion in both the frequency and the scope of victory celebrations. The Nile marked the second time in as many Octobers that Britons took to the streets on the occasion of naval success. And the Nile celebrations were only the first of four significant illuminations that took place the following year. News of the Nile in October was followed in weeks by news of Admiral Warren’s Victory off Ireland; successive nights of illumination were observed for the initial success of the ultimately ill-fated Helder expedition in September 1799; those were followed in a matter of days by celebrations for the British victory over Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam. Part of the increase in the frequency of victory celebrations was due simply to the upturn in British military fortunes. Victory celebrations, it need hardly be said, depend upon the vagaries of conflict. But at the same time that British victories became more frequent, an effort was made to reduce the threshold for launching victory celebrations (and to place the army more firmly in patriotic culture). As has been noted, the illuminations for the battle of ⁵ Oracle, 2 Oct. 1798. ⁶ Morning Post, 2 Oct. 1798; Morning Chronicle, 2 Oct. 1798. ⁷ Oracle, 3 Oct. 1798; Morning Chronicle, 3 Oct. 1798; Lloyd’s Evening Post, 1–3 Oct. 1798.

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St Vincent were decidedly restrained, and other earlier (but still significant) victories had suffered similar fates. There were no illuminations for Bridport’s victory (in which he took three French ships of the line) in June 1795.⁸ Hotham’s victory was only acknowledged because it coincided with the illuminations already being observed for the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales.⁹ After the Nile—in an effort to foster military enthusiasm for the rising Second Coalition—the government deliberately lowered the bar for its indulgence of patriotic appetites. Twice in 1799 the Park and Tower guns were fired on occasions for which they had almost never been fired before: the victories of allied forces.¹⁰ The illumination for the landing of the Helder expedition and the surrender of the Dutch fleet was almost unprecedented, and later the impropriety of celebrating victory for a campaign that had yet to be concluded came back to haunt the government. When it did, Samuel Dixon was to be found in his role as leader of the City ministerialists, opposing liberal-radical demands for an official inquiry into the expedition’s failure.¹¹ The intensification of victory culture in this period was not solely the result of ministerial design. Private interests also played a role. Consequently the expansion went beyond the forms of public demonstration (salutes, illuminations, thanksgiving, and fast days) over which the government had control. The expansion was commercially observable too. The existence of a large market for these patriotic products was generally recognized, but at the same time there was a rising sense of overdose. The younger Dibdin’s Covent Garden production The Mouth of the Nile appeared in the fall of 1798.¹² A year later he continued his exploration of victory culture in The Naval Pillar; or Britannia Triumphant.¹³ Andrew Franklin’s second effort in this area, The Embarkation, a naval docudrama of the Helder expedition, was greeted by critics with ⁸ I found no references in the Oracle or True Briton, two loyalist papers especially attentive to illuminations. ⁹ In the general illuminations for this wedding, some displays were reported to have attached anchors as a last-minute compliment to Hotham’s naval action. See St. James’s Chronicle, 7–9 Apr. 1795. ¹⁰ Oracle, 12 July 1799; 10 Sept. 1799. ¹¹ St. James’s Chronicle, 28–30 Nov. 1799. ¹² Thomas John Dibdin, The Mouth of the Nile; or, the Glorious First of August. By T. Dibdin. As performed at the Theatre Royal Convent Garden, 2nd edn. (London, 1798). ¹³ Thomas John Dibdin, The Naval Pillar: A Musical Entertainment. As performed at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden (London, 1799).

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the sense that they were becoming overwhelmed with such efforts.¹⁴ Print-sellers were as assiduous as their theatrical peers. As early as January 1798 they were mocked as ‘among the most considerable contributors to that British bulwark, the navy.—They have fitted out all their old Hawkes and Rodneys, as Howes and Duncans, and have turned all their marine still-lifes into the most tremendous engagements. There are no bounds to human industry.’¹⁵ As soon as news of the Nile reached Birmingham, its japanners set about producing commemorative tea trays, cream jugs, beer-cans, tobacco, and snuffboxes.¹⁶ The frequency of victories clearly increased opportunities for the various material products that commemorated heroes and victories, but the point is contemporaries still sensed a significant augmentation. The fact that victory celebrations were becoming more frequent simply bred an increasing familiarity with the opportunities such events offered. For this reason the period can also be seen to have experienced, not just the proliferation of victory culture, but an equally noteworthy series of developments in the social structures of patriotic display. Some of these developments were related to the arrival of the volunteers, a group whose development in the 1790s significantly altered patriotic culture. In the first half of 1798, the size of Britain’s volunteer force was doubled and the mass expansion of volunteer forces that was to reach its climax in 1801, when volunteers accounted for roughly half of Britain’s military manpower, began in earnest.¹⁷ This mobilization had a great impact on victory celebrations. In the street revelry for the Nile, uniformed volunteers played a major role and were particularly active in musket firing.¹⁸ Volunteer corps throughout Britain organized feux-de-joie similar to that of the Loyal Hampstead Volunteers, whose feu-de-joie on Hampstead Heath was followed by a dinner hosted by the patriotic print-seller, Alderman Boydell.¹⁹ The arrival of the volunteers greatly increased the opportunities for patriotic display, but, as we shall see, it also increased opportunities for conflict. This is one reason why the increase in patriotic activity cannot be said to have unified the British polity. But for the moment it is necessary to explore the range of ¹⁴ Monthly Mirror, 18 (1799), 237. ¹⁵ Morning Chronicle, 16 Jan. 1798. ¹⁶ Oracle, 15 Oct. 1798. ¹⁷ Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 68. ¹⁸ Morning Post, 3 Oct. 1798. For other examples, see Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 171–9. ¹⁹ Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 215; Oracle, 6 Oct. 1798.

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motivations that attended patriotic activity. These turn out to be equally significant factors mitigating the loyalist interpretation of patriotic evidence. For volunteers were not the only group who pressed forward at this time. Nor was this the first occasion during the war in which private and corporate groups seized the opportunity for public patriotic display. The range of these events was impressive, stretching from closed corporate dinners to large local fêtes. Each had its own particular symbolism, a symbolism closely linked to the forces that motivated participants. At one extreme were the dinners of the City livery companies and notable guilds, where participants in the battles and actions could frequently be found. The Bakers’ Company gave a feast in honour of the victories of Nelson and Warren, but the guests they assembled may not have compared to the Trinity Company’s entertainment in which Lords Spencer, Hood, and Clare joined Captain Capel at the London Tavern.²⁰ Beyond these opportunities for celebrity association, patriotic display also offered broader opportunities for approximating the martial identity that was at the heart of national identity in the period. When volunteer companies held celebration dinners, they were assuming a social form that was the established purview of military men. The Nile dinner that Sir Vere Hunt presided over at Worcester’s Crown Inn was overwhelmingly attended by ‘Military Gentlemen’; similarly the celebrations in Londonderry consisted of a dinner given by the mayor and corporation to the officers of the local garrison.²¹ Thus, when the officers, privates, and ‘honorary members’ (a designation which is itself indicative) of the Portman-Square Company of the St Mary-le-bone Military Association dined for the benefit of the Subscription Fund for the Widows and Orphans of the Nile, they were assuming a military privilege.²² Battle anniversaries were most commonly celebrated by the regiments or fleets involved.²³ History does not record what connection, if any, was held by the ‘Gentlemen’ who formed themselves as ‘the Knights of the Nile’ and celebrated its anniversary at the King’s Arms, St James’s Street.²⁴ At Hereford a ‘most numerous and respectable Company’ comprising ‘all ²⁰ Oracle, 19 Nov. 1798; 19 Oct. 1798. The Trinity Company, a familiar reference to Trinity House, the guild responsible for the regulation of shipping. ²¹ True Briton, 20 Oct. 1798; Oracle, 19 Oct. 1798. ²² Oracle, 24 Oct. 1798. ²³ For instance; the dinner held for the ‘Glorious First of June’ at Plymouth, reported in Oracle, 10 June 1800. ²⁴ Morning Chronicle, 2 Aug. 1799.

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the Nobility and Persons of Distinction in these parts’ attended a Nile celebration dinner.²⁵ If some of these events can be classified as tentative incursions into the martial sphere, at the other end of the spectrum were the celebration fêtes that accorded with traditions of patrician hospitality. The entertainment hosted by Sir William Langham on his Northamptonshire estates for ‘his numerous tenantry’—at which bread and beer were provided for 700—is an example of a well-attended community celebration for the Nile. In this respect it was possibly singular, but it also worth noting equally for the fact that the reportage emphasized its conformity to the widely practised ‘true Old English style’.²⁶ The ‘true Old English style’ denominated a particular ideal of gastronomic largesse and group participation.²⁷ For the most part, the social breadth of this participation was significantly circumscribed, as elite and cosmopolitan affairs appear to have been more common than gentrysponsored fêtes. Both, though, shared the symbolic language of feasting—a contemporary argot with considerable political significance. When one of the members of the Brentford Armed Association heard the rumoured news of the Nile, he promised to ‘treat his friends with a haunch of venison for every Ship of the Line that was taken, and Six if Buonaparte himself was captured. . . . He accordingly gave eleven haunches . . . nine of which were brought to the table, each decorated with the French Flag and the name of the ship, with the English colours on a flag staff flying it. The two haunches which represented the two ships sunk, had only French Colours, and the name of the ship on a broken Flag staff.’ The newspaper that reported this story noted, ‘Such patriotism and generosity ought not to pass unnoticed.’²⁸ As the munificence of this volunteer reveals, patriotic feasting equated military victory with culinary indulgence. Not all of these dinners were narrow events like the grand entertainment given by the lord chancellor to thirty-one guests at the Assembly Rooms in Hampstead.²⁹ In August 1799, Lord Romney hosted a royal review of the volunteer companies of Kent in an event intended to commemorate both the anniversary of the Nile and of ²⁵ True Briton, 20 Oct. 1798. ²⁶ Morning Post, 24 Oct. 1798; Oracle, 3 Nov. 1798. ²⁷ Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 242; see also Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 175, for further examples. ²⁸ Oracle, 27 Oct. 1798. ²⁹ Ibid., 30 Oct. 1798.

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the Hanoverian succession.³⁰ Over 6,000 volunteers dined in the presence of the king, royal family, Pitt, and members of the cabinet. As the presence of the prime minister reveals, the event was an exercise in partisan politics, and the iconography of the grand triumphal arch under which the royal party passed expressed the ministers’ particular construction of the meaning of the Nile.³¹ Contemporaries were impressed by the lavish bounty on display and newspapers printed detailed lists of the amount of food his lordship had purveyed. Romney spent £15,000 on the event, which was expected to earn him an earldom.³² His munificence was rivalled the next summer at Hatfield, when the Marquis of Salisbury hosted a similar review for yeomanry, volunteers, and militia of the county of Hertford, reportedly attended by 50,000.³³ The degree to which this equation of victory and feasting was a recognized cultural code is underlined in the number of satirical prints of this period that exploit gastronomic framings. By the late 1790s, these displays occurred in the context of a particular discourse concerning famine and war that saw them refracted through a partisan prism. The poor harvest and food shortage of 1797 led some to be cautious about elite displays of gastronomic wealth, and efforts were made to curb the perception of ostentatious excess. In Yorkshire, a corporation passed a resolution suspending feasts for the duration of the war; the example was followed by Gloucester shortly after the Foxite Duke of Norfolk was sworn in as mayor.³⁴ Even the London Guildhall moved towards retrenchment and modesty in civic pageantry. In the summer of 1798, the City committee on the Lord Mayor’s Day Entertainment recommended measures designed to reduce its expense.³⁵ Lord Mayor’s Day 1798 was a comparatively restrained entertainment. Even though it was the occasion of the first formal display of the captured French admiral’s sword given to the City by Nelson, and while explicit linkage of the ministry to the celebration of the naval victories was made (Pitt and Spencer’s carriages were drawn by the crowds), and although it further ³⁰ True Briton, 6 Aug. 1799. ³¹ Pace Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 219; True Briton, 7 Aug. 1799. The arch linked the Nile to General Suwarrow and Archduke Charles, the allied partners who were claimed as fruits of Nelson’s victory. ³² Oracle, 6 Aug. 1799. ³³ Ibid., 14 June 1800. ³⁴ Morning Chronicle, 20 Jan. 1798; Oracle, 12 Oct. 1798. ³⁵ Lloyd’s Evening Post, 10–13 Aug. 1798.

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marked the successful retention of the mayoralty by the pro-war party in the Common Council, ‘the splendid pageantry usual on this occasion was in great measure laid aside’.³⁶ While some attempted to insulate loyalism from the charge that such displays of largesse were inappropriate, others felt that they imparted a necessary political message. One of the published thanksgiving sermons for the Nile (while not mentioning feasting in particular) emphasized the value of displaying Britain’s wealth to the world. Commenting on the individual resources directed towards the voluntary contribution, the subscription funds, and volunteer companies, J. Howlett argued that ‘it must surely give an exalted conception of our wealth, and our almost inexhaustible resources, that, under the heaviest pressure of the most expensive war that Great Britain ever knew . . . [that] we can still, . . . open our hands and readily bestow our thousands and tens of thousands. . . . Must this not appear astonishing to our enemies? Must it not diminish their boasted confidence of so easily subduing us?’³⁷ In the autumn of 1798 the question whether to feast or not could be linked to larger debates over the meaning of the battle of the Nile and the desirability of an immediate peace. The substantial grain harvest of 1798 only complicated matters, and did nothing to diminish criticisms of profligate hospitality and gastronomic excess. Critics sensed the hypocrisy of Romney’s fête, claiming his ‘requisition of provisions’ rivalled the plundering of the French army in Italy.³⁸ For James Gillray and Samuel William Fores, the symbolics of patriotic dining were an apt metaphor for victory culture in general. The latter’s John Bull taking a Lunch—or Johnny’s Purveyors pampering his Appetite with Dainties from all parts of the World, articulated in satire the sense that the war was sustained through elite condescension to the base appetites of national identity.³⁹ Nelson, Warren, Duncan, Bridport, and Gardner press forward with dishes representing naval victories, which they serve to an obese John Bull. Feasting, then, aspired to a communal—even bucolic—ideal that was politically resisted in some quarters. It was an important type of social ³⁶ Ibid., 9–12 Nov. 1798; Oracle, 10 Nov. 1798. ³⁷ British Critic, 14 (1799), 677. ³⁸ Morning Herald, 9 Aug. 1799. ³⁹ S. W. Fores (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 3940), 1 Nov. 1798. The print is described in George and Stephens, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, vii. 484. Fores’s was an imitation of an almost identical Gillray print.

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behaviour in which the participatory ethos and public recognition of one’s patriotic efforts reigned supreme. But since feasting involved hospitality, in the end it was largely an individual compliment to the indefatigable efforts of a privileged few. And illuminations had a similarly distanced relationship from their communal ideal. The honour sought through them was intended for the community as a whole. Many community leaders took pride, as at Bury, that illumination devices appeared in ‘windows of all ranks’, and illumination reportage was dominated by local loyalists seeking to represent their districts as resolutely patriotic.⁴⁰ Reports were submitted to national papers in order to advertise the standing of the locality. But as the strong tendency to note the participation of potentially dissenting groups in illumination festivity reveals, communal harmony was primarily a constructed ideal—constructed by those delighted to find whatever evidence of it they could. The illuminations in post-rebellion Londonderry received considerable coverage, as did the participation of those Londoners living within debtor’s prison and king’s rules. From Somerset, the participation of ‘the only Roman Catholic family’ in Shepton Mallet was singled out for particular notice.⁴¹ In fact, the Nile illuminations witnessed some dissident acts: Horne Tooke characteristically refused to illuminate his Wimbledon home, while in Glasgow, the Dissenter who displayed anti-monarchical devices in his window had it ‘very properly, smashed to pieces’.⁴² Significant social value inhered to those who took the lead in victory celebrations and other patriotic acts. Their actions, as the catchphrase of the day went, ‘ought not to pass unnoticed’. Disinterested patriotism was something of a fiction, when one considers the degree of publicity that was actively courted. Personal motives loomed so largely in the patriotic culture of the day that the communal intent is often barely visible. Selfreflective estimations of personal worth and public honour lay behind the practice of printing subscribers’ names in lengthy front-page advertisements and the puffs that appeared announcing pecuniary gestures like that made by the Earl of Eglinton (‘always forward in the display of patriotism’) at the Ayrshire races.⁴³ A literal theatre of patriotism existed, ⁴⁰ True Briton, 16 Oct. 1798. ⁴¹ Oracle, 19 Oct. 1798; True Briton, 19 Oct. 1798; Oracle, 13 Oct. 1798; 12 Oct. 1798. ⁴² Oracle, 9 Oct. 1798; Morning Post, 23 Oct. 1798. ⁴³ Oracle, 3 Nov. 1798.

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in which various actors pressed forward with assertive acts designed to stake their claim as prominent members of their community. Consider the case of the young gentlemen of a ‘respectable school in Bristol’ who processed the streets with banners exhibiting emblematical transparencies. ‘On one was a device of the Hero of Italy at the Mouth of a Crocodile, with this inscription—I demes Ostia Nili.’⁴⁴ Such iconography was almost defiantly esoteric. It seems consistent though, with the aims of a group as interested in asserting its place as an heir to the literary public sphere, as in celebrating a national victory. Victory celebrations in Bristol were a particularly contested terrain. It is interesting to compare the cultured pretension of these young gentlemen to the more broadly targeted displays conducted at the Bush Tavern by its landlord, John Weeks. To celebrate Warren’s victory, Weeks ‘had a ship, which he called The Canada, suspended from the Bush across the street with various transparencies and devices’.⁴⁵ Weeks was a loyalist publican who took particular delight in thrusting himself forward at local celebrations one might have expected to have been dominated by the local corporation. He oversaw the Bristol ceremonies for the Preliminaries for Peace in 1801 and the Proclamation of Peace in 1802.⁴⁶ And in 1806, he presided over the Bristol observance of Nelson’s funeral, ‘dressed in the habit’ of a British sailor.⁴⁷ John Weeks’s festivities may well have been unique in catering to all ranks in a coherent, organized event. Mark Harrison did well to note that the newspaper reportage of one of these constituted a textual ‘appropriation’ of the event for the civic elite.⁴⁸ The same might also be said of the press description of a fashionable group whose chaise ‘passed through the town’ during the London illuminations for the Nile. It described ‘three Ladies, with large cockades in their head-dresses. The inside of the chaise was lighted up, a postillion was on each horse with flambeaux in their hands, besides two outriders also carrying flambeaux.’⁴⁹ However self-conscious a display this was, it retained an aspect of the deferential condescension that characterized Weeks’s efforts. But many of the Georgian elite’s assertive gestures of patriotism articulated a determined ⁴⁴ Morning Post, 9 Oct. 1798. ⁴⁵ Ibid., 31 Oct. 1798. See also the account of the Bristol celebration for the battle of the Nile, True Briton, 11 Oct. 1798. ⁴⁶ Harrison, Crowds and History, 77, 242. ⁴⁷ Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 11 Jan. 1806. ⁴⁸ Harrison, Crowds and History, 243. ⁴⁹ Morning Post, 5 Oct. 1798.

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exclusivity, and charitable objectives were sometimes completely absent. Over 300 people happily attended a Nile ball and supper at Brighton, but hardly any of them showed up for a masquerade the next night, when the proceeds were actually going to benefit the subscription fund.⁵⁰ On 24 October 1798, an advertisement appeared for a ball and supper to be held at a Chiswick dining hall to celebrate Nelson’s ‘late Glorious Victory’. It requested that ‘no Lady or Gentleman will appear without Powder’ and further particularized that entry would be refused to those unwilling to wear ‘Fancy Anti-Revolutionary Bonnets’ or cockades.⁵¹ These conditions attached overt political significance to an ostensibly national event. At this point in the war appearing with hair-powder was a defiantly elitist move; anti-revolutionary favours were emblems of the counter-revolution. Critical interest was further raised after the ball, when accounts of the elaborate festivities were supplied to the newspapers. They described a well-attended and well-costumed event in which gentlemen were invited to purchase cockades in order to raise a paltry threepence donation to the Nile subscription fund for orphans and widows.⁵² But tongues were really set wagging by the news that ‘a Gentleman with one arm was purposefully provided, to represent Lord Nelson, for the amusement of the Company’.⁵³ For indeed, the evening’s dancing was reported to have concluded with the sudden appearance of ‘a Gentleman with one arm, in naval uniform . . . along with a Lady of Egyptian manner and physiognomy, who danced an excellent Strathpy in the Coptic stile.’⁵⁴ In its disrespectful mimesis of Nelson’s body, its narrow partisan bent, and its niggardly charity, the Chiswick fête was taken as an extreme moment in loyalist festivity. This perception, though, was soon revealed to have been an elaborate hoax designed to embarrass loyalism. While the ball was held, both the public advertisements and the detailed accounts turned out to be forgeries ‘written with a view to render [the organizer] ridiculous’.⁵⁵ That the loyalist press had seen nothing undesirable in its design only underlined the parodists’ point, and extended the embarrassment to include loyalism as a whole. ⁵⁰ ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵

Oracle, 17 Oct. 1798. ⁵¹ True Briton, 24 Oct. 1798. Morning Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1798. Morning Post, 30 Oct. 1798. Emphasis in original. See also, Oracle, 2 Nov. 1798. Morning Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1798. True Briton, 30 Oct. 1798; Morning Chronicle, 30 Oct. 1798.

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Explicit in the hoax at Chiswick was an indictment of practices in the world of fashionable dress, perhaps the arena in which urban patriotism was displayed by the upper class. The ladies’ bonnets allegedly worn that day were but elaborate caricatures of an already extant variety.⁵⁶ On 11 October, the actress Mrs Jordan (the mistress of the Duke of Clarence) appeared on the Drury Lane stage; the cap she wore in honour of Nelson’s Victory launched a fashion craze. ‘Made in the shape of a sailor’s cap, with the letters H. N. in green velvet . . . ornamented with laurel, spangled, and richly adorned with jewels,’ within a week it was reportedly being produced by ‘every Milliner’s ’prentice from Bond-street to Cranbourn Alley’.⁵⁷ In November, Nelson caps gave way to the required compliment to Admiral Warren, a ‘Rabbit skin tippet’.⁵⁸ Such sartorial displays were taken seriously and deemed suitably flattering to the patriotism of their bearers—especially when worn by women. The mayoress of Norwich earned national attention for the appropriateness of the headdress she wore at a Nile victory ball hosted by the brother of Captain Berry. ‘It consisted of a French flag struck, and British Union Colour flying over it, with streamer lappets spotted with anchors and dismasted ships.’⁵⁹ It is difficult to determine the norms encoded in the squibs in which so much of the information concerning fashionable developments was recorded. But it seems clear that gender and class discourses interacted in a way that saw fashionable vanities tolerated on the part of upper-class women, considered decidedly suspect in the case of all men, and treated as generally representative of an excessively materialistic and evanescent aristocratic ethos. Criticism, when expressed, focused on those who produced the goods, the ‘Fashion Mongers’ addressed in one satirical print (Figure 2). Milliners were widely considered effeminate men— their catering to the female demand for patriotic fashion was understandable. But foppish upper-class men (the ‘Bond-street Beaux’) who donned check shirts of ‘blue and white, resembling the dress of a Sailor, in compliment to our naval victories’ were a little more suspect.⁶⁰ Men had serious avenues where their patriotism could be expressed; for them to indulge in simple sartorial excess was seen as unduly frivolous. ⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ ⁶⁰

Morning Chronicle, 29 Oct. 1798. Morning Post, 12 Oct. 1798; Oracle, 16 Oct. 1798; Morning Post, 17 Oct. 1798. Morning Post, 6 Nov. 1798. ⁵⁹ Ibid., 17 Oct. 1798. Ibid., 2 Nov. 1798.

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Figure 2. Dresses à la Nile respectfully dedicated to the Fashion Mongers of the day. W. Holland (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 3864), 24 October 1798. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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By this point in the war, then, an increasing competitiveness underwrote activities in the patriotic public sphere. Various social groups became increasingly assertive with respect to patriotic display. And it is suggestive to connect this development with a shift in the nature of illumination violence. Illuminations were typically accompanied by a high degree of property damage, primarily in the form of customary window breaking. But this pattern practically ceased with the illumination for the Nile—an event for which it has not been possible to discover (in London at least) a single reported instance of window-breaking.⁶¹ Not that this was a pacific affair. There was violence, but the reported violence for the Nile celebrations was primarily interpersonal, and thus correlates interestingly to the increased tendency to display patriotism personally in this period. This tendency was rising, in part because of the increased importance patriotic identities were coming to have in wartime politics. The volunteers, whose ceremonial presence gave ‘the impression of widespread public support’ contributed to this as well.⁶² Indeed, a number of these confrontations articulate the tension over who was entitled to contest and define patriotism. Accidental violence characterized all London illuminations in this period, and in this respect the Nile was no exception. Indiscriminate pistol-firing and squib-tossing led authorities to bring a premature conclusion to successive nights of celebration, and a small number of young individuals were brought before the Bow Street magistrates for such ‘mischievous’ behaviour.⁶³ But the ‘attack made upon Sir Robert Burnet by the mob’ near the Admiralty was not reported in the restrained tone that characterized earlier ‘regrettable’ incidents. It was an assault ‘of the most outrageous and criminal description’ in which ‘the assailant fired a blunderbuss directly in his face’.⁶⁴ The assault on Burnet was not viewed as isolated, or accidental. Rather it was one of a number of illumination assaults that admitted of a wider criminal intent. On the first night of illumination, two officers of the Coldstream Guards (one of whom, ironically, was the son of Admiral Duncan) were attacked and chased by a mob near the Admiralty. When Captain Duncan pressed charges, both officers testified ‘that their being in their regimentals was ⁶¹ My research confirms the trend noticed by Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 216. ⁶² Gee, The British Volunteer Movement, 203. ⁶³ Lloyd’s Evening Post, 5–8 Oct. 1798. ⁶⁴ Morning Post, 15 Oct. 1798.

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the only thing that made them obnoxious to the mob’. Six other officers were the targets of a similar incident on the same night. Their refusal (necessitated by the regulations of military dress) to remove their hats in deference to the crowd led them into a physical confrontation that only ended when the officers drew their swords and wounded several people.⁶⁵ But they fared better than the corporal who came to the aid of Captain Lowe of the Horse Guards, whom he discovered defending himself against an armed mob. A dagger wound to the knee was the price of the junior’s intervention.⁶⁶ Tensions between the crowd and the king’s soldiers were nothing new in the eighteenth century, but in these cases they fit with the general direction of the Nile illumination violence, a particular kind of violence directed towards those ‘guilty’ of pretensions to primary status in the capital’s theatre of patriotism. In the cases concerning the king’s soldiers, the crowd manipulated the dress regulations of military protocol in an effort to paint officers as unpatriotic. Military uniforms were signifiers of dominance and, from the perspective of the crowd, this dominance involved a soldier’s ability to evade punishment for his part in street violence by appealing to military justice. In this sense, it is no wonder that the crowd also came into conflict with the volunteers, a group with considerable pretensions to military status. On the first night of the illumination, an affray took place in Oxford Street between the crowd and several members of the St George’s Volunteers. Tensions between this volunteer company and the ‘lower orders of the people in the parish’ were already quite high (the latter apparently regularly taunted the corps’ members as ‘lunatics’). The conflict stemmed, significantly, from the refusal of two volunteers (who had been particularly disorderly in their revelry) to submit to the authority of the night watchmen. To avoid arrest they claimed the privileges of military justice—a claim they were eventually forced to defend with cutlasses against the mob that rose in support of the watchmen.⁶⁷ Incidents like this put paid to the hope that the volunteer presence in illumination activity might have a civilizing effect on victory celebrations.⁶⁸ On the contrary, the volunteer movement seems to have been responsible for furthering tensions.⁶⁹ At least two ⁶⁵ True Briton, 4 Oct. 1798; London Packet, 24–6 Oct. 1798; Lloyd’s Evening Post, 3–5 Oct. 1798. ⁶⁶ Lloyd’s Evening Post, 5–8 Oct. 1798. ⁶⁷ Morning Post, 25 Oct. 1798. ⁶⁸ Morning Herald, 19 Sept. 1799. ⁶⁹ Pace Colley, ‘Apotheosis’, 119.

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duels were fought over issues pertaining to the celebration of the battle of the Nile. One (which was fatal) concerned two officers of the Totnes Volunteer Corps, who fell into an ‘unfortunate quarrel’ when the corps assembled to fire its feu-de-joie for the Nile.⁷⁰ Another concerned jealousies between volunteer and regular army officers at a large dinner celebrating Nelson’s victory in Manchester. A challenge was issued by Major Seddon, ‘a gallant and meritorious Officer’ who had served in India and Ireland, to Colonel Ackers, a ‘much respected’ man who ‘had raised a Voluntary Corps’. Seddon had been originally made chairman of the event; his challenge stemmed from his inability to make himself heard because Ackers and others were drinking bumpers in an upper room.⁷¹ Such were the dangers inherent in feasting to the glory of Old England. The ambivalent response of Britons to the patriotic activities of the volunteers needs to be remembered when considering the thanksgiving for the Nile held on 29 November 1798. For the second time of the war, the government decided to mark military success by setting aside a weekday for a ceremony of national observance.⁷² Its form, combined with the presence of the volunteers, altered the nature of the national experience. Calls for another royal procession to St Paul’s were resisted,⁷³ and the thanksgiving for the Nile (to which Warren’s victory and the army’s suppression of the rebellion in Ireland were eventually attached), was experienced as a series of simultaneous local observances. For loyalists, this underlined the sense that the thanksgiving was a ‘consentaneous Act of Devotion’ on the part of the ‘whole British Nation’.⁷⁴ Even the most esteemed corporate bodies—the Royal Family, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons—observed the thanksgiving at the parish level, while St Paul’s hosted the City of London’s corporate thanksgiving ceremony. This shifted the participatory symbolism from 1797, turning a metropolitan spectacle into numerous celebrations of the nation in the locality. The pull of the capital was low enough that only 30–40 MPs attended the Commons service at St Margaret’s, Westminster.⁷⁵ ⁷⁰ Morning Chronicle, 1 Nov. 1798. ⁷¹ True Briton, 26 Nov. 1798; Morning Chronicle, 20 Nov. 1798; Oracle, 26 Nov. 1798. ⁷² Archbishop of Canterbury to the king, in Arthur Aspinall (ed.), The Later Correspondence of George III, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1962–8), iii, no. 1847. ⁷³ Morning Post, 27 Oct. 1798. ⁷⁴ True Briton, 29 Nov. 1798. ⁷⁵ Garlick and Macintyre, The Diary of Joseph Farington, iii. 1098; The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester (London, 1861), 163.

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The absence of a central ceremony privileged opportunities for local elites to assert their status. This was particularly true for the volunteers who became the focus of these local spectacles. In London the most significant aspects of the day of thanksgiving were held to be the cessation of public business ‘and the [attendance of the] Volunteer Corps of London and Westminster [at] divine service at their respective churches’.⁷⁶ There was a shift, then, in the symbolic proprietorship of the thanksgiving of 29 November 1798. Contemporaries not only sensed this, they resisted it. Complaints in opposition papers that volunteer associations had attended church in military dress betrayed sensitivity to the corps’ ability to impose their own militarist message upon the public ceremonial.⁷⁷ Whether in respect to thanksgiving days, illumination activity, or feasting, the point is that the symbolic approached never fully realized the intended ideal of communal and national solidarity that loyalism sought. As the next section reveals, the contemporary recognition of this disjunction assisted larger concerns about the utility and purpose of spectacle itself, concerns which also undermine interpretations of patriotic display as a harmonious force.

A ‘SCHOOL FOR POLITICKS’? DEMOCRATIZING THE ‘FIELD OF MARS’ Elite, middling, and plebeian actors’ assertions to primacy in the increasingly competitive and variant theatre of patriotism were accompanied by simultaneous concern over the expansion of the literary public sphere. Critics on both sides of the elite political divide perceived that the cultivated, belletristic ideal of the ‘field of Mars’ was slipping into an eighteenth-century form of plebeian ‘info-tainment’. A series of exchanges in the St. James’s Chronicle and the Morning Chronicle articulated this dissatisfaction with what was seen as the vulgarization of the patriotic public sphere. The first of these singled out the wildly speculative nature of the gazette-reading, coffee-house culture, in which unsubstantiated rumour and inexpert interpretation fostered an unhealthy atmosphere of national paranoia. It criticized the ‘weak-judging mortals’ who had been ⁷⁶ Morning Chronicle, 30 Nov. 1798.

⁷⁷ See True Briton, 5 Dec. 1798.

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‘mightily censorious’ of the Admiralty ‘because Nelson did not meet up with and engage the French fleet, previous to their landing the troops in Egypt. . . .’ Subsequent events proved that all was ‘providentially ordered’, and implied that general public speculation was unhelpful.⁷⁸ The specific concern here was with the proliferation of politicized military knowledge among the general public, a concern also addressed by another writer in the same paper. Titled a ‘School for Politicks’, this contribution pretended to agonize over the educational challenges posed by Britain’s rising military success. Territorial expansion and rising imperial hegemony increased the number of languages and the geographical knowledge necessary for readers to adequately follow military affairs. The author’s ironic concern for the amount of study required by those ‘who wish to make a figure in politicks’, paled in comparison to his scorn for the real object of his satire: those same ‘coffee-house politicians’ who ‘without knowledge or reading, contrive to puzzle and perplex’ the uneducated masses ‘who are content to trust the Government of a Country in the hands of its Governours; to rejoice in the successes of its arms; and who know perfectly well what it is to take nine ships of the line, although they may not be able to point out exactly where they were taken, or speak the language of those who lost them.’⁷⁹ Crucial here was the loyalist desire to circumscribe the literary public sphere and to resist the politicization occasioned by the interlinkage of war, empire, and commerce in victory culture.⁸⁰ Military discussions were inherently the purview of suitably proficient experts; the participation of the general public was not desirable. If loyalism subscribed to an ideal in which military intelligence was a necessarily privileged pursuit, what was made of the general public rejoicing and celebrations that were crucial to its publicity? Loyalists themselves could be uncertain about its efficacy. This was most obviously the case with victory illuminations in which ‘the loyal part of the community’ condescended to temporarily ‘license’ a range of unsettling practices that were ‘deemed an effusion of loyalty in the vulgar’.⁸¹ But it was also present in more pedestrian circumstances. The increase in patriotic display led to concern about what such spectacles could hope to ⁷⁸ St. James’s Chronicle, 11–13 Oct. 1798. ⁷⁹ Ibid., 20–3 Oct. 1798. ⁸⁰ On the latter, see Wilson, The Sense of the People, esp. 137–205. ⁸¹ Morning Herald, 4 Sept. 1799; Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1799.

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achieve. Most loyalists valued spectacle for the possibilities it offered of effecting moral elevation in the minds of those who viewed it. Suitably ordered displays were held to articulate a sublimity that operated upon the audience. To this end, the St. James’s Chronicle had once suggested that the government fund examples of ‘tasteful illumination’ in all public squares.⁸² But amidst the celebratory avalanche that accompanied the Nile, dissenting voices argued that patriotic displays had been commodified into a state of spectacular purposelessness. Their efficacy was doubtful, since among the people ‘the ruling passion is curiosity, to see what one has not seen before’. Participation in the theatre of patriotism had been a profoundly alienating experience for ‘Perambulator’, an anonymous volunteer who had found it more akin to St Bartholomew’s Fair: A few weeks ago, the Corps to which I have the honour to belong, marched to church, with musick playing, drums beating, and colours flying, a pretty decent crowd was collected to see us. This of course we considered as a compliment to our martial appearance—But alas! the very next day . . . I observed a crowd, equally great, looking at—at what? I am ashamed to say it—a dead Pig! . . . O shame of shames! that a Volunteer Corps and a dead Pig should excite the same degree of curiosity . . . Again, I observed at a late review, many thousands of persons who had put themselves to no small inconvenience to witness the grand sight. Not long after I observed as great a company at Kennington Common to see a man hanged!⁸³

Neither spectacles nor audiences were to be trusted, and the ‘loyal’ character of the people was thrown into doubt. National fortunes looked bleak, given a populace which ‘however unwilling to pay a trifling tax, if required to support the very principles they profess, will not grudge the admission money to see a match at cudgels or a race of asses’.⁸⁴ ‘Perambulator’ voiced the sense that victory culture was experiencing vulgarization. His concern was that the forms of victory culture amounted to meaningless condescension to the base tastes of the people. Patriotic display was a pointless strategy since the public was incapable of being reached. But a correspondent for the Morning Chronicle saw it the opposite way. In his view loyalism had been all too successful in pandering to its audience, to the point where there was no longer any distinction between the elevated interests of patriotism and politics, and the ⁸² St. James’s Chronicle, 2–4 Oct. 1798. ⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸³ Ibid., 13–16 Oct. 1798.

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trivial arena of amusement and entertainment. The partisan politicization of victory culture appeared to have been achieved though the commodification of political sentiment and the trivialization of political discourse. These concerns were advanced satirically in an article that pretended to address concerns over the ‘poverty of language’ but which in fact catalogued the forms of victory culture: Nothing surely can more lamentably demonstrate either the poverty of our language, or the want of discrimination in those who use it, than that we are obliged to speak of an Admiral and an Actor in the same terms, and have no other way of expressing our approbation of a victory by sea or land, than by employing the same terms we use to a play, a farce, or even a single song. The late victory at the Mouth of the Nile has justly been termed glorious, but when we would express our feelings at the sight of a corps of volunteers in their new consecrated cloaths, that must be glorious too. Does a victory make a great impression on the powers of Europe—so says Sir F. D’Ivernois do my pamphlets— so, says Deputy Birch, do my speeches; so, say Anti Jacobins, do our scurrilities.—Is an action brilliant, so is the placing of a pound of candles in the every window; the quick movement of a fiddle in a concerto—and the dress of a Tragedy Queen. Are nine ships worth talking about, so is Giant Kemble’s bulk, Mr. Dundas’ letter, and the pig-races at Margate. Ought our loyalty to be demonstrated by fighting for our Religion, King and Country; so it must be shewn in haggling for places, bargaining for boroughs, and hugging our cheese-parings and candles ends. From this want of variety in our expressions, Mr. Editor, I strongly suspect there arises a sameness of feeling. I have been in what are called political companies, where the grand plan of finance, and the new comedy, have taken up an equal portion of time . . . and where you would have doubted whether the salvation of the country depended most on ‘God Save the King;’ or ‘Meg of Wapping’ . . . We really want a new language, Mr. Editor, for it grieves me that I am obliged to speak in the same terms of a Statesman and a Player; an Admiral and an Alderman; and must say glorious, brilliant, and magnificent, whether ships are burnt, or candles blaze.⁸⁵

Concerns over the role that the urban populace could play in the capital’s theatre of patriotism were further revealed in the victory celebrations the following autumn. September 1799 witnessed victory ⁸⁵ Morning Chronicle, 31 Oct. 1798. Emphasis in original. ‘Tragedy Queen’ was a reference to Mrs Jordan (see above), D’Ivernois was a counter-revolutionary pamphleteer, Charles Kemble was a leading actor of the day, Dundas’s letter was published in August 1798, ‘Meg of Wapping’ was a popular sea-song. This entire contribution was in response to an earlier item, see Morning Chronicle, 27 Oct. 1798.

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celebrations for two British actions: the landing of the Helder expedition and the successful capture of Seringapatam. In both, illumination violence increasingly seemed to pose a personal threat, and elite tolerance was less readily granted. ‘Under the specious cover of national exultation, the peaceable inhabitants of the metropolis were last night not only grossly insulted, but openly robbed of their property, by the beasts of prey who were thus let loose upon the public.’⁸⁶ ‘The savage multitude, . . . not only grossly insulted almost every person of genteel appearance who came their way, but openly robbed them with impunity; and in some cases their treatment of the defenceless objects of their plunder was of the most savage and barbarous description.’ A ‘species of public rejoicing’ had become ‘an endless source of individual sorrow’.⁸⁷ Victory celebrations had become so saturnalian that the ‘practice of firing guns and pistols’, which had arisen from the traditions of the military salute achieved a mimesis that was radically opposite: they ‘resemble[d] nothing but the gloomy attack of a highwayman’.⁸⁸ In anticipation of these problems authorities, mindful of elite concerns, had taken preventative action. When the news of the Helder arrived, the Marlborough street magistrates issued handbills in order to prevent ‘the firing of crackers and pistols’ and an effort was made to ban the sale of gunpowder.⁸⁹ The resulting celebration was a muted affair. The illuminations ‘were general, but not distinguished for variety or number of devices as might have been expected’. On the second night (usually the most active) illuminating ‘was very partial, being chiefly confined to the principal streets’.⁹⁰ Given that illuminations were considered a necessary condescension to ‘what is deemed an effusion of loyalty in the vulgar’, any diminution in illumination activity could be seen as an attempt to circumscribe popular participation.⁹¹ This made it possible to hoist London loyalism on its own petard. As the Morning Chronicle noted, in a partisan jest, ‘The prohibition to consume gunpowder during the illuminations and rejoicings, was rather too severe. Though Admiral Mitchell has received a very brilliant victory ⁸⁶ Morning Herald, 4 Sept. 1799. See also 17 Sept. 1799. ⁸⁷ Ibid., 5 Sept. 1799. ⁸⁸ Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1799. ⁸⁹ Morning Chronicle, 4 Sept. 1799; 5 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁰ Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1799. But compare to Oracle, 4 Sept. 1799, which gave a more generous account of the first night. ⁹¹ Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1799.

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without firing a gun, this can be no reason for celebrating it without the usual discharge of squibs and crackers.’⁹² The perceived decline in the quality of decorations at leading public offices elicited the charge that concerns for retrenchment had determined official thinking. ‘OEconomy in the article of illumination does not become those who ought to show the brightest examples of loyalty in the city. It is a very awkward circumstance when there are more heroes concerned in a victory, than we have lamps to spell their names.’⁹³ ‘The parsimonious city illuminations have been censured on all hands. This omission of the marks of glaring loyalty may perhaps be easier accounted for than executed. The fact is, the care and anxiety of saving candles’ ends are equally felt by men in office on both sides of Temple Bar.’⁹⁴ ‘Saving candles’ ends’ was a reference to wartime austerity. Its juxtaposition to civic pageantry referenced the extravagant festivity which characterized civic and patriotic dinners and pointed to the fundamental hypocrisy; sacrifices were requested for the plebeian audience denied their illumination ‘entertainment’, while elite largesse continued behind closed doors. Oppositional monitorings of loyalist laxity in illumination continued ten days later, when celebrations were held for Wellesley’s victory at Seringapatam. Efforts in the City were censured. The Mansion House’s ‘dull and formal’ design ‘twinkled feebly’. ‘Even Leadenhall street was only partially illuminated . . . a few houses lighted up in the Poultry, [but] very economically.’⁹⁵ Particular comment was generated by the desultory Mansion House designs in which the words ‘ArmySeringapatam-Navy’ were alone displayed. The incorrect inclusion of an honour to the navy, which had played no role in Seringapatam, was gleefully pointed out.⁹⁶ The Mansion House had earlier omitted Lt. Gen. Abercrombie’s name from its Helder decorations. Together the two incidents were used to mock the City’s claims to leadership in the capital’s theatre of patriotism at the same time that they suggested a wider indifference to the popular will.⁹⁷ Defenders of the City responded to these charges, justified the iconography employed, and addressed the wilder rumours circulating regarding the omission of ⁹² Morning Chronicle, 5 Sept. 1799. ⁹³ Ibid., 7 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁴ Ibid., 9 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁵ Morning Post, 14 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁶ Morning Chronicle, 16 Sept. 1799; Morning Post, 14 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁷ Morning Chronicle, 16 Sept. 1799. See also Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1799; Morning Chronicle, 6 Sept. 1799.

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Abercrombie’s name.⁹⁸ Interestingly, the letter-writer who defended the ‘Army-Seringapatam-Navy’ display, explicitly acknowledged the inutility of the form: I happened to arrive in town late that evening, and knew nothing about [the recent victory], until . . . I espied the cabalistical words. There stood Seringapatam fast jammed in between the Navy and Army, but how it came there I could not conceive, and my application to one of the mob was rather unfortunate, for he could not read, but very civilly answered that we had taken one of them there places, but he could not say which. On my reaching the India House, however, I found that there are some lamplighters who can complete the sense of a Gazette better than others, and I much rejoiced that the tyrant Tippoo was dead . . . ⁹⁹

Significantly, this defence of City practices during the illumination was set in a discourse that asserted the primary status of the literate audience. The tension, then, was twofold. Patriotic display aspired to a communal unity that was rarely achieved—and this patriotic display itself could be distrusted and discounted by the patrician and bourgeois elements so forward in the process. This was because loyalist spectacle—no less than loyalist texts—generated fundamental concerns relating to the perceived expansion, or democratization, of the patriotic public sphere.¹⁰⁰ These issues were never very far from hand, and underline that patriotic display was social behaviour that embedded some of the most salient cultural tensions of the day.

THE MEANING OF THE BAT TLE OF THE NILE Victory culture escalated after the Nile and the tensions and debates covered so far in this chapter have emphasized that this upset contemporaries’ assured understandings of the structure of the public sphere. The following section returns to the explicitly partisan dimensions of patriotic debate, arguing for continuity in the contests over the language

⁹⁸ Morning Chronicle, 18 Sept. 1799; Oracle, 30 Sept. 1799. ⁹⁹ Morning Chronicle, 18 Sept. 1799. ¹⁰⁰ On this disposition within loyalist texts, see Gilmartin, ‘In the theatre of counterrevolution’.

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of patriotism. The notion that the period after the Nile saw the practical eclipse of rival visions of patriotism turns out to be far from the case. Opposition groups continued to express patriotism in their own terms. And loyalist efforts to marginalize Whigs and other dissident groups continued apace. News of the Nile was enthusiastically taken up by loyalists, who set out to lord the victory over their political rivals. A number of caricatures presented the imagined effect Nelson’s Gazette was supposed to have had on opposition luminaries.¹⁰¹ This effort was articulated through a discourse of national identity in which the Whigs were represented as fundamentally alienated from popular opinion. Taking advantage of a coincidence in the calendar, the True Briton used the first anniversary of Lord Duncan’s victory as the propitious date to print a fictitious account of the Whig celebration of the anniversary of Fox’s election for Westminster. Whig priorities were presented as dramatically inverted (in that they had chosen to observe a political dinner, rather than the anniversary of a national victory), Whig patriotism parodied (‘it requires a steadier and more philosophic turn of the mind than can belong to a haughty and blood-thirsty People, just flushed with conquest and carnage [by sea]’), and the Whigs’ distance from the people emphasized (‘It is not by sky-rockets and farthing candles that the lustre of a name so patriotic is to be either illuminated or eclipsed.’) The opposition was presented as hostile to British victories, contemptuous of the patriotic crowd, dismissive of illuminations, and hostile to the achievements of British heroes. To illustrate this, the paper invented an incident, imagining the fate of a seaman ‘who thoughtlessly interrupted the good-humour of the Company by proposing the health of Admiral Nelson. The man was speedily got under by the more decent part of the Company, and, upon resistance, turned out of the room into the street, where he was greeted with loud and licentious acclamation by a part of the Mob, . . . who for some time continued indecently bawling under the windows “Nelson and Victory”—“Down with the French.” ’¹⁰² In such ways, loyalists sought ¹⁰¹ See The Gallant Nelson bringing two uncommon fierce French Crocodiles from the Nile, S. W. Fores (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 3889), 7 Oct. 1798; Nelson’s Victory: good news operating on Loyal Feelings, James Gillray (artist and engraver), H. Humphrey (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 3865), 3 Oct. 1798. ¹⁰² True Briton, 11 Oct. 1798.

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to paint the parliamentary opposition as strangers to every aspect of victory culture and opponents of every emblem of national identity. Once again, though, these intemperate loyalist imaginings were not realized in Whig behaviour. The opposition remained carefully calculating when it came to contesting national victories. Although he questioned the wider direction of British strategy, Fox toasted Nelson at his anniversary dinner and descanted on the ‘gallant, glorious, and every way . . . decisive . . . victory of the heroic Admiral and fleet.’¹⁰³ In reporting the real account of the dinner, then, the True Briton was forced to resort to some extremely aggressive parsing in order to sustain the attack on Fox.¹⁰⁴ A month later, at a meeting of the Whig club, Erskine toasted the ‘health of that series of Heroes of Great Britain, “Earl Howe, Earl St. Vincent, Viscount Duncan, Lord Nelson of the Nile, and the Navy of Great Britain.” ’ In the opposition paper in which this was reported, the writer could not help wishing that the ‘hirelings of the Treasury’ had been present to witness this patriotic display.¹⁰⁵ The parliamentary Whig remnant acceded to Nelson’s vote of thanks without comment.¹⁰⁶ This and other similarly symbolic occupations of the patriotic mainstream led loyalists to churlishly remark that the opposition papers ‘dare not avow their real feelings on Lord Nelson’s late glorious Victory’.¹⁰⁷ Loyalists had good reasons for policing victory culture so intensely after the Nile. The most important was that the strategic meaning of the victory was contingent. More than had been the case with any victory before, the Whigs actually stood a reasonable chance of carrying the day with their interpretation of how the battle should be viewed. As Gerald Jordan has observed, the real mystery concerning loyalist politics after the Nile is how support for the war was maintained for so long.¹⁰⁸ All agreed on the decisiveness of Nelson’s victory, but there was no shared certainty over its strategic significance. The degree to which French military fortunes had been checked meant that the Nile, more than earlier naval victories, could convincingly stand as the precondition for a negotiated peace. Consequently both sides invested considerable effort ¹⁰³ Oracle, 11 Oct. 1798. ¹⁰⁴ See True Briton, 12 Oct. 1798. ¹⁰⁵ Morning Post, 7 Nov. 1798. ¹⁰⁶ Oracle, 11 Oct. 1798. ¹⁰⁷ True Briton, 3 Nov. 1798. ¹⁰⁸ Gerald Jordan, ‘Admiral Nelson as popular hero: the nation and the navy, 1795–1805’, in New Aspects of Naval History: Selected Papers from the 5th Naval History Symposium (Baltimore, 1985), 114.

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in articulating a place for the Nile within their larger conception of British foreign policy. In first announcing the victory the Oracle expatiated upon its strategic significance. And this was only the first in a series of essays the paper published on the question.¹⁰⁹ For the loyalist press the Nile was the prelude to a European-wide coalition. The anticipated effect of the victory was to reanimate allies by contributing to the formation of ‘a General League’ and to inspire the subjugated peoples of Europe to ‘general insurrection’. But the battle’s value did not end there and could be expanded to a catalogue that included ending the French Revolution itself. (This, if the embarrassment of the French defeat ‘hasten[ed] a change’ in the internal government of France.¹¹⁰) In the weeks that followed, an increasing range of ‘important effects’ were attributed to the Nile. The following occurred to the editor of the Oracle: The Fleet of the Enemy annihilated—India saved—The Turk awakened.—The French Trade in the Levant destroyed.—The Barbary States kept in awe.— The Spanish Trade at the mercy of Great Britain.—Toulon desolated.—France humbled.—The Glory of her great general diminished.—All Europe roused.— All Europe triumphing in the prosperity of the British Arms.—Naples called into action.—Sicily protected.—And the Glory of the British Character exalted beyond all the transcendent Naval Achievements that have hitherto been recorded in History.¹¹¹

Loyalists were determined to construct the Nile as the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end. As the ministry stated in the king’s speech to parliament later that autumn, the Nile had created but the ‘opening’ for the ‘general deliverance of Europe’. Futurities could only be secured, in the words of Lord Craven, with the pan-European coalition ‘without which it would be vain to look either for security or peace’.¹¹² The loyalist effort to clarify the strategic meaning of the Nile was necessary given the opposition’s own interpretation of the Nile as a war-ending victory. ‘If we are not to talk of Peace after Victory, when are we to talk of it?’ asked the Morning Post.¹¹³ If the Nile failed to bring ‘the cheering prospect of peace’ this was partly due to the intransigence of the British ministry. The present government was unwilling ‘to convert it into an occasion for offering terms of peace. Unhappy state of things! ¹⁰⁹ See Oracle, 3, 4, 12, 15 Oct. 1798. ¹¹⁰ Ibid., 3 Oct. 1798. ¹¹¹ Ibid., 27 Oct. 1798. ¹¹² Morning Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1798. ¹¹³ Morning Post, 5 Oct. 1798.

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When even conquest serves only to perpetuate hostility!’¹¹⁴ The Whig response to the Nile was ‘Peace with France on fair and honourable terms . . . ’¹¹⁵ Loyalists had little time for these ‘whimperings about Peace’ and continued to advocate war, pillorying the efforts of the ‘Parliamentary Opponents of Government’ who held ‘that the moment of Victory ought to be the moment of magnanimity’.¹¹⁶ A partisan contest over the meaning of naval victory was not new— but in the case of the Nile, it is possible that the opposition’s argument risked greater success, in part because of the uncertainties surrounding that battle’s overall significance. And these indeterminate conceptions of the battle’s meaning infused victory culture in possibly unexpected ways. In particular, they were registered in the battle poetry generated by the Nile. The poetic treatment the battle of the Nile received by the pseudolaureates who tackled it revealed a fundamental absence of agreement. The critical reaction to An Ode to Lord Nelson on his Conquest in Egypt (London, 1798), by ‘Harmodius’ was filtered through his stand on the war. For the European Magazine the ode had an uncomfortable status, being ‘more an Invocation to Peace, than a Celebration of Lord Nelson’s Victory. [But] Peace . . . is only to be obtained by war.’¹¹⁷ The Analytical Review was similarly minded; it held the work to be ‘for the most part an Ode to peace, rather than to Lord Nelson; and we are afraid the two names will not admit at present of being joined together’.¹¹⁸ No doubt for the same reason the determinedly conservative British Critic found aspects of the ode ‘ill-timed and inapplicable’.¹¹⁹ The Monthly Mirror assessed the political drift of the work similarly, noting that the author seems ‘to think that the victory will yield little more than a vain sort of triumph, if it does not lead to the re-establishment of peace’. It only differed from the other reviews in its approval for these sentiments.¹²⁰ For the most part, the critical history of the Nile poems played out according to the patterns of partisan debate. Verse that articulated the loyalist perspective on the battle was not favourably received by liberalleaning review organs, and vice-versa.¹²¹ Given this pattern of critical ¹¹⁴ Morning Chronicle, 3 Oct. 1798. ¹¹⁵ Ibid., 21 Nov. 1798. ¹¹⁶ True Briton, 4 Oct. 1798; 29 Nov. 1798. ¹¹⁷ European Magazine, 34 (1798), 328. ¹¹⁸ Analytical Review, ns 1 (1799), 90. ¹¹⁹ British Critic, 12 (1798), 666. ¹²⁰ Monthly Mirror, 16 (1798), 291. Emphasis in original. ¹²¹ See for instance, the reviews of William Lisle Bowles, Song of the Battle of the Nile (1799) in Critical Review, 25 (2) (1799), 356, and Analytical Review, ns 1 (1799), 90–1;

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reaction, which privileged partisan inflections on the war, the reception given to Eyles Irwin’s Nilus; an Elegy on the Victory gained by Admiral Nelson over the French Fleet, on Aug. 1st, 1798 (London, 1798) needs to be recognized. Irwin’s Nilus earned favourable reviews from three of the four organs that reviewed it.¹²² None saw it as a partisan contribution, because the poem completely avoided the question of the significance of the battle.¹²³ But even though Irwin’s poem evaded the primary debate over the meaning of the Nile, contemporaries paid it particular attention, and it was one of the few Nile poems to reach a second edition. What explains this appeal? Irwin’s success can be attributed to the special place he occupied within the literary public sphere. Twenty years previously, he had published an account of his travels to the Nile. In the summer of 1798, when speculation concerning the fate of Nelson and Bonaparte was at its height, extracts of Irwin’s essay were reprinted in Lloyd’s Evening Post (the organ of the City ‘Establishment’ coffee-houses), because they had ‘now become particularly interesting, on account of the correct description which they give of those countries to which the views of Buonaparte are imagined to be directed’.¹²⁴ Contemporary literary culture granted writers like Irwin a special authority, one gained from personal expertise. In Irwin’s case, this was his knowledge of geographically unfamiliar territories. It was ‘his knowledge of the scene of action’ that qualified him to write Nilus.¹²⁵ As the British Critic recognized, ‘Mr. Irwin has a connection with the Nile, which few Britannic Poets can boast.’¹²⁶ The ‘Gentleman of Earl St. Vincent’s Fleet’ who proffered another of the Nile poems claimed a similar expertise, this time invoking the authority of familiarity with naval life.¹²⁷ Both were characteristic of and of William Sotheby’s The Battle of the Nile; a Poem (London, 1799) in Critical Review, 25 (2) (1799), 351, and British Critic, 13 (1799), 187. ¹²² See European Magazine, 34 (1798), 399; Critical Review, 25 (2) (1799), 356; British Critic, 14 (1799), 69–70; and Monthly Mirror, 17 (1799), 168. ¹²³ Irwin did hold decided views on the subject, which he considered in two other pamphlets written at this time. See Eyles Irwin, An Enquiry into the Feasibility of the Supposed Expedition of Buonaparte to the East (London, 1798), and The failure of the French Crusade; or, the advantages to be derived by Great Britain from the restoration of Egypt to the Turks (London, 1799). ¹²⁴ Lloyd’s Evening Post, 29–31 Aug. 1798. ¹²⁵ Eyles Irwin, Nilus; an elegy. Occasioned by the Victory of Admiral Nelson over the French Fleet, on August 1, 1798. (London, 1798). ¹²⁶ British Critic, 14 (1799), 69–70. ¹²⁷ The Battle of the Nile; a Descriptive poem, addressed as a Tributary Wreath to Nautic Bravery. By a Gentleman of Earl St. Vincent’s Fleet (London, 1799).

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a significant cohort of authors whose contributions to the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’ were dependent on a participatory cultural authority and underlined the conception of the gazette-reading sphere as a community of reflective and qualified experts. Eyles Irwin was a welcome traveller in the literary ‘field of Mars’. His position as an expert and the balance he sought between literary achievement and historical verisimilitude conformed to the expectation of the genre. Reviewers of his work reported with satisfaction on his literary credentials and expertise. Irwin’s work was well received, even though he had innocently violated the conventions of literary form by titling his poem an elegy. The relative grace with which this error was excused is worth contrasting to the scornful reaction garnered by William King’s Britannia Triumphant over the French Fleet, occasioned by the Victory of Admiral Nelson at the Mouth of the Nile; a Poem (Salisbury, 1799). William King was a self-described Devon ‘peasant’ of ‘indigent Parents’ and ‘slender Education’.¹²⁸ On hearing of Nelson’s victory, he wrote a poem that his patrician neighbours pressed him to publish. Two hundred and thirty-seven individuals, mostly local inhabitants in the vicinity of Lord Arundell’s estates near Wardour Castle, subscribed to its publication. These subscribers may have been attracted to the literary merits of the thirty-four-page poem; or they may have been taken with the poem’s professed aim to ‘inspire the Peasant’s Soul with a Heroic love for his Country’.¹²⁹ In spite of its humble origins, Britannia Triumphant was noticed by the major literary reviews, but none was impressed with the model of plebeian literary agency that King represented. For the British Critic, the ‘best parts’ of this ‘honest effusion of loyalty from a peasant’ were ‘the copy of Lord Nelson’s Gazette prefixed, and (for the author) the List of Subscribers subjoined’.¹³⁰ The Analytical Review condemned it even more strongly. It entered a ‘protest against the absurdity’ not to mention the ‘cruelty of encouraging such publication’ from ‘an honest peasant’. ‘The Poem before us has come to a second edition, and it is sanctioned by a long list of subscribers! what is the consequence? this poor fellow . . . will despise the vulgar occupation in which he has been ¹²⁸ William King, Britannia Triumphant over the French Fleet, occasioned by the Victory of Admiral Nelson at the Mouth of the Nile; a Poem (Salisbury, 1799), unpaginated. ¹²⁹ King, Britannia Triumphant over the French Fleet, 1. ¹³⁰ British Critic, 14 (1799), 428.

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bred up, and to the ruin of his wife and family, . . . seek a more honourable livelihood in authorship!’¹³¹ Britannia Triumphant was seen as a significant intrusion into the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. As its critical reception also makes clear, the fundamental reason for this was located in its plebeian origins (‘he leaves his plough to take care of itself, and absolutely tries to write verses without the least notion’).¹³² Britannia Triumphant raised the same concerns and questions about the nature of plebeian patriotic agency raised by victory celebrations. In fact, King’s entry into the world of letters had its origin in the liminal practices and spirit of condescension that characterized victory celebrations. As he described it, his verse was prompted by ‘Ideas [that] occurred to me on hearing of the late Glorious Victory off the Nile, over the Enemies of God and Man. As every Peasant and Swain were testifying their Gratitude by various sentiments of Joy, I took this method of testifying mine . . . ’.¹³³ King was aware that verses from a ‘rustic swain’ would appear presumptuous but hoped (in the dedication he wrote to Lady Nelson) that the ‘enthusiastic Joy which pervaded every British breast on hearing the late Glorious Victory off the Nile, by the gallant Hero Lord Nelson, over the Enemies of all Religion’ would facilitate a warm reception.¹³⁴ On the contrary, his poem was taken as a challenge to both the conventions and purpose of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. Britannia Triumphant was published for two reasons. Its subscribers felt it might perform effective patriotic work on plebeian minds. More importantly, the poem (but only when understood and admired as the product of a local peasant) presented a flattering selfimage of a harmonious and loyal community. But neither of these coincided with the interests of the reading audience of gazette-culture, whose purposes were neither propagandistic nor particularly altruistic. The ‘field of Mars’ privileged the reflective and active reading practices of an educated elite—it was not concerned with good intentions. This was the context in which the British Critic dismissed the poem as inferior to the Gazette letters by which it was prefaced.¹³⁵ This was not solely ironic, ¹³¹ Analytical Review, ns 1 (1799), 527. The poem was further reviewed, dismissively, in the Critical Review, 26 (2) (1799), 112. ¹³² Analytical Review, ns 1 (1799), 527. ¹³³ King, Britannia Triumphant over the French Fleet, 1–2. ¹³⁴ Ibid. ¹³⁵ Four pages reprinting Nelson’s Gazettes from the Nile were included in the editions of Britannia Triumphant.

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it was the manifest truth to anyone familiar with the priorities of the genre. As a plebeian contributor, William King stood alone among the pseudo-laureates of the Nile. But Britannia Triumphant was not the only Nile poem that garnered critical attention for its plebeian contexts. The passage of William Sotheby’s The Battle of the Nile that the British Critic excerpted for its review was the only part of the poem that featured the common people to any degree. Considering the ‘exertions’ of Britons ‘in arming [their country] against the threatened invasions’, Sotheby introduced the image of a bucolic battalion of Britons:¹³⁶ Why quits the yeoman life’s domestic charms To rush unbidden mid the clash of arms? Why yon unwearied swains, at the close of day Unyoke the steed, and join the war array; . . . — ‘We heard the vow, exterminating Gaul! And rose at Liberty’s parental call— Throne, city, hut—one will, one voice, one soul Rung round the isle, and armed the united whole!¹³⁷

This was a pleasing and reassuring image, where plebeian Britons took their ‘natural’ place as defenders of their native soil. But the acceptability of this usage is worth comparing to another in W. Hildreth’s The Niliad; an Epic Poem, in honour of the Victory obtained by the British Fleet, under Nelson, over a superior Fleet of the French, off the Mouth of the Nile, on the 1st of August, 1798 (London, 1799). No copies of Hildreth’s poem have survived. However, its review in the Analytical Review reveals that the deployment of a familiar plebeian image was viewed negatively. In a generally hostile review, the journal focused on the unsuitability of the conclusion in which scarred and ‘maimed’ veteran tars of the Nile were imagined in ‘jocund’ retirement in ‘the salubrious atmosphere of Greenwich’. ‘So much for the plebeians’ was the sarcastic assessment of the reviewer.¹³⁸ Based on such a thin reference, it is impossible to do anything but speculate on why this plebeian image was held to be unsatisfying. The reviewer may have been resisting the idea of affording ¹³⁶ British Critic, 13 (1799), 187. ¹³⁷ William Sotheby, The Battle of the Nile; a Poem (London, 1799). ¹³⁸ Analytical Review, ns 1 (1799), 92.

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plebeian figures primary place in the concluding passage of the poem or reacting to an uncomfortable focus on wounding. Whatever the case, the reception of Hildreth’s poem further indicates that the plebeian content of the Nile poems was the subject of attention and provides more support for the argument that the membership of the patriotic public sphere was the subject of continuous debate. This becomes even more observable in a look at two projects in naval symbolism, one—a periodical—dedicated to the controlled extension of the patriotic public sphere, the other—a pillar—that collapsed amidst resistance to that very impulse.

ERECTING ‘COLUMNS’ OF NAVAL TRIUMPH Thomas Dighton, a Charing Cross artist, was among the first to celebrate the hero of the Nile in a print (see Figure 3). Dighton’s effort was a hastily produced pseudo-portrait, calculated to satisfy public demand in advance of genuine portrait engravings. Nelson is depicted sitting at a table with the French Admiral’s sword, surrounded by copies of the gazetted dispatches that announced his victory to the world. Dighton’s print echoed the Humphrey caricature of Earl Howe (discussed in the Introduction), which is not surprising, since it asserted the same conception of the gazette’s place in gentleman’s literary culture. Gazettes were a conduit to the field of action; they had status as literature because they were first-hand accounts of dramatic events that could be read for insights into virtue, heroism, and gallantry. Since dispatches were written in epistolary form, they provided audiences with what was perceived to be an almost participatory involvement in the sphere of military communication. The brevity of Nelson’s dispatch from the Nile, for instance, became the occasion for imagining the pressures he was under: ‘The enterprising and gallant Admiral does not seem to have ceased from the important task of completing the destruction of the enemy, in order to write a splendid narrative of his exploit. After the battle it appears that he proceeded instantly to seize on and dismantle the batteries on shore . . . ’¹³⁹ Read this way, gazettes were a powerful mechanism through which national audiences identified with individual commanders and heroes. As such, they represented an important form for the mediation ¹³⁹ Morning Chronicle, 3 Oct. 1798.

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Figure 3. Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, K.B. Thomas Dighton (artist, engraver, publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD 3834), October 1798. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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of national identity. Nelson’s dispatch articulated sensibilities that could be claimed to be quintessential to membership in the patriotic nation: ‘He is no Englishman, in whom the recital of the Action did not excite feelings correspondent to those of the brave writer.’¹⁴⁰ What was true for the gazette was true for a range of texts in the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. A healthy market for supplementary accounts, ‘authentic details’, private letters, and ‘further particulars’ existed by the late 1790s. These texts have often been used by naval and military historians, but their precise cultural context has not been noticed. This is a necessary task, because the contexts of textual production and consumption are crucially important for uncovering the dynamics that informed the construction of the patriotic public sphere. These contexts come through strongly in an examination of the Naval Chronicle (1799–1818), the most successful of a small number of naval and military historical periodicals launched c.1799–1801. The Naval Chronicle was founded in January 1799 by James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur. Clarke had served in the navy as a chaplain, McArthur as a purser. Both belonged to a network of London-based naval propagandists and literary activists that included figures like John Charnock, a former naval volunteer who published his own periodical work, the Biographia Navalis (6 vols., 1794–8), wrote a History of Marine Architecture, (1801–2), produced a Life of Lord Nelson in 1806, and edited some of the early volumes of the Naval Chronicle.¹⁴¹ The Shoe Lane premises of the publisher Joyce Gold provided the offices for the Naval Chronicle, the production of which was facilitated by the political and naval connections of its contributing editors. McArthur had been Lord Hood’s fleet secretary, but Clarke—a self described ‘Courtier’— was perhaps the best-placed figure in this coterie.¹⁴² His naval career brought him into the patronage network of the Prince of Wales, whom he served in a number of household capacities, eventually becoming historiographer to the king, and a canon of Windsor.¹⁴³ Given his centrality to the project, it is the literary practices of James Stanier Clarke that assist in locating the context in which the Naval ¹⁴⁰ St. James’s Chronicle, 2–4 Oct. 1798; True Briton, 4 Oct. 1798. ¹⁴¹ Dictionary of National Biography, iv. 132; John Charnock, Loyalty, or Invasion Defeated, An Historical Tragedy. (London, 1810), vii. ¹⁴² Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), vii. ¹⁴³ Dictionary of National Biography, iv. 429–30.

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Chronicle flourished. His 1798 publishing debut, Naval Sermons—a collection of loyalist exhortations prompted by the mutinies—suffered from a conflicted relationship to its audience. This reflected its dual purpose. On the one hand, it was intended to preach loyalist politics to the seamen of the Royal Navy, as titles like ‘The Delusions which seduce Mariners from their Duty’, ‘The Necessity and Advantages of Obedience’, and ‘The Christian Religion’ readily testify.¹⁴⁴ But Clarke equally wrote in order to rehabilitate contemporary perceptions of seamen that the mutinies had shattered. The public, Clarke complained, lacked a ‘just conception’ of mariners. ‘The plain, simple deportment of a Mariner’ was frequently misunderstood and these ‘intrepid veterans’ were ‘sometimes misrepresented’.¹⁴⁵ Clarke sought to restore public confidence in British seamen, in part by countering claims of their irreligion.¹⁴⁶ Critics, though, doubted the utility of his sermons because they sensed a conflict over the readership that Clarke truly sought. They argued Clarke’s discourses had a literary ‘elegance’ that rendered them useless for ‘a congregation of rustics’ and doubted the impact they could have had on ‘the sturdy character and rude understandings of the uninstructed seamen in the Impeteux’.¹⁴⁷ Naval Sermons could not simultaneously serve as a loyalist resource educating sailors and as an ‘authentic detail’ illustrating the ‘real’ naval character. A collection of prescriptive sermons could not serve both goals, and so, in the Naval Chronicle, Clarke selected a periodical form more capable of reaching both his intended audiences. The Naval Chronicle billed itself as a monthly miscellany ‘comprehending all the Naval Circumstances of Great Britain’.¹⁴⁸ This was a wide editorial parameter, which included biographical sketches, historical essays, court-martial accounts, promotion lists, shipping reports, navigational information, technical notices, obituaries, and even naval poetry. Indeed, that parameter of naval subjects was construed so broadly that the editors requested readers ‘look rather to the contents of a single volume, than of one number’ before evaluating its worth.¹⁴⁹ This was an ¹⁴⁴ James Stanier Clarke, Naval Sermons . . . To which is added, A Thanksgiving Sermon for Naval Victories; James Stanier Clarke, Naval Sermons, 2nd edn. (London, 1801). ¹⁴⁵ Clarke, Naval Sermons, 2nd edn. 213, 214. ¹⁴⁶ Ibid., 36–7; 216. ¹⁴⁷ European Magazine, 34 (1798), 28; Critical Review, 25 (2) (1799), 430. See also British Critic, 12 (1798), 549. ¹⁴⁸ Oracle, 27 Dec. 1798. ¹⁴⁹ Naval Chronicle, 1 (1799), iv.

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entirely suitable request, because it was Clarke and McArthur’s conception of the audience they addressed that primarily influenced the content of their monthly numbers. The editors’ intention in the Naval Chronicle was twofold: ‘to make [it] an useful and entertaining library of itself to seamen, and an acceptable work to every one who partakes of the glory acquired by our brave countrymen, or experiences the security derived from their valour.’¹⁵⁰ The seafaring readership was privileged over the land-bound audience, and the periodical was explicit about the distinction it recognized between the two. The first volume contained a glossary ‘for the information of those who are not conversant with Nautical Terms’. Similarly, the editors were compelled to print an explanation for one of the engravings included in the first number, since it ‘has not in general been clearly understood, by persons unacquainted with the sea’.¹⁵¹ This division between readerships was a conceit, which the editors consistently maintained and which readers appreciated. The strategy heightened the Naval Chronicle’s claims to authenticity and enhanced the sense that the nation was united with its naval heroes in a form of literary community. This impression was sustained in a number of ways. The preface to the third volume claimed authority from the fact that it was written ‘On board H.M.S. Braakhel, Portsmouth Harbour, June 23, 1800.’¹⁵² Correspondents helped maintain the perception of maritime authenticity by identifying their positions in the wider community of readers. Contributions were signed ‘By a Naval Officer’, ‘An Officer of the Cape Squadron’, or asserted their awareness that ‘the Naval Chronicle, has found its way on board most of the ships of his Majesty’s Navy . . . ’¹⁵³ The idea that the Naval Chronicle provided an accurate window on the naval profession made it attractive to the consumers of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. This was the opinion of the amateur poet, who introduced his contribution contingently, confessing that ‘Though I am no sailor, and your work might on that account be less calculated for me, yet to have before my eyes the portraits, lives, and noble actions of our illustrious Admirals, is a possession truly valuable.’¹⁵⁴ Aiming the Naval Chronicle in part at a maritime audience was central to Clarke’s larger project of naval reform. He had a particular conception ¹⁵⁰ Ibid. ¹⁵¹ Ibid., 154. ¹⁵² Ibid., 3 (1800), vi. ¹⁵³ Ibid., 6 (1801), 53; 8 (1802), 31; 8 (1802), 24. ¹⁵⁴ Ibid., 5 (1801), 425. Emphasis added.

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of the naval literary craft, one influenced by both the periodical form in which the Naval Chronicle appeared, and the manner in which it (considered as a literary product) was to be consumed. When the editors expressed the intention that the Naval Chronicle would prove ‘an useful and entertaining library of itself to seamen,’ this was meant literally. Clarke was aware that the realities of shipboard life set the parameters for the periodical. Sea officers had neither the time nor the space requisite for intensive literary study. The inability to store ‘the numerous works relative to this subject’ and ‘the agitated and interrupted day’ of the mariner precluded them from pursuing the literary ‘leisure of the recluse’.¹⁵⁵ Thus, the Naval Chronicle was designed to be practical for a seagoing readership—its miscellaneous content determined by an interest in extracting relevant naval material from other sources and combining them in one place. Clarke was critical of works that failed to recognize what was ‘commodious to seafaring men’. Literature of the ‘field of Mars’ produced in sizes as extensive as royal quarto may have been ‘a splendid ornament for the shelves of the curious and elegant collector’ but did not meet the needs of sailors.¹⁵⁶ An awareness that gentlemanly literary culture was inaccessible to naval men provides the key to understanding Clarke’s literary projects. All his publications were directed in some way toward the goal of breaking down the obstacles to the literary cultivation of naval officers. The Naval Chronicle was intended to permit naval officers to take up literary pursuits, in short, to be a part of the literary culture of the public sphere. This was part of an overall vision of a postmutiny navy, reformed with men of literary taste and character. The content and editorial bias of the Naval Chronicle often reflected this goal. While its department of ‘Naval Literature’ tended to review professionally useful publications, it frequently incorporated belletristic material whose maritime content was far less utilitarian. Lyrical Ballads (featuring, of course, Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’) was reviewed in an early number.¹⁵⁷ Others contained a poetic description of the sea by moonlight written by Admiral Lord Bridport; a review of a work—‘Nautical Odes’—described as ‘very properly intended to inculcate ¹⁵⁵ James Stanier Clarke, The Progress of Maritime Discovery (London, 1803); see also review in Naval Chronicle, 10 (1803), 225. ¹⁵⁶ Review of Charnock’s History of Maritime Architecture, Naval Chronicle, 1 (1799), 130. ¹⁵⁷ Naval Chronicle, 2 (1799), 328.

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the practice of virtue among the seamen, and reform their manners’; and a serialized tale of ‘Marine Fiction’ by the novelist Charlotte Smith. One of the most popular sections was devoted to ‘Naval Poetry’. Even the lengthy biographical sketches of selected British naval officers that were the featured component of each issue privileged this sense of literature’s power. These memoirs invariably included epigraphs from canonical texts and were commonly punctuated by esoteric literary allusions. That of Admiral William Cornwallis contained quotations from Pope, Milton, and an epigraph from Horace.¹⁵⁸ The biographical memoirs of Captain Edward Thompson, an eighteenth-century naval officer who had achieved some success as a minor poet and writer, provided the opportunity for the Naval Chronicle to advocate strongly the literary elevation of prospective officers, arguing that the current esteem in which the naval service was held was the result of officers being ‘men of education and polished manners’.¹⁵⁹ To be sure, practical navigational and technical developments were passed on through its pages. But hopes for the literary elevation of the naval profession were quite widely held; some correspondents viewed the peace of Amiens as an opportunity for midshipmen to catch up on their reading. The ‘study of the antient classics’ was particularly encouraged by the author who compiled a list of maritime incidents to be found in the writings of Juvenal, evidently hoping that it would prove the entry point to more intensive study.¹⁶⁰ The fundamental intent of the Naval Chronicle was to extend literary culture to the wardrooms of the naval service in a manner that was both professionally useful and intellectually elevating. This can be nowhere better glimpsed than in the biographical sketches that formed its staple content. Importantly, these assisted in the ancillary goal of creating a national community of naval readers. On the one hand, these biographies were intended didactically, as inspirational and edifying accounts that gave ‘encouragement and emulation to those who are beginning their career of glory’.¹⁶¹ When properly related, the biography of a longserving figure like Lord Howe could serve as an instructional text, providing ‘a system of acting under almost every exigency that the nature of the sea service can produce an example of ’.¹⁶² At the same time, the ¹⁵⁸ ¹⁶⁰ ¹⁶¹ ¹⁶²

Ibid., 7 (1802), 1–25. ¹⁵⁹ Ibid., 6 (1801), 437. Ibid., 8 (1802), 34–7. See also ibid., 9 (1803), 295. Ibid., 5 (1801), 215; 6 (1801), iii–iv. Ibid., 9 (1803), 397.

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form of these biographical memoirs were intended ‘in time . . . [to] form an extensive naval history’ to be consumed by civilian readers.¹⁶³ Because the periodical form enabled particular editorial practices, it was especially conducive to the creation of a national naval history. Periodical form granted the Naval Chronicle a degree of permanence, as was acknowledged by the correspondent who submitted particulars of an action, in recognition that the event ‘deserves to be recorded in some more permanent publication than a Newspaper’.¹⁶⁴ ‘Progressive appearance’ made it possible ‘for errors to be noticed, and for their corrections to be inserted in the same volume,’ thus giving the Naval Chronicle some claim to authoritative status.¹⁶⁵ Periodical form also facilitated the economies of space faced by those ambitious enough to attempt a comprehensive naval history of Britain. The ability to refer to complementary accounts in existing volumes removed writers from the obligation of endlessly recounting the celebrated battles in which so many of the chronicled heroes had served.¹⁶⁶ Thus, officers incidentally mentioned in the text might be given a short biographical account in a footnote, and footnotes often directed readers to earlier volumes, where different versions of actions could be found, or more complete descriptions, or further services of officers incidentally mentioned. In this way the Naval Chronicle avoided being sidetracked into discussions of particular battle histories and maintained the focus on individual achievement, honour, and virtue that was central to its perceived moral utility. The editors had formed this expansive estimation of the utility of naval biography, because of the intensive reading they anticipated in the literary public sphere. Their task was to arrange and assemble ‘authentic documents’ that went ‘beyond the mere Gazette letters of the day’.¹⁶⁷ These permitted deeper study, a study not generally permitted in the abbreviated formats of the gazette letter and newspaper. Close engagement with texts was the expected practice. Indeed, the Naval Chronicle privileged the introspection of the audience (in their role as appreciative spectators). This can be seen in the department of ‘Naval Poetry’, the one section to which land-based readers could reasonably contribute. ¹⁶³ ¹⁶⁴ ¹⁶⁶ ¹⁶⁷

Naval Chronicle, 1 (1799), 212–20. See also ibid., 1 (1799), 423. Ibid., 13 (1805), 272. ¹⁶⁵ Ibid., 1 (1799), i–iv. For the editor’s announcement of this policy, see ibid., 7 (1802), 16. Ibid., 1 (1799), ii.

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Its poems were meant to be read alongside Gazette letters and authentic accounts. Highly interactive, their moment of literary genesis was often explicitly linked to the act of reading earlier numbers of the Naval Chronicle.¹⁶⁸ Considered in this sense, the biographical sketches emerge as important patriotic texts, sustaining a meditative engagement with heroic subjects. The Naval Chronicle’s publishers made a practice of reprinting biographies from earlier issues and selling them as back issues. In 1805, they could report that they had ‘lately reprinted Admiral Knowles’ Memoir for the fifth time, and with considerable additions,’ while that of Admiral Howe ‘has gone through many impressions, and is again out of print’.¹⁶⁹ Through these biographies, the Naval Chronicle became central to the construction of British naval heroism in the period after the Nile. But it is important to understand the periodicals’ ambiguous relationship to the contemporary flood tide of naval celebrity. For the Naval Chronicle was partly a reaction against, and partly a capitulation to, the intensification of victory culture. It was determinedly a product for the literary public sphere and considered that it served as a corrective to popular enthusiasm. Popularity was often polarized to learned appreciation in its pages. Contributors held that ‘the contemplative mind may join in the general shout which attends an hero’s triumph,’ but considered that their pages were given over to ‘rational entertainment’.¹⁷⁰ And while at times it delivered warnings concerning the evanescent quality of ‘the applauses of the multitude’, for the most part the Naval Chronicle focused on providing a proper direction for victory culture.¹⁷¹ An explicit aim of the periodical had been to give an appropriately loyalist spin to discussions in the ‘field of Mars’. Editors held that ‘amid the feverish agitation of such repeated and glorious victories, [the public] appear[ed] to have formed an incorrect, and confined idea, of this subject of National Exultation.’¹⁷² In 1802 they bemoaned that ‘the solid and permanent ¹⁶⁸ See for instance, ‘On reading the interesting anecdote in the Life of Earl St. Vincent’, ibid., 4 (1800), 497–8; ‘On the death of Samuel Hayes, who was killed in the Action between the Phoebe frigate, Captain Robert Barlow, and the Africane frigate, Captain Magendie [See Gazette Letters, vol. v. page 360.]’; ibid., 6 (1801), 49; and, ‘Stanzas, written extempore by an Officer of the Royal Navy, on Sir James Saumarez being invested with the Order of the Bath (see page 507.)’; ibid., 7 (1802), 43. ¹⁶⁹ Ibid., 13 (1805), v–viii. ¹⁷⁰ Ibid., 4 (1800), 169; 7 (1802), iii–v. Emphasis added. ¹⁷¹ Ibid., 7 (1802), 467. ¹⁷² Ibid., 1 (1799), 155.

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advantages resulting from those victories, have hitherto been lost in the blaze of glory, by which they have been surrounded, and which, while the war continued, was every month rendered more dazzling by new triumphs.’¹⁷³ For this reason, the earliest numbers contained a department of ‘Naval Transactions’ intended to give a fully correct understanding of Britain’s naval achievements during the current war.¹⁷⁴ ‘All in their consequences, and at the different periods in which they were achieved, have equal claims upon this country; and let it be remembered, that the accomplishment of each, in its order, has put the nation in a condition to attain the one in succession.’¹⁷⁵ To this end, the Naval Chronicle worked against the current of naval celebrity, aiming to prevent the privileging of particular heroes or particular victories. Its debut number articulated the ministerialist perspective, arguing that the victories of Hood, Hotham, and Bridport were equivalent to those of Howe, Duncan, and Nelson.¹⁷⁶ Given the extent to which the editors were aligned with important Admiralty figures (in particular Hood, McArthur’s former patron, and Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty), this was not surprising. Members of the Hood family interest were especially selected as subjects for enhancement. Efforts on their behalf were not informed solely by the editors’ sycophantic dispositions, but, rather, fit the larger purpose of combating the vicissitudes within contemporary naval celebrity. Prominent here were the partisan slants so often visible in contests over victory culture. As the editors noted, the biographical memoirs had been launched in part to combat the operation of partisan bias.¹⁷⁷ Thus preaching against partisanship became a theme of the Naval Chronicle. Biographical memoirs of Sir John Moore and Sir Charles Knowles were presented as cautionary tales about the dangers of the ‘party animosity’ that characterized the eighteenth-century navy.¹⁷⁸ And when the biographical sketches of Duncan and St Vincent addressed the highly controversial incidents of Admiral Keppel’s trial, the authors pretended that both subjects had remained admirably immune from the partisan conflicts of that earlier day.¹⁷⁹ ¹⁷³ ¹⁷⁴ ¹⁷⁵ ¹⁷⁷ ¹⁷⁸ ¹⁷⁹

Naval Chronicle, (1802), iii–v. Ibid., 1 (1799), 212–20; 1 (1799), 423. Ibid., 1 (1799), 155. ¹⁷⁶ Ibid., 1 (1799), 155–9. Ibid., 1 (1799), ii; 1 (1799), 89. Ibid., 3 (1800), 421–51; 1 (1799), 89–123. The quotation is from p. 114. Ibid., 4 (1800), 7; 4 (1800), 87–8.

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Efforts to depoliticize naval history conformed to the general loyalist project of erecting uncritical, pro-ministerial perspectives as hegemonic truths within British political culture. But the effort also accorded with the envious disposition some close to the naval service held concerning contemporary naval celebrity. A large part of the Naval Chronicle’s potential readership consisted of half-pay officers—qualified naval careerists who had been unable to obtain commissions during the present conflict. The editors attempted to placate this group, serving up apologias for the operation of naval interest, combined with exhortations to imitate the patience of those heroes who had been ‘passed over’ at points in their career. In this framing naval celebrity was the insidious result of naval ‘interest’ and random chance. ‘Biography’, the editors held, ‘would lose a very considerable portion of its interest, [if it] only called forth its energies to celebrate the hero that was successful.’¹⁸⁰ Thus the sketches in the Naval Chronicle stressed the invariability of heroism in the naval character and called attention to the latent and potential services of all naval officers. The editors even dismissed naval celebrity, at one point referring to the competitive contests of ‘this age of Egotism, and Grasping’.¹⁸¹ Rivalries between naval officers sensitive to their public reputations were a particular problem by this point in the war. After Camperdown, there was ‘so much bickering and jealousy on board the North Sea Fleet’ that Spencer was forced to intervene. Here jealousies had been exacerbated by officers who had supplied self-aggrandizing accounts of the action to the newspapers. This, The Times ruefully noted, proved ‘the impropriety of officers publishing their own partial accounts of naval actions’.¹⁸² In such ways, publicity, fame, and reputation were identified as disruptive influences upon the naval profession, at the same time that they were held to be necessary for success in it. But since the Naval Chronicle was one of the principle organs where officers could publish their individual accounts, this only underlines the periodical’s complicated relationship to the mechanisms of contemporary naval celebrity. Originally intended to stabilize and influence the narratives of naval glory, its experience revealed the difficulties of even as modestly and patriotically appropriate an expansion of the patriotic public sphere as that represented by the move into the wardrooms of the naval service. ¹⁸⁰ Ibid., 2 (1799), 85. ¹⁸² The Times, 8 Jan. 1798.

¹⁸¹ Ibid., 3 (1800), iv.

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Previous studies of naval hagiography have focused on questions of content and ignored the particular contexts of textual production.¹⁸³ The Naval Chronicle reveals that these contexts were informed by assumptions concerning national community, naval masculinity, and social rank. As the editors worked their way towards a more proper identification of the nation with the navy, they consistently addressed the dynamics generated by the composition of the patriotic public sphere. The latter, as this loyalist literary project shows, was not held to be entirely static but was ideally capable of controlled extension. It was the direction this extension was to take that was the real matter for debate, as the following case of the Naval Pillar project indicates. THE NAVAL PILL AR The parameters of publication and the delimited nature of the reading public in this period meant that literary efforts to articulate patriotism and national identity were necessarily circumscribed. Recognizing this, historians of national identity have long been taken with the importance of public monuments and memorial architecture, forms which are generally held to have been more widely accessible than literature and (as a result) more didactically designed.¹⁸⁴ The battle of the Nile gave birth to one of the earliest efforts in this area, the unsuccessful ‘Naval Pillar’ project of 1799–1801, a project whose history has thus far been only partially understood.¹⁸⁵ In the late summer of 1799, this proposed Naval Pillar became the subject of a contemporary debate that, once again, registers the existence of significant dissenting traditions within the broad church of Britain’s patriotic culture. More particularly, the fate of the Naval Pillar project reveals how elite presumptions concerning the nature of the public sphere mitigated the wider process of national identity formation. ¹⁸³ C. I. Hamilton, ‘Naval Hagiography and the Victorian Hero’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980), 381–98; Cynthia Fansler Behrman, Victorian Myths of the Sea (Athens, Oh., 1977); David Eastwood, ‘Robert Southey and the Meanings of Patriotism’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 265–87. ¹⁸⁴ See for instance, Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870–1914’, in Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition. ¹⁸⁵ For brief discussions, see Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero, 338; Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 217.

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Initial calls for a monument to the victories of Howe, St Vincent, and Camperdown were heard in early 1798, but the project was given a decisive impetus by news of the Nile.¹⁸⁶ Formal efforts began in July 1799, when members of the Cabinet, along with the Duke of Clarence, his royal brothers, and other Admiralty figures, initiated a public subscription, employing Alexander Davison, a City shipping contractor and Nelson’s prize agent, as their intermediary.¹⁸⁷ From the start the project had an elite provenance and was informed by the priorities of those involved in gentlemanly reading culture. Always envisioned as a British rival to the monuments of antiquity, these associations were only intensified by the fact that the battle of the Nile had occurred in the geographic space of the ancient world.¹⁸⁸ The commemorative analogies suggested by the ruins of the ancient world came readily to mind, particularly after it was learned that Bonaparte’s Army of Egypt had inscribed the names of its dead on Pompey’s Pillar. This desecration generated the first call for a British monument to the four naval victories modelled directly upon the practices of the ‘nations of antiquity’.¹⁸⁹ Compared to previous monuments and memorials, the Naval Pillar was novel: it was intended to be erected before the end of the war it commemorated; it was meant as a tribute, not to individuals but to the naval service in general; and the strategy of a public subscription (combined with the absence of organizational associations with either St Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey) lent the project secular and public qualities. For all these reasons, the project invited public involvement, and a debate followed in which participants clashed over a range of issues related to the project’s purpose and meaning. Consensus rested on the fundamental ideas that the proposed pillar would ‘compensate’ for the sufferings of sailors’ relatives and friends, ‘perpetuate their valorous deeds to future generations’, and reflect admirably upon the ‘Patriotism and Public Spirit’ of those individuals and corporate bodies who helped finance it.¹⁹⁰ But behind these general charitable, historical, and selfreflecting objectives, lurked a range of particularized interests that reveal, once again, the fractured nature of the patriotic public sphere. ¹⁸⁶ The Times, 12 Jan. 1798; Gentleman’s Magazine, 83 (1798), 24–7, 100. ¹⁸⁷ See Morning Chronicle, 22 July 1799. ¹⁸⁸ See for example Oracle, 12 Oct. 1798. Also True Briton, 29 Nov. 1798; Oracle, 23 Nov. 1798. ¹⁸⁹ Morning Post, 1 Nov. 1798. ¹⁹⁰ True Briton, 24 July 1799; 25 July 1799.

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Much of the early debate concerned the identification of a location and form for the monument. Although its sponsors initially spoke in terms of a pillar, in the end a number of different architectural forms were proposed. And while the committee had named both Portsdown Hill (near Portsmouth) and Blackheath as possible sites, Shooter’s Hill, Hyde Park Corner, the Admiralty, Lincoln’s Inn Square, Bloomsbury, St James’s Park, Dover Cliffs, the Isle of Portland, and the Isle of Wight were all eventually suggested. Choice of location was freighted with significance for the larger meaning of the project and infused with notions concerning the nature of the public sphere. The same was true for the architectural forms proposed, whether column, statue, pyramid, or naval temple. Neither question was debated solely from the perspective of aesthetics. Rather, advocates of particular proposals held that these questions had consequences for the meaning, function, and purpose of the pillar. A belief that the monument could operate on the plebeian masses guided the suggestions made by ‘Mechanic’ in the Morning Herald. Identifying himself as sympathetic to the ‘poor working men’, he was unique among contributors for his opposition to the war and for addressing the role the pillar would play in peacetime. He considered Portsdown Hill ‘improper and ill-chosen for a structure of such national importance’, arguing the area was not commonly visited and was only visible by sailors in the Solent. If placed in London, it would be visible to ‘so many thousands’, including the majority of British mariners and seamen, not many of whom were to be found in Portsmouth when the fleet was laid up.¹⁹¹ Concerns like these were far removed from those expressed in another proposal that saw the Naval Pillar as an opportunity to reclaim a portion of London for the enjoyment of the polite classes. It recommended the erection of a large heroic statue near the precincts of the Admiralty, the hand of which was to hold a brazen lamp suitable for lighting the nearby park and, presumably, to be employed at illuminations. The general object here was to make St James’s Park suitable for ‘an evening’s promenade’, but given the proposal’s appearance in the days immediately preceding the Helder illuminations, it seems possible that the writer equally envisioned the moral elevation of subsequent victory celebrations.¹⁹² The narrow utility of this proposal was satirized by another ¹⁹¹ Morning Herald, 2 Sept. 1799; 17 Sept. 1799.

¹⁹² Ibid., 5 Sept. 1799.

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correspondent, ‘Jason’, who contemptuously equated the suggestion to the idea of memorializing the navy through the construction of a large edifice in Covent Garden, the alcoves of which could do double duty sheltering the market traders during rainstorms, as well as providing a permanent ornamental stage for the Naval Candidates who so commonly submitted themselves at the Westminster election.¹⁹³ The fact that this writer saw an equivalence between a national monument given over to the goal of genteel walks in the park and a national monument exploited for an explicitly political and partisan usage, makes it clear that he was opposed to the attempted politicization of the navy. Indeed, ‘Jason’ was primarily attracted to the notion of the Naval Pillar as a general memorial to British naval heroes of all ranks. A persistent contributor to the debate raging in the pages of the Morning Herald, ‘Jason’ was one of the strongest advocates of the Portsmouth site, a preference he repeatedly justified by arguing that the memorial would be viewed at that location by the largest number of the men it was erected to honour.¹⁹⁴ Jason’s views were consistent with an understanding that the Naval Pillar was unique in addressing a broad and collective audience. It differed from other monuments to military heroes of the period that ‘attempt[ed] not to glorify individuals so much as to create a shrine dedicated to the state for the encouragement of patriotism based on service’. Designed to ‘induce reflections on the value of the service that the hero exemplified’ in the minds of an elite service class, these monuments, ‘look more towards a service class than a nationalistic public’.¹⁹⁵ For Jason and others then, the Naval Pillar was nationalistic and even represented the possibility of reaching illiterate plebeians with a patriotic message. There would always be, they held, ‘a numerous class of men’ who through poverty or illiteracy would be excluded from the literary culture of the field of Mars. These plebeians ‘may not have an opportunity of searching the written records’, but their ‘flame might yet be kindled by witnessing some public and permanent Monument’.¹⁹⁶ Countering the exclusivity of the patriotic public sphere was also in the ¹⁹³ ¹⁹⁴ ¹⁹⁵ ¹⁹⁶

Ibid. Ibid., 6 Sept. 1799. See also his letters of 20 Sept. 1799, and 24 Sept. 1799. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 224, 241; see also Colley, Britons, 177–93. Oracle, 24 Sept. 1799.

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mind of the writer who advocated that the inscriptions on the pillar be written in English, so it could be read by ‘every British Subject of the least learning’.¹⁹⁷ The proposals advanced by Richard Elsam, an architect in the Barrack-master general’s office, help illustrate the centrality of the question of the pillar’s audience. Elsam’s proposal sought the commemorative middle ground. While he included individual statues of St Vincent, Howe, Nelson, and Duncan, the project’s egalitarian drift was discernible in his plan to inscribe four peripheral columns with lists naming ‘all the gallant officers who signalised themselves’ on each occasion. An interior column was to be octagonal, which would provide room for the memorialization of the intermediate and lesser victories of heroes like Saumarez, Sir Sidney Smith, and others. Planned inscriptions were to generally commemorate ‘Heroes by the Nile’ and ‘Heroes of the First of June’. And there was a final egalitarian symbolism in the figure of Britannia who was to top the pillar ‘with a rostral crown in her right hand, held out as a reward for all those heroes who may become votaries in her darling cause’.¹⁹⁸ (See Figure 4.) Just who, then, was the Naval Pillar for? Heroic admirals and common seamen were just two possible answers. A third included those who contributed financially to the project. For the Georgian elite, the manner in which the Naval Pillar reflected upon its sponsors was an important consideration. Donating to the project was another opportunity for patriotic display, as lists of subscribers’ names were regularly published in the newspapers. (Not that this level of publicity necessarily satisfied all donors; W. Nicholson of Cornhill found it necessary to publish letters announcing his 20-guinea contribution in at least two London papers.¹⁹⁹) Subscription efforts have been privileged by historians who tend to view them with a popular legitimacy perceived to be greater than that of state-sponsored efforts, which are held to be tainted as propaganda.²⁰⁰ Missing here is an understanding that contemporary assumptions concerning donor prestige could foster a telling sense of ¹⁹⁷ St. James’s Chronicle, 21–4 Sept. 1799. ¹⁹⁸ Richard Elsam, An Essay on Rural Architecture . . . containing a proposal for a Naval Pillar . . . (London, 1803), 43–4. ¹⁹⁹ Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1799; True Briton, 27 July 1799. ²⁰⁰ Colley, Britons, 222–3; Alison Yarrington, ‘Nelson the citizen hero: state and public patronage of monumental sculpture 1805–18’, Art History, 6 (1983), 326–7.

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Figure 4. Naval Pillar. Richard Elsam (architect and artist), Thomas Tegg (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD 3896), May 1804. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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proprietorship over an ostensibly ‘national’ project, even if voluntarily funded. One contributor, who supported locating the pillar in London, justified his preference by arguing this was most convenient for the majority of subscribers.²⁰¹ Recognizing this proprietary sentiment, some held ‘the idea of erecting a national monument by subscription’ was paradoxical. National honours ‘required both the public purse, and the public power’.²⁰² Such notions raised the question of who—donors or seamen?—was most honoured by the pillar. Indeed, the elisions and qualifications required in order to perfectly articulate the diffuse meanings the project had come to symbolize is illustrated by the poem ‘The Naval Pillar’, published in the Oracle, 10 December 1799. While it praised the achievements of Admirals Howe, St Vincent, Duncan, and Nelson, and closed with a line insisting the pillar was equally a memorial to the common seaman, the poem was subtitled ‘Lines inscribed to Alexander Davison’, and contained an introductory note declaring that it was furthermore ‘Intended as an Address to the British Nation, but more particularly to those who have so liberally contributed to the Erection of the proposed naval column in Honour of our four glorious victories.’²⁰³ The debate over the Naval Pillar raged in terms that make clear the underlying concern for all parties was their conception of the patriotic public sphere. There were voices resistant to its extension and others calling for its radical democratization. One participant in the gentlemanly reading culture (who claimed a superior status as a ‘Purchaser and Constant Reader of your paper’) held that public monuments were ineffective and irrelevant to the national purpose. The published texts of the literary public sphere were superior to the task: ‘the happy effects and the faithful page of history will do more justice to our naval heroism, and tend more effectively to inspire emulation, than a Pillar as wonderful as the Tower of Babylon.’²⁰⁴ This was a determinedly elitist perspective, similar to that held by those who, while supportive of the pillar, did not believe that the project should be guided by any interest in addressing a ²⁰¹ Oracle, 15 Oct. 1799. ²⁰² John Cartwright, The Trident: or, the National Policy of Naval Celebration (London, 1802), 7; see also, Critical Review, 37 (2) (1803), 139. ²⁰³ Oracle, 10 Dec. 1799. ²⁰⁴ Ibid., 8 Oct. 1799. Emphasis in original.

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plebeian audience. Writing in support of a London location, ‘Dinocrates’ dismissed the frequently raised objection that ‘common sailors’ were less likely to visit the capital, arguing that the vulgar order to which ‘Jack Tar’ belonged was incapable of being affected by monumental forms: ‘although we owe much of our success to them (and to whom praise is due), it is strong habits, the impulse of occasion, and animal courage, that operate in them far more than the finer and more noble sentiments, which this Pillar is intended to perpetuate and excite.’²⁰⁵ The most radical extension—and most extensive reform—of the patriotic public sphere was that advanced by the doyen of popular radicalism, Major John Cartwright. Cartwright’s proposed naval temple, the Hieronauticon—a St Paul’s scale structure intended to become the eighth wonder of the world—was an incredibly ambitious project. Because of its size, related cost, and complexity, it never stood a chance of being erected. But The Trident—the 200-page work in which Cartwright published the full details of his project—operated as a serious political text.²⁰⁶ Far from being an ancillary architectural fantasy, Cartwright’s naval temple was grounded in contemporary debate and integral to the politics of victory culture. A number of radical political perspectives were articulated in The Trident. With respect to the tributary object of the Naval Pillar project, it advocated the widest possible commemorative remit. Monuments were assigned not only for the great admirals and actions of the period, but also for individuals active in almost every imaginable naval or maritime pursuit. There were memorials for surveyors of the navy and officers of the dockyards, shipwrights, carpenters, labourers of the royal dockyards, and even honours for those artists and writers who had contributed, in their way, to Britain’s naval superiority. Cartwright’s temple, then, was commemoratively democratic. It was also politically radical, devoted to the promotion of Cartwright’s conception of the British navy as a constitutional force rooted in national defence. In an expansion of a contemporary radical constitutional narrative, Cartwright held that the navy was a gift of Alfred the Great to his people for the preservation of their liberty. Consequently, much of the temple’s iconography advocated radical perspectives on English constitutionalism. A statue of Albion ²⁰⁵ Morning Herald, 21 Sept. 1799. ²⁰⁶ Few historians have passed anything other than incidental comments on Cartwright’s project. Linda Colley characterized it as proto-fascistic, ‘Apotheosis’, 128.

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symbolically linked naval dominion, trial by jury, and democratically organized militias (all inheritances that Cartwright claimed originated with Alfred).²⁰⁷ And where The Trident’s decorative designs did not assert a distinctly radical symbolism, they set forth carefully modulated renderings of the conventional tropes of patriotic culture, as in the tableaux of heroic death that Cartwright specifically intended to ‘mix the sentiment of the calamities of war, which should never be kept out of sight, with its glories’.²⁰⁸ All this was related to the sense in which The Trident sought to reform victory culture from the perspective of popular radicalism. For Cartwright’s proposal was not just to build a naval temple, but also to invent a series of public celebrations and spectacles that aimed to replace the contemporary forms of victory celebrations. The Hieronauticon was conceived ‘as a monument of national glory, a nursery of national art’— but also, importantly as ‘a school of national manners and public virtue’.²⁰⁹ To meet with the latter objectives, Cartwright proposed two types of ceremonies: triennial naval games, modelled after the ancient Greek Olympics; and ‘occasional celebrations’, an elaborate series of investitures and thanksgivings that were to replace the current victory illuminations, festivities, and honours. The naval games were pragmatically intended to promote naval prowess and provide a regular spectacle of naval patriotism. Cartwright’s reformist ambitions were most apparent in the occasional celebrations. Crucially, these victory celebrations blended official state spectacle with popular festivity. They aimed to combine the essential elements of victory culture in a manner that appealed to all ranks and would achieve ‘a polish and elevation of the national manners and mind’.²¹⁰ Along with formal ceremonials at which naval heroes would be invested with their honours, the plans called for popular festivals designed to attract the ‘multitudes’.²¹¹ Taverns and public houses were to be incorporated into the temple’s construction. Cartwright envisioned these as sites of plebeian revelry, where ‘the Alison Yarrington labelled it a ‘preposterous structure, part monument and part leisure centre’ that was ‘totally unrealistic’, The Commemoration of the Hero, 341. ²⁰⁷ Cartwright, The Trident, 79, 63–6, 53–8, 146, 99–107, 149–53, and 101. ²⁰⁸ Ibid. 72. ²⁰⁹ John Cartwright, England’s Aegis; or, the Military Energies of the Empire. (London, 1804), 73. ²¹⁰ Cartwright, The Trident, 13. ²¹¹ Ibid. 32.

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friends of the honest tars of old England might . . . drink their wine . . . sing a song . . . [or] recount old stories of battles and sieges’.²¹² (Perhaps mindful of the excesses of illuminations, Cartwright urged caution here, concerned that the festivals and fairs ‘be carefully regulated, and effectually guarded from falling into licentiousness’.)²¹³ Consistent with the theme of moral elevation, he proposed bringing aspects of elite literary culture to the people. The elegiac poetry of the elite was to be recited at these ceremonies; and literary competitions were to be held for efforts in poetry and ‘national naval history’. Relief sculptures illustrating incidents from the lives of Britain’s naval heroes were intended to ‘excit[e] in all beholders a taste for biographical studies’.²¹⁴ And the temple’s classical motif, far from circumscribing popular understanding, was, in Cartwright’s mind, designed to give prospective naval youths ‘a taste for classic and useful reading’.²¹⁵ Cartwright’s Trident was premissed on both the desirability and possibility of elite cultural values percolating into plebeian society. Cartwright was optimistic in this regard—others more sceptical. At the height of the debate over the Naval Pillar project, the Covent Garden company mounted a play that underlined the unlikelihood that a national community could be formed in such a way. Thomas John Dibdin’s The Naval Pillar; or, Britannia Triumphant debuted at Covent Garden on 7 October 1799. Its humour was sourced in the inversions that could occur in a community when the boundaries of the patriotic public sphere were excessively transgressed. The plot of The Naval Pillar centred on a village meeting held by a local committee to erect a naval pillar. Some common seamen attend, but before the men of the village can determine exactly what form their monument will take, the meeting is interrupted by the local women, who mock the efforts of the committee: ‘while you were only talking, we have been better employed, and come to invite your presence at a festival, where you will behold a feeble attempt on our part at what national gratitude may one day bring to perfection’. The play concludes with the patriotic representation that the women have prepared.²¹⁶ Much of The Naval Pillar’s humour and force was achieved by satirizing elite practices in the patriotic sphere. In the village meeting Dibdin ²¹² Ibid. 30–4. ²¹³ Ibid. 199. ²¹⁶ Dibdin, The Naval Pillar, scene III.

²¹⁴ Ibid. 157.

²¹⁵ Ibid. 38.

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parodies the self-interested nature of the architectural symbolism contained in the Naval Pillar proposals—each employs an iconography specific to a separate sectarian constituency. Under scrutiny here was the sense that advocates of the Naval Pillar subverted the project to their own interests and privileged their own perspectives about what was appropriate in the patriotic public sphere. Not that the play was constructed as an exclusive attack upon elite patriotism—the lower orders were gently ridiculed as well. At the same time that it sent up the priorities of elite patriotism, The Naval Pillar delighted in the incongruous circumstance of plebeian orders playing with elite forms (exemplified in their disastrous management of the committee meeting, the women’s erection of their own imitation naval pillar, and the singing of the song which parodied the classical form of the anacreontic—commonly used in serious patriotic panegyric). All this was underscored by frequent reminders that plebeians did not fully comprehend the codes of victory culture. One reiterated notion was that common seamen did not understand the significance of elite efforts to memorialize their achievements. A song (‘In praise of the Tars who have leather’d the World’) counterpoises the elite honours and rewards of victory culture to the greater respect and honour the Tars feel they have earned from the world and the sea; it emphasized the seaman’s distance from the ‘gallipots, parchments . . . ditties, . . . jokes, and orations’ of gentlemanly literary culture.²¹⁷ Dibdin’s willingness to burlesque victory culture may explain why one critic found The Naval Pillar ‘despicable’ and dismissed it as a ‘Dramatic abortion’. Nonetheless the play was a popular success.²¹⁸ But ironically, Dibdin’s play was the only Naval Pillar that ended up being produced. In April 1801, the proposed pillar was abandoned.²¹⁹ Why? Fund-raising was a problem—but not because the projected cost of £15,000 was extreme. The larger fund-raising problem may have been related to the proprietary tensions noted above. That the campaign raised only £2,300 may have been because the device of published subscription lists failed to offer wealthy donors the level of publicity and local celebrity they desired. (Certainly Lord Romney’s £21 donation contrasts bizarrely with ²¹⁷ Dibdin, The Naval Pillar, scene III. ²¹⁸ True Briton, 8 Oct. 1799; see also, Star, 8 Oct. 1799; Oracle, 8 Oct. 1799; Sun, 8 Oct. 1799; Morning Herald, 8 Oct. 1799; Monthly Mirror, 18 (1799), 237; British Critic, 14 (1799), 669. ²¹⁹ The Times, 18 Apr. 1801.

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the £15,000 he spent on his royal fête.²²⁰) But more generally, the Naval Pillar project collapsed as a result of the fundamental disagreement over its meaning. When the proprietary nature of a patriotic project was clear—when the process could be controlled—private individuals and corporate bodies could wade in with confidence. Donors were obviously less forthcoming if they disapproved of the political associations accruing to the project, and for many loyalists, this was very much the case. From their perspective the Naval Pillar was not sufficiently partisan. For even though the project was a Cabinet-led effort under royal sponsorship, many Whigs and the Opposition press welcomed the project and did not question the political nature of its origin. The Duke of Norfolk was among the first subscribers, and the Whig Duke of Bedford offered to donate a site in his Bloomsbury holdings.²²¹ If this had come to pass, it would have seen the Naval Pillar constructed in a new square immediately adjacent to Bedford House, ‘to be called Victory Place’.²²² Such symbolism was unacceptable to loyalism, elements of which were sensing that the real problem with the project was that it did not advance a sufficiently triumphant ministerial message. There was concern that moderates were carrying the day with their conception of the pillar as a general naval service monument. In this respect, the Oracle’s call for all parties to unite behind the Naval Pillar project was a red herring—a specious declaration, aimed at subordinating the project to loyalism.²²³ Others felt a new project was necessary to get out the real message and suggested that a Pillar be erected specifically to the ministers under whose direction the brilliant victories had been won. The proposed monument was decidedly partisan, commemorating the ‘exalted services’ of Pitt, Dundas, and other ministers, while advancing the governmental interpretation of the battle of the Nile.²²⁴ In the end the political ²²⁰ An estimate of the projected cost is given in the Morning Chronicle, 20 July 1799; Elsam claimed that Davison raised £2,300 for the project, An Essay on Rural Architecture, 42–3. In Liverpool in 1806, the public subscription for a monument to Nelson raised £9,000 in a matter of months, see Yarrington, ‘Nelson the citizen hero’, 320. Concerns over cost were expressed in the Morning Herald, 19 Sept. 1799, but not mentioned when it was dropped, The Times, 18 Apr. 1801; Yarrington has pointed out that local and civic pride were crucial to the success of monuments in provincial cities, see ibid. 326. ²²¹ Morning Chronicle, 22 July 1799. ²²² Ibid., 28 Aug. 1799. See also a similar proposal, Gentleman’s Magazine, 84 (1798), 1014. ²²³ Oracle, 14 Sept. 1799. ²²⁴ Ibid., 21 Sept. 1799; 28 Sept. 1799.

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calendar offers the final evidence that the Naval Pillar died due to a partisan struggle. The Committee on the Naval Pillar was composed of leading Pittites, all of whom left office in March 1801—in the same month the project was shelved.²²⁵ Thus a Pittite experiment in patriotic culture lapsed alongside the government whose accomplishments it was designed to advance. This collapse occurred, not because loyalism had given way to a broader non-partisan patriotism, but because it had—on this occasion—failed to maintain the symbolic exclusivity it desired.²²⁶ Most accounts of loyalist, monarchical, military, and state spectacle in this period invoke the events they examine as if the political and cultural resolution of their message were clear-cut.²²⁷ It is rarely recognized that significant divisions over the meaning of such efforts existed, even between groups who shared the same general political goals. Division, debate, and fractures were as evident as shared outlooks and assumptions. As the debate over the Naval Pillar project most dramatically indicates, a wide range of opinion could be masked by patriotic projects generally held to be ‘good ideas’. Most importantly, as this chapter has shown, there were a whole range of debates concerning the nature of the patriotic public sphere, none of which was incidental. Discussions over monumental art were about more than simple aesthetics, concerns over illumination were about more than public safety, and literary projects in naval glory operated as more than information almanacs. Ultimately, these debates call into question the very concept of national identity that Linda Colley argues was developing in this period. In Britons, the process of national identity and citizenship formation emerged as the inexorable result of a series of social dynamics: one of the most important of which was the fraternity experienced in a range of collective patriotic projects. But it is perhaps equally useful to be aware of the sense in which these dynamics were undercut and resisted in important contemporary conversations over the extension of the public sphere. The most recent examination of cultural nationalism in wartime Britain by J. E. Cookson has argued strongly for an understanding of ²²⁵ Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 146. ²²⁶ For another view, see Cookson’s comment in The British Armed Nation, 217–18. ²²⁷ Colley, Britons; Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 209–45; Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 139–65; Morris, The British Monarchy and the French Revolution, 134–87; Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero.

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patriotism as a highly generalized sense of opposition to the French foreign ‘other’. He is also particularly insistent that this ‘national defence patriotism’ was significantly different and distanced from the loyalist project of the early 1790s. But Cookson also attempts to effect a closure between loyalism before 1798 (seen as a political campaign waged against plebeian political agency) and patriotism after 1798 (seen as a broad-based, philanthropically oriented expression of ‘national unanimity’ against the specific French threat). He points to a range of civic and urban patriotic efforts—the voluntary contribution, the Patriotic Fund, and the Naval Pillar—which he sees as indicative of a general trend that saw a politically exclusive loyalist discourse supplanted by a socially open and ideologically generalized patriotism, a patriotism ‘above party’. This chapter, in its attention to the partisan investment in the battle of the Nile, the Naval Chronicle, and the Naval Pillar challenges this view, revealing that concerns for the agency of the lower and middling orders also obtained through the period. And it is worth noting that the voluntary contribution and Patriotic Fund subscriptions (both of which Cookson believes effectively laid down a ‘rhetorical base’ for the ‘social mobilisation and consensus-building extending to the lower orders’) could be undermined by the conceptions of social distance that we have traced in the patriotic public sphere.²²⁸ True, contributions for the Patriotic Fund were sought in language that emphasized the expected role all ranks could play. But this socially open rhetoric was to some degree a loyalist vision rather than a reality. Indeed, there were ‘parts of the kingdom where the Institution at Lloyd’s has never been heard of ’ where ‘it is only known to those who read the reports of its proceedings in the newspapers’. Moreover, there were many modest donors ‘who would shrink from the idea of paying a shilling on the counter of a Banking-house’.²²⁹ The parameters of subscription were thus fundamentally restricted. And if these efforts were more socially restricted than their rhetoric allows, it is also necessary to recognize the degree to which they too remained infused with distinctly partisan tinges. The voluntary contribution employed precisely the partisan loyalist discourse that Cookson feels was running its course. Loyalist puffs promoting the

²²⁸ Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 212–17. ²²⁹ The Times, 22 Nov. 1805.

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voluntary contribution counterpoised the loyalty of ‘our soldiers and our sailors’ to our ‘Internal Enemies’, the ‘Jacobins’.²³⁰ The capital’s campaign in February 1798 was launched with a benefit première of George Watson Taylor’s England Preserved, a patriotic offering whose bill was altered to incorporate a series of personal tributes to members of the Hood faction who (along with some newly promoted members of the Cabinet) were in attendance.²³¹ After the play had concluded with an exhortation in support of the contribution, and a group of seamen appeared on stage to sing naval songs, both Admirals Bridport and Hood were brought forward by the house, toasted, and received ovations.²³² Once again, a familiar naval symbolism was deployed to partisan effect. This remained the case eight months later, in the wake of the battle of the Nile, when, as we have seen, the patriotic sphere remained intensely partisan and socially circumscribed. ²³⁰ Oracle, 9 Feb. 1798. ²³¹ Ibid., 8 Feb. 1798. ²³² Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 11 Feb. 1798.

4 Contesting Naval Heroism We have heard, indeed, of wars and rumours of wars; we have read accounts of battles; gazettes have afforded us lists of the slain; and we have occasionally seen mutilated wretches . . . wander about the streets . . . But we have never witnessed here the dreadful shock of contending armies . . . Conceiving of war by the images of it which are presented to our observation in our own peaceful island; by reviews, parades, and military processions; we have no adequate idea of its real picture: we associate with it the notion of pomp, and splendour, and gaiety; and have no apprehension that its actual characteristics are fury, and barbarity, horror, misery, and despair. Revd Richard Warner, 5 December 1806.¹

Were patriotic representations of war inherently idealized? Were the threats and realities of war conveniently ignored in the patriotic public sphere? Did patriotic projects (whether literary, monumental, or spectacular) draw their strength and value from their ability to misrepresent war? Richard Warner, the Foxite curate of St James’s, Bath thought so. Those who heard his sermon for the general thanksgiving for Trafalgar on 5 December 1805 were presented with his critique of loyalist propaganda and victory culture. By the time Warner’s sermon made it into print, in May 1806, his criticisms had widened. Outraged by what he saw as the exploitation of the pulpit in the interest of loyalism, Warner attached a polemical introduction and a biographical sketch of Pitt to the published version of his sermon, which he dedicated to Fox. Warner’s political purpose may have been well served by his characterization of loyalist propaganda as inherently false and inauthentic (as a ‘sharp language ¹ Richard Warner, National Blessings reasons for Religious Gratitude: a sermon preached . . . December 5, 1805, the day of the general thanksgiving (Bath, 1806), 29.

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of invective’ and a ‘high-flown language of personal panegyric’), but the same approach, when it has materialized as an analytical framework in historical studies, has not worked particularly well.² Several historians of the period have taken the loyalist message seriously, and have explored its potential impact on popular attitudes and ‘public opinion’.³ Linda Colley, most famously, has called upon historians of the period to take loyalist rhetoric and patriotism seriously.⁴ To her, this has sometimes meant accepting its manifestations at face value. But as this chapter shows, it is necessary to understand how meaning was created and experienced. By investigating the productive processes and textual dynamics discernible in patriotic discourse we certainly move no closer to uncovering what exactly Georgian popular opinion was—but we do move significantly closer to understanding the real social and political dynamic that shaped and informed the efforts in the patriotic public sphere, and the assumptions and understandings that lay behind them. The last chapter focused primarily upon debates and struggles over projects in the patriotic public sphere, debates that expressed a wider concern with the very boundaries of that public sphere. This chapter pushes that investigation further, and suggests that concerns about the democratization of the patriotic public sphere were closely linked to the awareness that symbolic meanings could not be controlled or managed. For Richard Warner, the claim that false representations of war were ascendant was a tool intended to motivate those enraged about the political objects to which these representations were directed. It did not serve his purpose to acknowledge that his description of patriotic culture was disingenuous caricature. Patriotic representations were not experienced as empty shows of loyalist propaganda and rhetoric. Nor did they distance and efface the threat of war simply through spectacle’s perceived ability to attract and beguile. As will be shown, ‘lists of the slain’, ‘mutilated wretches’, ‘reviews, parades, and military processions’, and the naval heroes of the day, together took their place in a victory culture that could never have simply ignored the realities of war. The victory culture of the period mediated uncertainties as much as it papered them over. It was able to do so, because the process witnessed the agency and operation of a number of interests and groups. ² Richard Warner, National Blessings reasons for Religious Gratitude: a sermon preached . . . December 5, 1805, the day of the general thanksgiving (Bath, 1806), vi, viii. ³ Dickinson, ‘Popular conservatism and militant loyalism’; Macleod, A War of Ideas, 179–200. ⁴ Colley, Britons, 1–9.

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This is powerfully revealed in the contemporary construction of Nelson’s meaning. Nelson was the most successful admiral of the period—in part this accounts for why he was the most celebrated. He was also more attuned to self-advertisement than many of his colleagues, and in some measure this too explains the relative scale of his fame.⁵ That Nelson’s achievements would make him famous can be taken as self-evident. But what those achievements signified was open to debate. Nelson’s renown between the Nile and his death at Trafalgar makes him an ideal subject for exploring the mechanisms of late Georgian patriotic culture. It was explicitly in response to the loyalist exploitation of Nelson’s image that Warner published his sermon. He had particularly objected to a passage in a rival’s sermon in which Pitt, Nelson, and Cornwallis were presented as a loyalist triumvirate. Warner’s protest against such loyalist usage was not an isolated epilogue to the career of the ‘Hero of the Nile’. Rather, Warner’s objection exemplifies one of the fundamental features of Nelson’s celebrity, that it was open to use from a variety of partisan perspectives, up to his death and beyond. As a result his image became, perhaps, one of the major sites in which discourses concerning heroism, masculinity, the war, and the navy circulated. Because of this, an investigation of the meanings attached to Nelson during his lifetime and beyond becomes something more than a historicist exercise in recovering the basis of his contemporary popularity.⁶ Rather, it is revealed to be a crucial site for struggles to define the experience of war and its relationship to patriotism. By necessity, then, this chapter commences its examination of contests over naval patriotism in the period 1798 to 1806 with an exploration of the efforts to construct and attach meaning to the career of Admiral Nelson. In April 1799, the Gentleman’s Magazine reprinted a copy of a letter sent by Nelson’s clergyman father to an acquaintance who had written to him, in the afterglow of the Nile, to congratulate him on his son’s achievement: My great and good son went into the world without fortune, but with a heart replete with every moral and religious virtue—these have been his compass to steer by: and it has pleased God to be his shield on the day of Battle, and to give ⁵ A recent biography, Terry Coleman, The Nelson Touch: The Life and Legend of Horatio Nelson (Oxford, 2002), is particularly attentive to Nelson’s efforts at self-promotion. ⁶ For an alternative reading of Nelson’s popularity, see Jordan, ‘Admiral Nelson as popular hero’.

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success to his wishes, to be of service to his country. His country seems sensible of his services—but, should he ever meet with ingratitude, his scars will cry out and plead his cause; for at the siege of Bastia he lost an eye; at Tenerife, an arm; on the memorable 14th of February, he received a severe blow on his body which he now feels, and now [at the Nile] a wound on his head.

In its next number, the embarrassed periodical was compelled to admit the item was not authentic. In the long run, this has turned out not to be the case—an original of this letter does exist—but at the time the editors believed that they had been duped.⁷ Why? Although it is impossible to discover what led them to doubt its provenance, it is not hard to see why they had initially been convinced of the letter’s legitimacy—because it so perfectly (too perfectly, it must have later seemed) encapsulated the meanings with which Horatio Nelson was being imaginatively invested. By focusing upon the paternal origins of Nelson’s religious piety, his modest social origins, the cumulative wounding of his body, and his country’s recognition of his services, it fastened on those characteristics which were crucial to his contemporary audience and which came to predominate in their engagement with Nelson. Because Nelson’s birth was inseparable from the significance attached to the position to which he rose in British society, the letter can be taken to have located Nelson’s contemporary significance in relation to three factors: religiosity, merit, and wounding. In the following sections, the manner in which each of these associations was attached to Nelson will be considered.⁸ THE CHRISTIAN HERO AT THE NILE When the Gazette containing Nelson’s dispatch from the ‘Mouth of the Nile’ was released, it received an intensive reading in the coffee-houses of London and beyond. Its opening lines, ‘Almighty God has blessed His Majesty’s Arms in the late Battle, by a great Victory . . . ’, resonated so well with their audience that their revisitation in the following weeks ⁷ Gentleman’s Magazine, 85 (1799), 344; correction given in Gentleman’s Magazine, 85 (1799), 392. My thanks to Marianne Czisnik, of the University of Edinburgh, who has alerted me to the existence of the original of this letter. ⁸ It is worth noting that several of the anecdotes concerning Nelson that are today taken as canonical were not nearly as well known during his lifetime. His words upon disobeying Hyde Parker’s signal to retreat at Copenhagen (‘You know I have but one eye,

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became almost ritualized.⁹ They were read out in Parliament by Lord Minto, formed one of the major themes in the Thanksgiving Sermons delivered for the Nile,¹⁰ and the dispatch itself became a commercial product. A ‘Transcript, in ornamental penmanship’ was marketed to ‘the Nobility, Gentry, and the public in general’. The text, in the words of its retailer, would ‘transmit to posterity what must ever be considered as highly creditable to the piety and candour of the heroic author’.¹¹ A cursory glance at Nelson’s private and professional correspondence demonstrates that his expressions of faith were sincere.¹² What demands explanation is why they became so strikingly resonant for his contemporary audience. In this sense, it is crucial to note that from the start the information was deployed with an eye towards difference and national identity. Nelson’s attitude to religion was dramatically juxtaposed with the controversial uses made of faith by Bonaparte.¹³ The latter’s putative conversion to Islam (made as a gesture to solidify alliances during his Egyptian adventure) had only recently scandalized Christian Europe. These comparisons were developed more fully in a number of Thanksgiving Sermons, but formed only one aspect of the cultural engagement with the English admiral’s piety.¹⁴ Equally serviceable for national identity was the manner in which Nelson’s piety and family background could be framed to reflect upon the general values and advantages of the British state. The cyclical regeneration of naval talent (i.e. the notion that the and must keep that on the enemy’) serves as a case in point. It was related in a footnote to Edward Orme, Orme’s Graphic History of the Life, Exploits, and Death of Horatio Nelson (London, 1806). But see also, Coleman, The Nelson Touch, 258–60. ⁹ Oracle, 3 Oct. 1798. ¹⁰ Morning Chronicle, 22 Nov. 1798; see George Henry Glasse, Mr. Glasse’s Sermon, preached at New-Brentford, on Sunday, October 28, 1798 (Brentford, 1798), 15; Thomas B. Clarke, Proofs of Providence and Divine Protection. A sermon preached at Grosvenor Chapel on November 29, 1798. The day of public thanksgiving for the success of his Majesty’s arms (London, 1798), 5. ¹¹ Morning Chronicle, 23 Nov. 1798. ¹² Gerald Jordan has viewed Nelson’s religiosity primarily in terms of his popularity within the navy, large numbers of whom he feels actively desired to practise a shipboard faith. Jordan, ‘Admiral Nelson as popular hero’, 111–12. ¹³ St. James’s Chronicle, 2–4 Oct. 1798. See also, True Briton, 4 Oct. 1798. ¹⁴ Glasse, Mr. Glasse’s Sermon, preached at New-Brentford, on Sunday, October 28, 1798, 13; Thomas Rennell, A Sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons, on the 29th of November, 1798, at the church of St. Margaret, Westminster, being the day of General Thanksgiving for the Success of His Majesty’s Arms (London, 1798); John Buckner, A Sermon, preached at the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster, before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, on Thursday, November 29, 1798, being the Day appointed for a public Thanksgiving (London, 1798), 21; British Critic, 13 (1799), 556.

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nation’s sons would naturally arise to take their places in the ‘chapter of admirals’) was a staple theme in the rhetoric of naval supremacy. Nelson’s case attached religious and moral elevation to a trope that had previously concentrated on the physiological traits and innate professional talents that were held to be the source of the nation’s naval character. Thus it could be boasted that ‘Admiral Nelson was educated in pure and sound principles, under a venerable Parent’.¹⁵ The sense in which this was held to reflect pleasingly upon the institutions of British society was one reason why it was felt that Nelson’s father deserved some advancement in the Church of England.¹⁶ Rewarding Nelson’s father was not simply another way of complimenting the son; it was a recognition of the services rendered to the nation through the devotional schooling of the son, and a celebratory advertisement of Britain’s religious and moral resources. The domestic applications of Nelson’s pious dispatch become all the more intriguing when they are compared to the manner in which it was utilized within the British fleet. What this comparison underlines is that the naval symbols, gestures, behaviours, and identities separately constructed for shipboard audiences were often difficult to represent in terms of the priorities of the patriotic public sphere. Frequently, the transposition of naval episodes into the domestic realm involved changes in the focus of their meaning. This can be seen in an episode from Portsmouth during the celebrations for the Nile. It shows that the interests privileged by the literary public sphere sometimes struggled with the representation of naval culture. In the second week after the arrival of the news of the Nile, the True Briton related ‘with great pleasure . . . a circumstance that reflects much credit on the zeal and attention of Admiral Parker, the Commander in Chief at Portsmouth’. The paper described how the admiral, ‘not satisfied with the general rejoicing, which he had conspicuously contributed to,’ had over one thousand copies of Nelson’s Gazette posted throughout the environs of Portsmouth and Portsea. Moreover, Parker: gave out public orders that all the Ships at Spithead, St. Helen’s, and in the Harbour, should have one of them placed against the mainmast, for the Seamen to read, and on Sunday se’nnight, after Divine Service, by his order the ¹⁵ Oracle, 30 Nov. 1798. See also, Revd John Gardiner, A Tribute to the Memory of Lord Nelson: in a sermon preached on the general thanksgiving day, December 5, 1805, in the Octagon-Chapel, Bath (Bath, 1798), 16. ¹⁶ True Briton, 24 Nov. 1798.

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Extraordinary Gazette was read on board each Ship by the Chaplain, or the Captains of such as had no Clergymen. Sir Peter Parker had given particular instructions for that part of Sir Horatio Nelson’s Dispatches, in which, next to Divine Providence, he attributes the Great Victory to the high state of discipline of the Ships’ Companies, to be strongly marked and impressed on the minds of the Seamen. This measure has given some very general satisfaction both on shore and on board; the Seamen expressed their sense of the Commander in Chief ’s goodness, in making known to them the particulars of this glorious achievement, and the observations made upon the Glory to England, from Discipline and Subordination, appeared to be seriously felt.¹⁷

This was a powerful vision of patriotic celebration put on an edifying footing, one in which the Gazette text united distant readers and naval seamen in a shared literary experience. But Parker’s actions were as much authoritarian gestures necessitated by the symbolic theatre of shipboard discipline as they were ‘contributions’ to the ‘general rejoicing’. The account equally marked his celebratory ‘zeal’ as his ‘attention’ to naval ‘discipline’. And in this sense, it conformed to the manner in which Nelson’s dispatches from the Nile were read within the navy itself. Parker’s deployment of Nelson’s dispatch as a text of naval loyalty and a tool of fleet discipline matched the significance that Sir Edward Berry, Nelson’s flag-captain at the battle of the Nile, attached to his commander’s pious example. Like Nelson and Parker, Berry had an interest in promoting fleet discipline. The account of the Nile that he published in December 1798 considered the promotion of shipboard religion as a disciplinary strategy to be advocated and recommended to his fellow officers. The closing paragraphs of Berry’s account (which was originally serialized in the True Briton, 8–12 December 1798, and later published as An Authentic Narrative of the proceedings of his Majesty’s Squadron, under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson from its sailing from Gibraltar to the conclusion of the glorious Battle of the Nile) were strong calls for the diffusion of religion, discipline, and order throughout the naval officer corps. Admiral Parker’s actions and Captain Berry’s Authentic Narrative reveal the distance that could exist between the contexts of textual production and the contexts of textual consumption, in the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. In both cases, Parker and Berry privileged the institutional concerns of the navy; neither revealed themselves ¹⁷ Ibid., 15 Oct. 1798.

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particularly attentive to the interests of the general reading public. In Berry’s case, the omission is particularly interesting because his narrative went on (through rampant reprinting, abridgement, and plagiarism) to become one of the canonical narratives in the lives of Nelson.¹⁸ For the True Briton, providing an appropriately patriotic account simply required that the event be subtly positioned in relation to larger domestic ideas concerning the character of victory culture. But when the same paper’s editors published Berry’s account later that winter, they added several closing paragraphs that specifically directed readers on how to read the first-hand account. Here religious piety and discipline were ignored, and consumers were instructed in a series of impressionistic observations concerning ‘the Professional Character of the gallant Admiral’.¹⁹ In this manner, the polemical aspects of Berry’s conclusion were softened, and the paper provided what it had advertised to its readers all along, particulars designed ‘to increase our admiration for those who were the fortunate sharers in [the victory’s] toils, its dangers, and its glory’.²⁰ It is important to note that Nelson himself played a role in the construction of his own celebrity. Nelson’s influence over his public image came from his ability to author texts that he knew would be widely disseminated and intensively read. Nelson was exceptionally aware of this power, and his orientation towards the mechanisms of contemporary celebrity was well developed. Like all military and naval officers desirous of promotion, he recognized the necessity of literary self-advertisement and was determined to be named in a Gazette. At the siege of Calvi in 1794, he kept his own journal, in hopes that it would form the basis of a gazetted account of the action.²¹ Similarly, he drafted—but never published—his own account of Hotham’s action of March 1795.²² When the Gazette for the battle of St Vincent failed to detail his own exploits, Nelson sent his account to the well-placed Captain ¹⁸ See John Charnock, Biographical Memoirs of Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1806); Archibald Duncan, The Life of Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1806); Frederick Lloyd, An Accurate and Impartial Life of Viscount Nelson (Ormskirk, 1806); James Harrison, The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1806). See also, European Magazine, 34 (1798), 414–16; Naval Chronicle, 1 (1799), 42–63. ¹⁹ True Briton, 12 Dec. 1798. ²⁰ Ibid., 7 Dec. 1798. ²¹ Harrison, Life of Lord Viscount Nelson, 127. ²² James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur, The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson from his Lordship’s Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1809), i. 201.

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Locker—the governor of Greenwich Hospital—with the suggestion that it might find its way into the newspapers.²³ Two years later, within weeks of being made aware of the existence of the Naval Chronicle, he once again submitted his account of St Vincent to the public.²⁴ This, though, came after he had already sent its editors a rough ‘Memoir of his professional life’, which came to form the basis of the biographical sketch of Nelson that the periodical published in March 1800.²⁵ Given all this, Nelson’s advertisement of his genuine piety was a calculated move. Nelson had been in London during the autumn of 1797, and was probably aware of the corrective impulses that inspired the Naval Thanksgiving. He may also have known that Admiral Duncan’s religiosity had been celebrated after Camperdown. James Stanier Clarke’s Thanksgiving sermon of 1797, for instance, praised Duncan for holding a thanksgiving service on board the Venerable after Camperdown.²⁶ Nelson must have sensed the appeal of the lines with which he opened his dispatch, and known that he was playing to the gallery in the theatre of patriotism. His family background and Bonaparte’s own actions only served to strengthen their appeal. Consequently, conceiving of Nelson as a national figure who had put religion on a correct footing became one of the major meanings attached to his celebrity image. The medal struck to commemorate the Nile Thanksgiving indicated as much in its iconography. On one side Religion stood ‘supporting the Bust of Admiral Nelson’; the other displayed the Eye of Providence accompanied by the lines, ‘Under this sign you shall conquer’ and ‘Praise be to God’.²⁷ By Trafalgar, Nelson was held to exemplify a naval devotion that was now considered a feature of national identity. Admiral Collingwood’s victorious dispatch approached ‘the language of a divine’ in the eyes of one observer; another pointed to the ‘line of Christian conduct’ pursued by Duncan, Nelson, and now, by Collingwood.²⁸ And when news of the ²³ Harrison, Life of Lord Viscount Nelson, 176. ²⁴ It appeared in Naval Chronicle, 2 (1799), 500–1; the editors asserted that it ‘came in a cover, and as we imagined from his Lordship’ in Naval Chronicle, 14 (1805), vii. ²⁵ Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Dispatches and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, 7 vols. (London, 1845–6), iv. 53; Naval Chronicle 14 (1805), v–vi. ²⁶ Clarke, Naval Sermons, 216–19. ²⁷ Oracle, 29 Nov. 1798. ²⁸ William Jay, Reflections on Victory, A sermon preached in Argyle-chapel, Bath, December 5, 1805; being the day appointed for a general thanksgiving, for the Signal Victory obtained under the late Lord Viscount Nelson, over the combined Fleet of the enemy (Bath, 1805), 33; J. Dawson, England’s Greatness, the effect of divine power and goodness: a sermon

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battle first reached London, the curtain at Covent Garden rose to reveal ‘a group of Naval Officers and sailors [with flags and captured ensigns] in the act of returning thanks to Heaven for the victory with which our arms had been blessed.’²⁹ The point here is that, with respect to his personal piety, Nelson’s image was constructed along existing lines, lines that his own actions and the contexts in which they were delivered permitted to be more fully realized in his case than others. Forces were working to construct uniformity in the signs of naval celebrity, working to give a coherent character to the ‘chapter of admirals’. But these structural impulses within Georgian culture interacted with Nelson’s own agency to establish his celebrity image. This was less the case with the second major group of meanings attached to Nelson by contemporaries, those concerning his significance for contemporary debates over merit, honour, and a political system that came to be known as ‘old corruption’.

‘INTO THE WORLD WITHOUT A FORTUNE’: MERIT, HONOUR, AND REWARD As the work of Philip Harling has shown, the issue of ‘old corruption’ occupied a fundamental place in British political culture during the French Wars. It was capable of reviving popular radicalism around 1805–6 and dominated oppositional politics into the post-Waterloo period.³⁰ An important development in the institutional culture of the British state and a central issue for the debate over ‘old corruption’ concerned the manner in which individuals served the public good and the compensation they could expect for their work. From the 1780s, as Harling illustrates, significant pressure mounted around the perceived need to reform the venal excesses of British state administration. One result of this was that, as the war advanced, ‘merit was becoming a hotly contested notion’.³¹ preached at the Nether Chapel, Sheffield, on the day of thanksgiving, Dec. 5, 1805, and published by request at the Nether Chapel, Sheffield (Sheffield, 1805), 28. ²⁹ European Magazine, 48 (1805), 382. ³⁰ Philip Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford, 1996); id., ‘The Duke of York affair’. ³¹ Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 71.

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Given the scale of Nelson’s contemporary celebrity and the heights to which he rose in the naval service, it is not surprising that his career was examined in terms of merit. What is surprising is the continuity that was present here. From Tenerife to Trafalgar, Nelson’s image was constructed in terms of what it could say about the efficacy of Pittite rule. Contrary to those who have discerned that Nelson appealed, in a broad non-partisan sense, to groups across the political spectrum (an appeal related to the change in the nature of support for the war circa 1799, when Britain’s war effort could be supported by liberals and radicals concerned about the implications of Bonapartist tyranny), it is in fact the case that from the start Nelson was invoked to both defend and question the nature of Pittite rule and its relation to patriotism.³² In making this argument, it is salutary that it be distinguished from Colley’s well-known treatment, where Nelson was seen as a representative figure inspired to public service by the ‘cult of elite heroism’—one that well illustrated the nature of Britain’s calculatedly open elite, who were willing to ‘admit in a controlled fashion a number of truly exceptional men for the sake of efficiency [and] . . . preserving the existing order.’³³ This was largely an impressionistic interpretation of what Nelson’s career might have symbolized, one that conforms closely to what loyalists themselves claimed about Nelson and other naval heroes. But rather than resolving to the benefit of a larger loyalist project in state formation, the contemporary investment in Nelson’s image was characterized by the political cohabitation and struggle so characteristic of naval symbols in this period. Any victorious fleet action earned its commander a peerage. Thus, for his victory at the Nile, Nelson was made a baron. Nelson’s modern biographers have made much of the comparatively insubstantial nature of this reward. Contemporaries were similarly exercised, but mostly in private.³⁴ The explanation that protocol dictated a barony satisfied most parties, and there was no public effort to seek a higher title for the ‘Hero of the Nile’. The controversy, though, has overshadowed the fact that a significant amount of press ink was spilt, not defending Nelson’s baronial rank, but investing his ennoblement with appropriate meaning. This was because Nelson’s peerage was announced months after one of the most ³² Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 214–16; See also Thompson, Making, 496–7. ³³ Colley, Britons, 182, 191. ³⁴ See Coleman, The Nelson Touch, 167–8, and Edgar Vincent, Nelson: Love and Fame (New Haven, 2003), 270–1.

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controversial set of creations in the period. Opposition papers were quick to contrast the glorious nature of his public services to the secret political deals for which the majority of Pitt’s appointments were held to be made.³⁵ The Morning Post expressed the ‘wish [that] every new Peer, like Lord Nelson, was called by the name of the same place or event in which he had rendered the public a service. In that case, how many should we have called Lord ——, of Rotten Borough?’³⁶ And when the Morning Chronicle commented on Nelson’s barony, it did so, not to attack governmental ingratitude, but to malign the unmerited appointments of political peers: ‘We are not surprised at the proposition to bestow yet higher honours upon Lord Nelson. When it is considered for what he was made a Peer, and for what some others have been raised to that dignity, our ideas of distinction become rather confused.’³⁷ By December 1798, the notion of Nelson as an antidote to ‘old corruption’ was becoming a familiar one in liberal circles. A letter in the Monthly Mirror deployed Nelson as a foil against the Pitt system, and indulged in the overdrawn hope that his example might invigorate a second chamber crammed with ‘court-tools and sycophants’.³⁸ Oppositional squibs compared the scale of Nelson’s victory to the scale of Pittite taxation, and contrasted his imagined modesty to the pecuniary appetite of the bachelor prime minister: ‘Lord Nelson wishes to keep nothing for himself but his scars and glory: he has sent Citizen Blanquet’s sword to the city of London; he intends the Ottoman aigrette for his Lady; and the Seraglio, part of the Grand Seignior’s present, for Mr. Pitt.’³⁹ Ministerial interests were sensitive enough to criticisms of aristocratic merit and the Pitt system that they felt compelled to respond. Lloyd’s Evening Post confronted implications of aristocratic indolence in an item that descanted upon the services of Lord Spencer, the civilian head of the admiralty and ‘a Nobleman of high rank and splendid fortune’ whose industriousness and self-abnegation were held to exceed that expected ‘from any clerk in his office’. These virtues, the paper claimed, ‘have been . . . frequently manifested by a true British Aristocracy’.⁴⁰ But the ³⁵ John Cannon, Aristocratic Century: The Peerage of Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1984), 16–17. ³⁶ Morning Post, 15 Oct. 1798. See also Morning Chronicle, 8 Oct. 1798. ³⁷ Morning Chronicle, 29 Nov. 1798. ³⁸ Monthly Mirror, 16 (1798), 342–3. ³⁹ Morning Post, 19 Oct. 1798; 20 Oct. 1798. ⁴⁰ Lloyd’s Evening Post, 31 Oct.–2 Nov. 1798.

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more common tactic to present the virtues of a working aristocracy was loyalism’s effort to construct Nelson’s ennoblement in ways that flattered Britain’s social order. Here Nelson’s elevation symbolized the openness of aristocracy, and, importantly, the ability of government officials to recognize the private virtue that lay around them. The fact that Nelson was ‘raised by personal merit from an undistinguished station in life to the high honours which at length adorned him’ became a staple of its discourse.⁴¹ This allowed loyalism to take pride in a ‘Government where eminent qualities are seldom overlooked, in whatever rank they are found, [and where Nelson’s] high reputation and established worth occasioned him to be selected to the most weighty and severe duties’.⁴² Self-congratulation reigned in assertions that ‘Every heart [ought] to beat with affection for a country, which will thus impartially open the avenues to honour and elevation to every individual in whatever station they may be born.’⁴³ At the same time, Nelson’s origins themselves worked to validate notions of a perpetually regenerating aristocratic order. Here it is worth noting the essentially conservative manner in which eighteenth-century biographical conventions operated. These sketches typically opened with a recitation of their subject’s family lineage that embedded individual achievement within an established ancestral lineage. In Nelson’s case, his origins among the minor Norfolk gentry and connections to the Walpole family served as shorthand guides to the sources of his individual virtue and were almost always the first information supplied in the earliest sketches of his career.⁴⁴ The positioning of Nelson’s image in the discourse of ‘old corruption’ was related to the wider place the naval service occupied in debates over late Georgian government and society. The celebrity affect for Admiral Duncan, as noted earlier, incorporated elements of the ‘old corruption’ critique. In fact, Nelson and Duncan were but two famous naval heroes assessed in this way. Other admirals and naval officers had their careers ⁴¹ Revd London King Pitt, A sermon preached in the Chapel of the British Factory in St. Petersburg, on Sunday, 10th/22nd Dec. 1805. On occasion of the late glorious victory obtained over the combined Fleets of France and Spain and on the lamented death of Lord Viscount Nelson (St Petersburg, 1805), 23. ⁴² Gardiner, A Tribute to the Memory of Lord Nelson, 17. ⁴³ A Sermon preached on the Sunday after the funeral of the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson (Chelsea, 1806), 14. ⁴⁴ See, for example, British Public Characters (London, 1799), 517–30; Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 157–88; Morning Post, 9 Oct. 1798.

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constructed along the same lines and read for evidence that merit was recognized over birth. Essays on Captain Alexander Hood and Sir George Pocock announced that their advance had been by merit alone.⁴⁵ Such information was politically freighted, because the equity held to govern naval promotions was a controversial subject in this period.⁴⁶ While many held that the navy’s particular institutional practices (especially those concerning promotion and the granting of commissions) permitted it to be viewed (especially in comparison to the army) as a branch of the British state that was exceptionally open to talent, there were those who argued that promotion ‘by merit’ was simply cronyism by another name.⁴⁷ Naval ‘interest’, by which commanding officers ensured they were surrounded by friendly juniors in whose abilities they held confidence, may well have worked to achieve overall operational efficiency, but it prevented hundreds of fully qualified officers from advancing in the king’s service, or getting a commission at all. In loyalists’ rendering, Nelson’s life had a message for these frustrated victims of injustice. The Naval Chronicle’s sketch of Nelson advanced the moral of his professional life in terms that defended the institutional status quo. Nelson’s career ‘forcibly illustrates the remark, which he has often been heard to make, that PERSEVERANCE in any profession will most probably meet its rewards, without the influence of any contingent interest’.⁴⁸ Because of the navy’s established position as a potent national symbol, and because of its importance for national defence, perceptions about equity in the administration of the navy were perceptions that could be easily applied to the general social order. Throughout the war, celebrated naval careers were read in terms of specific tensions within the naval service. That these tensions themselves had parallels and analogues in British political culture more generally only enhanced the manner in which the navy continued to operate as a powerful national symbol capable of articulating a range of conflicting messages. Indeed, although the navy had occupied a particular place in British culture throughout ⁴⁵ Naval Chronicle, 6 (1801), 173–88; Ibid., 8 (1802), 441. See also, obituary of Admiral John Forbes, Morning Post, 15 Mar. 1796; comments on Admiral Mitchell in Oracle, 3 Sept. 1799; and eulogy to Captain Westcott in Oracle, 18 Oct. 1798. ⁴⁶ See, for example, Morning Chronicle, 8 July 1794; St. James’s Chronicle, 21–4 Mar. 1795; Naval Chronicle, 5 (1801), 268. ⁴⁷ Star, 2 Sept. 1802. ⁴⁸ Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 157–88. Nelson himself was without a commission from 1787 to 1793.

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the eighteenth century, it seems that its cultural importance increased in the period of the French wars of 1793–1815, and that this was due, not just to the ‘natural’ fact that the navy was inordinately successful at sea (which it was), but equally to its ability to mediate, channel, and perhaps resolve, significant wartime tensions in the British polity.

‘LOPP’D, BAT TER’D AND BROKE’: NELSON’S BODY On 18 November 1800, when public interest in the movements of the ‘Hero of the Nile’ was still at its height, Nelson and his party attended the Covent Garden theatre. The Oracle’s account of this visit directed readers’ attention to the early exit of Nelson’s elderly father. ‘At the conclusion of the Fourth Act of the Comedy, his Father retired, and was supported out of the box with the most anxious solicitude by the remaining arm of his glorious son, the bursts of applause proceeding from an overflowing House defy description . . . His Lordship looked remarkably well; was dressed in full uniform; and decorated with the different Orders of Merit which he has so deservedly won, and we hope, will long enjoy.’⁴⁹ This act of filial affection was rendered even more appealing by the fact of Nelson’s disability. Public curiosity was attached to his ‘remaining arm’, and the scene drew its power from its display. The scale of contemporary fascination for Nelson’s body cannot be overstated. In spite of the fact that Nelson’s disabled body was, in its own time and even to this day, an immediate and obvious point of reference, the particular significance that Nelson’s body held for his contemporaries has never been explored. But attention to Nelson’s wounds and disfigurement constitute one of the major contexts of his meaning, both during his life and after his death. After Trafalgar, Edward Orme’s Bond Street print-selling firm advertised a deluxe pair of prints of the hero, ‘one representing him in the full vigour of manhood, with both his arms; the other after he had lost one arm, and at the time he was wounded in the head. [The both] will complete the History, Life, and Suffering of that immortal Hero.’⁵⁰ Posthumous Nelsonic poetry referred regularly to his ⁴⁹ Oracle, 19 Nov. 1800. Emphasis in original.

⁵⁰ The Times, 3 Jan. 1806.

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‘nobly mutilated form’,⁵¹ or ‘mangled form’,⁵² described his body as ‘Lopp’d, batter’d and broke,’⁵³ and meditated on the ‘Deep wounds his body cover’d o’er’.⁵⁴ In several, Nelson’s wounded body became the dominant metaphor. Twenty-five of the first 111 lines in the first canto of The Progress of Glory, in the Life of Horatio Lord Nelson, of the Nile, for instance, were given over to invocations of Nelson’s wounds.⁵⁵ Not that this corporeal voyeurism was limited to the period after Nelson’s death. It had begun with the loss of his arm at Tenerife, when interest was generated by the ‘curious fact’ that Nelson ‘had for some time practised writing with his left hand, in case any accident should happen to his right’.⁵⁶ Upon meeting the hero of the Nile at a West End levee in December 1800, the second Viscount Palmerston was struck by his ‘shrunk and mutilated’ frame. ‘It is melancholy to see him,’ he observed.⁵⁷ The biographical sketch of Nelson that Clarke and McArthur wrote for the Naval Chronicle established the corporeal narrative of Nelson’s career that was to become commonplace in later biographies and illustrations. In it Calvi (‘It was at this siege that Captain Nelson lost the sight of his right eye’), and Tenerife (‘Sir Horatio Nelson in this attack lost his right arm by a cannon shot’), took their places alongside the Nile as significant moments in Nelson’s career.⁵⁸ By his death Nelson’s body had been established as an emblem of corporeal patriotism; indeed it was almost the only text one needed to know: ‘He lost one eye at Calvi, and one arm at Tenerife, and on all occasions proved that he thought his body as well as his mind were the property of his Country.’⁵⁹ A good deal of the posthumous and contemporary references to Nelson’s body were embedded in a rhetoric of sacred and patriotic ⁵¹ [Catherine Ann Lightfoot], The Battle of Trafalgar or, Victory and Death. A Poem (London, 1806). ⁵² I., On reading the account of the Victory’s sailing for England, with the captured flags of France and Spain and the body of Lord Nelson, after the victory gained by the British Fleet off Cape Trafalgar, the 21st of October, 1805 (London, 1805). ⁵³ George Harley Davies, The Fight off Trafalgar; a Descriptive Poem (London, 1806). ⁵⁴ Samuel Maxey, The Victory Of Trafalgar. A Naval Ode. Commemorative and Descriptive of British Heroism (London, 1808 edn.). ⁵⁵ The Progress of Glory, in the Life of Horatio Lord Nelson, of the Nile (Whitehaven, 1806). ⁵⁶ True Briton, 6 Sept. 1797; Morning Chronicle, 8 Sept. 1797; and see also Star, 9 Sept. 1797. ⁵⁷ Brian Connell, Portrait of a Whig Peer: Compiled from the Papers of Second Viscount Palmerston 1739–1802 (London, 1957), 440. ⁵⁸ Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 170, 179. ⁵⁹ Sun, 6 Nov. 1805.

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sacrifice. Nelson’s wounds were invoked as badges of honour, and inspected with a mixture of envy, compassion, and horror. Nelson ‘had lost a precious eye, and a powerful arm, [and] was covered with the scars of wounds received in his county’s cause’.⁶⁰ ‘To recapitulate the number, and the nature of the wounds he received, would be truly afflicting to humanity itself.’⁶¹ But not all the attention paid to Nelson’s body was necessarily respectful or reverential. And even Nelson’s amputation could be invoked in disarmingly whimsical, celebratory, and even patronizing manner. In 1801, during the Copenhagen campaign, a British sailor detained in Riga by the Northern System blockade attended a society masquerade ‘in the character of Lord Nelson’. Costumed in a large cocked hat, naval uniform, ‘vacant coat sleeve’, star, and pelisse, and ‘preceded by his boatswain piping all hands, . . . followed by three sailors, one carrying a log book, another a spying glass, and a third a compass,’ the party delivered a novel national slight to the assembled Russian notables.⁶² While this was a dramatic (and possibly fictional) example of the associations that developed between Nelson’s body and national identity during his lifetime, it was not an isolated one. This almost unseemly interest in Nelson’s corporeal alteration and its identification with patriotic assertiveness was widespread—widespread enough to be the subject of criticism in the Chiswick fête discussed in Chapter 3. Two weeks after his return from Tenerife, a satirical essay titled ‘Admiral Nelson’s Left Hand’, written in the person of Nelson’s remaining left hand and arguing against the alleged social preference shown to right hands, appeared in the St. James’s Chronicle.⁶³ This was a light example of macabre humour, but the loss of Nelson’s right arm was equally pressed into serious political service. The Morning Chronicle exploited it in their campaign against the Pittite conduct of the war, Nelson’s arm representing the tragically unnecessary losses occasioned in reckless and ill-planned expeditions: ‘Admiral Nelson yesterday attended at the Admiralty for the first time since he arrived from Tenerife. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas were there, but they did not offer to shake hands with him.’⁶⁴ The Oracle found ⁶⁰ William Kingsbury, Victory Mourning. A sermon, preached at Southampton, Nov. 10, 1805: occasioned by the great victory obtained over the combined Fleets of France and Spain, off Cape Trafalgar, Oct. 21, when the renowned Lord Nelson was slain (Southampton, 1805). ⁶¹ Charnock, Biographical Memoirs of Lord Viscount Nelson, 354. ⁶² The Times, 20 Aug. 1801. ⁶³ St. James’s Chronicle, 14–16 Sept. 1797. ⁶⁴ Morning Chronicle, 19 Sept. 1797; Star, 19 Sept. 1797.

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a more fitting loyalist application for the remaining arm, metonymically fashioning it into an emblem of British martial vengeance: ‘Admiral Nelson is said to be so far recovered that the Spaniards, in the next spring, may expect once more to feel the weight of his arm.’⁶⁵ Little sense of propriety governed these usages, which occurred during a period when the admiral was known to be in a serious convalescence characterized by ‘excruciating pain’.⁶⁶ The contemporary affect that surrounded Nelson had a great deal to do with an interest in his body and its disfigurement. Georgian Britons carried on a persistent engagement with Nelson’s body, both during his life and after his death. The reasons can be traced to contemporary attitudes towards wounding, disability, patriotism, and the experience of the male body in war. The eighteenth-century military record is strewn with anecdotes like the following, related of one Thomas Main, a naval seaman at the battle of Trafalgar. According to the version first published in the London press shortly after the battle, Main exemplified ‘the enthusiasm of a British Seaman when fighting with the Enemies of his Country’. As related by his commanding officer, Main’s misfortune, and claim to fame, was as follows: [During the engagement] a shot took off the arm of Thomas Main, when at his gun at the Forecastle. His messmates kindly offered to assist him in going to the Surgeon; but he bluntly told them, ‘I thank you; stay where you are; you will do more good there.’ . . . The Surgeon, . . . willingly would have attended him in preference to others, . . . but this brave Seaman would not admit of it, saying, ‘avast, not until it comes to my turn, if you please.’ The Surgeon soon amputated the arm, near the shoulder; during which operation, with great composure, smiling, and with a steady clear voice, he sang the whole of Rule Britannia. The cheerfulness of this tough Son of Neptune was of infinite use in keeping up the spirits of his wounded shipmates; but I am sorry to inform you that this fine fellow died in Gibraltar Hospital . . . ⁶⁷

Linda Colley has asked historians of the period to take such evidence seriously, citing the case of Thomas Main as the potentially ‘typical’ ⁶⁵ Oracle, 27 Sept. 1797. ⁶⁶ See True Briton, 18 Sept. 1797; Oracle, 14 Nov. 1797. Indeed, Nelson’s retirement was tentatively reported in this period, see Oracle, 14 Sept. 1797; True Briton, 13 Sept. 1797. ⁶⁷ Sun, 4 Dec. 1805; Naval Chronicle, 15 (1806), 17.

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product of experiential national identity.⁶⁸ Such anecdotes of wounding, however, cannot upon examination stand as evidence of plebeian patriotism. Rather, they need to be understood as the exact opposite—as particularly vivid imaginings of social harmony and masculine fraternity, whose creation was rooted in the conventional hyperbole of the naval yarn. Thomas Main was a real person, but the commanding officer who related this story was participating in the conventional discursive form that was the ‘annals of tarism’ (the contemporary term used to describe humorous anecdotes involving ‘Jack Tar’).⁶⁹ There are strong reasons for doubting the veracity of this story. For one thing, contemporary accounts of life on the lower deck (in particular accounts published at the conclusion of the war, when the patriotic heyday had passed) are brutally honest about the manner in which battle wounds and amputations were approached. Battle was a rare enough circumstance that few were immune to its horrors. More substantial eye-witness accounts of Trafalgar and St Vincent relate the horror with which sailors viewed the carnage, the unwillingness with which they sometimes manned their guns (doing so, at times, at sword-point), and the shock, stunned silence, and desperate fear that often accompanied the act of being wounded.⁷⁰ Contemporary medical treatises corroborate these accounts, coaching naval and military surgeons on the pain, fear, and insensibility they would encounter from patients on the field of battle.⁷¹ Of course, Thomas Main’s story was told precisely because of its claim to singularity, and it had a contemporary credibility for those who heard, and told it. Thus, assessing its claim as an accurate record of plebeian patriotism requires more than simply raising questions about the probability of the event it claims to record. More substantial, then, is the insight gained when these anecdotes are approached as a distinct genre. It is here that their origins and cultural utility can be more readily glimpsed. The anecdote told of Thomas Main at Trafalgar was merely one of a number of anecdotal tropes involving soldiers and seamen that are scattered throughout the eighteenth-century historical record. These ⁶⁸ Linda Colley, ‘Britishness and otherness: an argument’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 322–3. ⁶⁹ See Oracle, 2 Sept. 1800. ⁷⁰ See William Robinson, Jack Nastyface: Memoirs of a Seaman; and William Dillon, Narrative of My Adventures, in Dean King and John B. Hattendorf (eds.), Every Man Will Do His Duty: An Anthology of Firsthand Accounts of the Age of Nelson (New York, 1997). ⁷¹ John Bell, Discourse on the Nature of Wounds (Edinburgh, 1795), ii. 42.

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formulaic tales circulated in a variety of cultural forms—in memoirs, in newspapers, and in the theatre. Frequently they attached themselves to cases, like Thomas Main’s, that had some initial basis in fact. And often, the same story was repeated in accounts of subsequent battles. The anecdote (related in Chapter 1) of the lieutenant of the Marlborough who allegedly nailed the colours to the mast during the ‘Glorious First of June’, for instance, was trotted out again for Camperdown. Here it described how, upon the Venerable’s flags being shot away, ‘a young lad who was ordered to hoist another, really nailed the flag to the staff, declaring it should not come down again but with the mast.—An instance of courage truly British.’⁷² At least two other versions of this anecdote circulated around the same time, each providing alternative names and varying expansions upon the premeditated nature of this act.⁷³ An even more dramatic example of this kind of circulating anecdote comes from the Helder expedition in 1799. As reported in the Morning Chronicle: An anecdote is told of a British Sailor at the attack of Helder, which is truly characteristic:—He was one of the detachment of seamen sent on shore to assist in drawing the artillery up the beach. The party employed on this service were covered by a body of grenadiers, one of whom having dropt, Jack started from his gun, and examined the body. Exclaiming with an oath, that he was a dead man, he said, he would take his place; and having stripped off the Grenadier’s belt and cartouch box, and equipped himself therewith, he seized his firelock, and began loading and firing at the enemy. He discharged his piece six times, at each time bringing down his man. At length he dropped himself, and was carried on board the hospital ship to be amputated, having received a ball through his knee. This was not all; he was told that he must be brought to trial for having deserted his post, and taken upon him a task out of the line of his duty. ‘But please your honour, I killed six of them.’ ‘That may be,’ replied his Captain, ‘but you flew from your quarters.’ ‘Then please your honour,’ rejoined Jack in the simplicity of his heart, ‘forgive me this once, and I will kill no more of them.’⁷⁴

This story, in fact, had earlier appeared in relation to a 1756 incident in India, when it reported the antics of ‘one Strahan, a common sailor, belonging to the Kent’.⁷⁵ It was subsequently told, in relation to the ⁷² Star, 24 Oct. 1797. ⁷³ For which see the Star, 11 Nov. 1797, and Edward Orme (ed.), Historic, Military and Naval Anecdotes, 6. ⁷⁴ Morning Chronicle, 6 Sept. 1799. ⁷⁵ Naval Chronicle, 6 (1801), 43–5.

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Helder, in a number of slightly different versions.⁷⁶ Even more interestingly, it also found its way on to the London stage, where it formed the basis for the plot of The Embarkation, Andrew Franklin’s theatrical of the Helder expedition.⁷⁷ In this light, it is not surprising to learn that the anecdote of Thomas Main had circulated earlier and in several versions. From the 1782 relief of Gibraltar, then, we have the tale of John Addinbrook, ‘a seaman on board the Royal William, [who] received a wound which severed his right thigh from his body . . . Addinbrook told [the surgeon] with the greatest composure, that his efforts were in vain, that he was a dying man, and with earnestness requested him to go and attend to those who were more likely to survive the day. With his small remaining strength, he then raised himself a little from the cot in which he was weltering in his blood, seconded the three cheers, fell back, and instantly expired.’⁷⁸ In 1796, the core elements of the tale adhered to a ‘Nautical Anecdote’ related of the Thames frigate, during an engagement with a French ship of the line. ‘One of the Lieutenants had a leg shot off, and the other very much wounded; as he was carried along to the gun deck, in his way to the cock-pit the seamen expressed their grief for his misfortune; “Never mind me, my lads,” said he, “mind to your guns, if you love me, revenge my fall.” And when the surgeon was performing the amputation, he heard the crew give three hearty cheers, upon which he raised himself up, took his hat, and joined in the enlivening sounds; ordered a man to take his compliments to the Captain, and give him joy of victory.’⁷⁹ A year later, at Camperdown, the significant elements were again related of a seaman about to undergo a double leg amputation. ‘Well, never mind, (said Covey) I have lost both my legs to be sure, and mayhap lose my life; but, (continued he with a dreadful oath) We have beat the Dutch! We have beat the Dutch! so I’ll even have another cheer for it—Huzza! Huzza!’⁸⁰ The relative veracity of these anecdotes is, from the point of view of the project of cultural history, not nearly as relevant as the role they ⁷⁶ Oracle, 26 Oct. 1799; Naval Chronicle, 8 (1802), 302–3; Orme (ed.), Historic, Military and Naval Anecdotes, 6. ⁷⁷ Andrew Franklin, The Embarkation (1799), Larpent Collection. Performed once, at Drury Lane, on 3 Oct. 1799, and reviewed in Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 6 Oct. 1799; Times, 4 Oct. 1799; Monthly Mirror, 18 (1799), 237. ⁷⁸ Naval Chronicle, 1 (1799), 421. ⁷⁹ Oracle, 12 July 1796. ⁸⁰ J. G., The Brave British Tar, or History of James Covey, who had both his legs shot off in the Battle of Camperdown (London, 1820).

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played in mediating the late eighteenth-century experience of war. War had an obvious potential for causing instability in society, and the perceived human cost of war was always identified as its most potentially disruptive element. For this reason, significant attention had been paid in eighteenth-century Britain to the veteran soldiers and seamen of that century’s many conflicts. As individuals who had paid the penultimate price for their national identity, the war wounded, particularly the permanently disabled, were a group who had long been identified as a potentially alienated set of national icons. Their importance was almost universally recognized, and in the period a number of philanthropic ventures were launched to seek relief on their behalf. It is salutary to note that in this period the word ‘patriotic’ was associated in the public mind with the Patriotic Fund, formally established at Lloyd’s Coffee-House in 1803 as the permanently embodied successor to the subscription fund drives for wounded seamen, widows, and orphans launched after the earlier victories of the war. Its founding resolutions trumpeted its purpose in purely corporeal terms. It existed for the purpose ‘of assuaging the anguish of wounds, or palliating in some degree the more weighty misfortune of loss of limbs’.⁸¹ The male body, then, was centrally located in contemporary patriotic discourse. Threats to it were, both metaphorically and literally, threats to the stability and permanence of the wider body politic. For these reasons, the ‘veteran tar’ and the ‘neglected soldier’ became staples of eighteenth-century culture, their welfare commonly considered a litmus test of the nation’s moral standing.⁸² But if disabled veterans had always been a discomforting reminder of the threats to social order, there seem to be good reasons for suggesting that their corporeal iconicity intensified during the French wars of 1793–1815. One reason for this was that there were simply more disabled veterans around. As John Bell indicated in his 1795 Discourse on the Nature of Wounds, advances in amputation practice made since the close of the Seven Years War had led, not only to greater survival rates among those upon whom amputations were performed, but also to more frequent ⁸¹ Naval Chronicle, 14 (1805), 462. ⁸² See for example, [Anonymous] ‘The Soldier that Has Seen Service’, and, [Anonymous] ‘The Volunteer’ in Roger Lonsdale (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. (Oxford, 1984).

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recourse to the operation itself.⁸³ One aspect of the cultural fascination with disabled seamen was their relative novelty. As survivors of what was still seen (outside elite medical circles) as a high-risk operation, they may have even been surrounded by a sense of the miraculous. An increased rate of survival, though, was but half of the equation: the scale of wounding and the frequency of engagement also contributed. Naval historians have long pointed out that the fleet confrontations in this period were almost unprecedented in their scale and relative decisiveness, a fact that was not lost on contemporaries. As a contributor to the Star noted after Camperdown, when one compared the scale and human cost of the naval victories of the present war with the earlier naval victories of the eighteenth century, one was led to the conclusion ‘that our naval contests have been more sanguinary and obstinate, though not less decisive, in the present than in the preceding war’.⁸⁴ Corporeal concerns, then, were patriotic concerns—a fact dramatically sensed in the aftermath of Camperdown. Several days before Duncan’s victory on 11 October, the Star reported that in one day 360 wounded men—the greatest number ever known—had applied at the Admiralty board for admission to Greenwich Hospital. A large number of them had to be turned away, since they lacked the surgeon’s certificates required for official relief.⁸⁵ The treatment of naval veterans became something of a cause célèbre for the paper in the following month. It reprimanded its readership for the disappointing attendance at Drury Lane’s benefit for the Widows and Orphans fund, but reported with satisfaction on the ‘care and attention’ the wounded of Camperdown received ‘from the Government’ in the hospitals at Yarmouth.⁸⁶ It is worth noting the hysteria that casualty rates could generate within the loyalist community. A Nile Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Towcester attempted to diffuse the dissatisfaction that death and disability might cause and anticipated plebeian loyalty in an unexpected manner. Britons (in particular, ‘perverse and wicked Jacobins’) were invited to ignore the corporeal cost of war through a reminder of the dangers, diseases, and ‘premature death’ that endangered the life of the lower orders even in peacetime: ‘Are you ignorant that a man in his daily occupation, is as liable to make his exit off this theatre of the world, as the Sailor, the ⁸³ Bell, Discourse on the Nature of Wounds, i. 3–6. ⁸⁴ Star, 14 Nov. 1797. ⁸⁵ Ibid., 6 Oct. 1797. ⁸⁶ Ibid., 28 Oct. 1797; 1 Nov. 1797.

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Noble, the Honest, the Happy, Hardy Tar may from the mast head, or in the heat of battle; who knows no Trouble, who fears no Dangers that spring from the Duty to his King and Country . . . ’⁸⁷ It seems to have struck this speaker as unthinkable to elevate plebeian suffering to a virtuous level; instead, the sacrifices of the war dead were downgraded into quotidian and anonymous sufferings. Given this manifest concern for the political consequences of ignoring wounded seamen, it is interesting to consider how the wounding of war was represented. The link between the male body and the patriotic body, or men’s bodies and the body politic, was made problematic by the fact that there was no one male body. Just as there was an elite patriotic code to which only educated gentlemen and elite officers could adhere, there was an elite body that was held to experience war in a different way. In the classical aristocratic conception of war, battle provided an opportunity to display virtue and honour. This honour was not taken to be earned, per se; it was held to be extant within the aristocratic and gentlemanly warrior class. As Robert Nye has shown in his seminal study of honour and masculinity in nineteenth-century France, in spite of the challenges posed by the rise of the bourgeoisie and the insights of the Enlightenment, significant elements of this aristocratic ideal survived into the nineteenth century.⁸⁸ In Britain it can be seen in the degree to which hereditary assumptions consistently worked their way into a number of military projects, particularly those concerned with military education.⁸⁹ And it was equally expressed in the fact that battle itself tended to be viewed in terms of the opportunity it presented for displaying the warrior elite’s talents. Naval battle was idealized as the proving ground for elite honour—as the opportunity for the admiral (or commander) to display a skill, fortitude, toughness, and expertise that was primarily mental. What fascinated contemporaries—what in fact they celebrated as a pleasing reflection of their own identity—was the ability of British officers to ⁸⁷ J. Morgan, A Sermon preached in the Parish Church of Towcester, on Thursday, 29th November, 1798, the Day appointed by his Majesty, to return thanks to Almighty God, For our recent and important Successes in Distant Seas and Elsewhere (London, 1799), 28. ⁸⁸ Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honour in Early Modern France (New York, 1993). ⁸⁹ See, for instance, the plan for the Naval Asylum in Times, 27 Jan. 1801; a proposal for a Royal Naval Seminary, Naval Chronicle, 10 (1804), 281; a proposal for a new military school, in Buckinghamshire Oracle, 30 Apr. 1799 and Morning Chronicle, 20 Aug. 1799.

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prove their innate virtue by remaining civilized and controlled in the face of almost unimaginable barbarity. One of the standard tropes in which this quality was expressed was the ‘brain-splattering motif ’, in which the commanding officer’s poise and presence of mind revealed themselves in dramatic juxtaposition to corporeal threat of war.⁹⁰ One of the anecdotes of the victor of the battle of St Vincent, for instance, related that ‘in the engagement the gallant Admiral [Jervis] had a very narrow escape. A Cannon ball took off the arm of a marine who was standing next him, the blood of which flew over his clothes . . . ’⁹¹ Later that year, at Camperdown, it made another appearance: ‘The Admiral’s [i.e. Duncan’s] steward was wounded in both shoulders, close to his Lordship’s side, by the fractured skull of a man killed on the quarter deck!’⁹² The motif was also applied to Admiral Sir Richard King, of whom it was told that ‘During [an action of 7 July 1792] a shot struck off the head of his Captain, [Reynolds] and blew his brains over the Commodore [King], who never flinched. On being told by his Master, towards the Conclusion of the action, that two more of the enemy’s Ships appeared to be coming up; and being asked, when they were nearly within gun-shot, what he would do with The Ship, answered coolly—Fight her, Sir! till she sinks.’⁹³ Consider as well how the motif operated in the narrative of Captain Harvey, a heroic victim of the ‘Glorious First of June’. His ‘gallant behaviour’ and ‘heroic bravery’ were represented as truly exceptional. Wounded ‘early in the action . . . by a musket-shot in the hand’, Harvey ‘remained cool and collected at his post’ even while the ‘shattered remains’ of a fellow officer and ‘every man of his party’ were ‘driven about’ him. After ‘an unlucky ball carried off his right arm’ he still ‘would not quit the deck’ and ‘with a wonderful degree of composure, ordered all men to the Leeward side, poured in a broadside, which carried away [the enemy ship’s] three masts.’ Finally forced to quit his station, Harvey was removed below decks, where he continued to give orders, charging his men ‘to sustain the fire . . . and to let the Brunswick sink rather than strike after such a glorious day’.⁹⁴ If a commanding officer’s heroism was largely expressed in an appropriately civilized mental fortitude, this can be contrasted with the ⁹⁰ David McNeil, The Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in EighteenthCentury Fiction (Newark, 1990). The term ‘brain-splattering motif ’ is his, 93–4. ⁹¹ Oracle, 10 Mar. 1797. ⁹² Star, 11 Nov. 1797. ⁹³ Naval Chronicle, 2 (1799), 570. ⁹⁴ Oracle, 25 June 1794.

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heroism of the ordinary seaman. Assuming that these anecdotes gained the currency they did for their singularity rather than for being as ‘truly characteristic’ as they were advertised to be, it becomes interesting to note that the fortitude of these selected seamen was represented in a broadly similar manner to that of their officers. Thomas Main’s obliviousness to pain at Trafalgar was but one example. After Nelson’s disastrously unsuccessful second attack on Boulogne, the press reported the case of a seaman ‘who lost the entire of his face from his eye-brows to his under jaw, the ball or splinter having carried away his eyes, nose, and cheeks—he however lived for four days in this condition, in perfect possession of his senses; on entering the hospital he took off his own shoes, washed his hands, and tied his own neck-cloth, and in writing on the subject of his misfortune, he alone regretted that he should not live to see the success of the enterprize.’⁹⁵ Another dramatic example, in which the sailor’s body was translated into an overt metaphor for plebeian determination, concerned a victim at Trafalgar ‘so completely cut in two on board the Victory, by a double-headed shot, that the whole of his body, with the exception of his legs, up to the knees, was blown some yards into the water; but, strange to tell, his legs were left standing upon the deck, with all the firmness and animation of life!’⁹⁶ Another, related of the same battle, told of one John Ryan, a seaman of the Raisonable, who underwent an amputation at the Royal Hospital in Haslar in the weeks following the battle. ‘During the operation he neither uttered a sigh, or a groan, or single syllable; but when carried back to his bed he requested one parting look at the limb, to which he then addressed the following serio-comic apostrophe:—“You d——d ungrateful rascal, who after helping me out of many scrapes, and into many prisons, for the last two years have been a miserable torment to me; I thank God that in now losing you I am become comparatively at ease!” ’⁹⁷ Like the officer anecdotes cited above, those telling of remarkable fortitude in wounding sprang from contemporary perceptions of the experience of battle. The mental energy required of officers on the quarterdeck could be contrasted with the static defensiveness of those serving on the lower deck. Once the disposition of the ship had been achieved, naval engagements involved the regular performance of manual procedures by those ⁹⁵ Oracle, 7 Sept. 1801. ⁹⁶ The Times, 2 Jan. 1806; Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 5 Jan. 1806. ⁹⁷ Naval Chronicle, 13 (1805), 195.

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wilfully exposing themselves to reciprocal risk and wounding. The two groups became united in their heroism, and tars were held to be worthy of notice when they displayed the same unflappability that was expected from their officers. Contemporaries were both amazed and disturbed by the vulnerability of seamen during battle. This, no doubt, is why those anecdotes that did not attempt to dissolve the corporeal threat into palliative presentations of plebeian patriotism instead typically focused, like those of the Helder sailor (cited above), on exactly the sort of frenetic and impulsive activity that was most explicitly denied. The discipline necessary for success in battle was exacted through a combination of strategies: the monetary incentives presented by prize money, the threat of punishment, and the operation of significant shipboard loyalties. Probably the least important ingredient was the sense of patriotism suggested by Colley. Rather, those elements were arguably present because the anecdotes operated for the benefit of domestic audiences. They addressed concerns about the corporeal consequences of war through images that showed a comforting fraternal unity finding its place in the larger matrix of national identity. The number of these anecdotes that feature seamen identifying with recognizable national symbols (the colours, the unofficial naval anthem, the person of their commander) augur for an interpretation that suggests their purpose was to foster a process of national imagining in which these symbols were privileged and valued. In order to understand how anecdotes could operate in this manner, enabling them to perform a powerful political purpose, it is necessary to appreciate that the genre of the grotesque was at work. A popular eighteenth-century literary genre, the grotesque is normally understood as a satirical mode, one particularly applied to the fictional depiction of eighteenth-century militarism and war. The core element of the grotesque is its fundamental ambivalence towards its subject. As David McNeil is careful to point out, the grotesque is not a uniformly critical genre but rather one characterized by ‘the ambivalence of the ludicrous and the fearful, [and] the element of play’.⁹⁸ In its application to the representation of war, absurd gallantry and horrific barbarity are two of the most common examples of its use. Crucially, both of these are ⁹⁸ McNeil, The Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 19.

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observable in the ‘annals of tarism’, although the manner of their presentation, while it raises disconcerting issues, does not ultimately resolve in an overtly critical direction. This is because the ambivalence of the grotesque operates to efface the very concerns it acknowledges (that is, the very concerns it gives the most lurid and realistic expression to).⁹⁹ Moreover, as several of the above examples attest, the grotesque elements in these anecdotes were accompanied by palpably patriotic and heroic elements. Grotesque distancing was a strategy often employed in describing plebeian injury. The wounds of the officer class, though, were approached differently. Although their wounds and sufferings could certainly be graphically described (as above in the case of Captain Harvey), an affective sympathy conforming to the heroic genre was more commonly applied. A significant degree of public solicitude was displayed towards wounded officers, especially if they had returned to Britain for a period of convalescence. The lingering travails of Captain Harvey after the ‘Glorious First of June’, Captain Freemantle after the attempt on Tenerife, Lieutenant Chambers after Camperdown, and Captain Parker after the second attack on Boulogne, were followed closely by the newspaper press.¹⁰⁰ This interest was not considered invasive or prurient, and the families of the wounded even encouraged this attention. Two weeks after the battle of Camperdown, William Chambers, father of the seriously wounded lieutenant, wrote to the Star to correct an earlier medical report, and to provide the public with further details on his son’s health. ‘My son is in as a good a way as the case of two legs amputated will admit. Much to the credit of Dr. Wright, all his amputated patients, fifteen in number, are in a fine way for doing well. One man amongst them, will, it is feared, lose the sight of both eyes. . . . Congratulating you and the public on the late glorious victory, though at the expence of a beloved son’s legs, I am, Sir, your humble servant, [etc. etc.].’¹⁰¹ Private sufferings were a public concern, to be advertised to those participatory in the patriotic public sphere. It is worth noting, in this respect, that the subscription relief committees in no way saw their ⁹⁹ McNeil, The Grotesque Depiction of War and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 20. ¹⁰⁰ See Oracle, 2 July 1794; London Chronicle, 3–5 July 1794; 8 July 1794; True Briton, 4 Sept. 1797; Star, 9 Sept. 1797; True Briton, 11 Sept. 1797; Star, 27 Oct. 1797; Times, 20 Aug. 1801; Star, 20 Aug. 1801; Times, 30 Sept. 1801. ¹⁰¹ Star, 30 Oct. 1797.

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activities limited to the philanthropic alleviation of the distress of ordinary seamen. They proudly claimed to ‘administer to the support of all naval officers, from the officer downwards; making provision also for the relatives of the slain, in proportion to their various necessities’. These ‘provisions’ included paying handsome material tributes to those whose sacrifice was of a higher order. In 1795 ‘Rear Admiral Sir George Bowyer, and Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley, each of whom lost a leg in the support of the British flag on the Memorable First of June’ were ‘laudably voted a pair of elegant goblets, value five hundred guineas’ by the Committee for conducting the Subscription for the Relief of Wounded Seamen.¹⁰² Wounding and the male body, then, occupied a privileged place in wartime Britain’s patriotic discourse. And since ‘no [other] commander . . . ever received such severe mutilation in his person’ as Admiral Nelson, it becomes necessary to consider the place that his body occupied within it.¹⁰³ For when Britons trumpeted the fact that ‘the wound which Admiral Nelson received, in the late glorious engagement with the French, is the forty-second which that heroic man has gained since entering into the naval service,’ their sense of wonder was caught up in more than a sense of numerical excess.¹⁰⁴ The scale of Nelson’s injuries was simply the occasion for a discursive struggle that mediated a number of contemporary concerns. Concerns about the loyalty of the navy, concerns about the degree to which elite direction of the war effort was appreciated, concerns about plebeian patriotism, and concerns about the effect of the war on domestic society, were all issues manifested in relation to Nelson’s wounds. Through it all, Nelson’s body functioned as an emblem of corporeal alterity and a symbol of representative national disfigurement. On 20 November 1805, an anonymous loyalist poet writing one of the many funerary odes to Nelson considered the meaning of the hero’s body in a lengthy footnote. Here Nelson’s wounds were explored as a major avenue through which his countrymen conceived of his service. ‘His countrymen beheld his wounds with grateful reverence; they considered him, like a defensive tower on the frontiers of their safety, which long exposed to the blasts of war, had suffered in all its outworks, and had been somewhat dismantled by the storm; the security it had ¹⁰² Oracle, 19 Feb. 1795. ¹⁰³ Orme, Orme’s Graphic History of the Life, Exploits, and Death of Horatio Nelson, 34. ¹⁰⁴ Oracle, 6 Oct. 1798. Emphasis in original.

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afforded, endeared to them its dilapidations; it derived a new character of interest from every injury . . . ’¹⁰⁵ One interesting aspect of this imagined reconstruction of the way Nelson’s body had been viewed during his lifetime was contained in the notion that there had been consistent engagement with his career, an engagement that played out through a solicitude and interest in all his wounds, wounds which allowed his body, in the poet’s words, to ‘derive a new character of interest from every injury’. This sense that Britons had collectively shared in observing the progressive deterioration of Nelson’s body was mythical, and concealed the fact that by the time significant public attention was paid to him, the process of Nelson’s wounding (with the exception of that to his forehead at the battle of the Nile) was largely complete. The fact that Nelson was imagined as an individual whose progressive wounding was publicly appreciated is related in large part to the circumstances in which his body first appeared as an area of public interest, and to the significance that came to be attached to his injuries. Although he himself had made significant efforts to claim the public eye earlier as a result of actions at Bastia and St Vincent, Nelson’s real celebrity dates from the August 1797 expedition to Tenerife. This unsuccessful expedition, in which a force of 800 led by Nelson, acting under the orders of St Vincent, was overwhelmingly repulsed in an attack on the heavily fortified Spanish garrison town, became one of the more controversial of the period. Initial reports of this ‘melancholy affair’ indicated that up to 350 troops had been killed.¹⁰⁶ Although the appearance of the subsequent Gazette downgraded the casualties to 246, the abbreviated nature of the published dispatches raised more questions than it answered.¹⁰⁷ Official circumspection, the large scale of the losses, and the uncertainty concerning the objectives of the expedition in the first place lent credence to the belief that the expedition was another ill-advised military adventure organized by desperate ministers in which the lives of British heroes had been unnecessarily risked.¹⁰⁸ It was into this context of corporeal waste and elite incompetence, set against the backdrop of 1797’s summer of naval discontent, that Nelson’s ¹⁰⁵ Victory in Tears; or, the Shade of Nelson. A Tribute to the memory of that immortal hero, etc. (London, 1805). ¹⁰⁶ Star, 1 Sept. 1797; True Briton, 4 Sept. 1797. ¹⁰⁷ Star, 4 Sept. 1797; Oracle, 4 Sept. 1797; True Briton, 4 Sept. 1797. ¹⁰⁸ Morning Herald, 2 Sept. 1797; Morning Chronicle, 5 Sept. 1797; Morning Chronicle, 4 Sept. 1797; Oracle, 6 Sept. 1797.

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amputation was initially situated. The loss of his arm was briefly presented as something of a foil to the government’s direction of the war. As has already been noted, there was an interesting tendency for Nelson’s amputation to be considered in a curiously slight, macabre, almost burlesque fashion. There were accounts in which Nelson’s loss was imaginatively shaped into a comforting narrative of physical fortitude and fraternal concern for the safety of his men, such as the anecdote that claimed that after Nelson had lost his arm, he ‘continued for some time to exert himself in snatching from a watery grave, a number of gallant fellows that were paddling about him,’ and had him ‘heroically refusing’ assistance back onto his ship.¹⁰⁹ It seems significant that when Nelson’s wounds were represented (by Nelson himself as well as by others) the codes and tropes drawn upon were frequently those of the annals of tarism, and could even, at times, approximate elements of the grotesque. Typically tarist anecdotes, when applied to admirals and commanding officers, articulated their perceived social liminality—they frequently emphasized the more ‘sailor-like’ features of their character. In Nelson’s case, this liminality was frequently expressed in corporeal terms, strengthening his solidarity with his men. The degree to which a powerful cultural impulse was operating here can be glimpsed by interrogating a series of incidents that came to form one of the fundamental aspects of the Nelson myth. Through them, an important dynamic can be glimpsed, in which Nelson came to heroically personify the progressive mutilation that was grotesquely addressed in the annals of tarism. One of the canonical episodes in the narrative of Nelson’s life, repeated in almost every modern biography, concerns the wounded admiral’s presentation at court to George III, on 27 September 1797. As first recounted by Clarke and McArthur in their biographical sketch of 1800, Nelson is reported to have responded to the king’s concern for the loss of his limb with the resounding rejoinder, ‘May it please you Majesty, I can never think that a loss which the performance of my duty has occasioned; and so long as I have a foot to stand on, I will combat for my King and Country! ’¹¹⁰ Typically cited as an example of Nelson’s exemplary sense of patriotism, the incident in fact expressed one of the essential tropes of tarism. Its broad similarity to an incident that occurred three weeks later, ¹⁰⁹ Star, 23 Sept. 1797. ¹¹⁰ Naval Chronicle, 3 (1800), 180. Emphasis in original. I have not located an account of this incident before Clarke and McArthur’s in 1800.

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on the Drury Lane stage in the aftermath of Camperdown, is instructive. Here ‘a happy allusion was made by [the actor] Bannister . . . to Admiral Duncan’s victory: disguised as a sailor, after noting the loss of his starboard fin, he “observed, ‘that he did not care if he had lost both fins, and all his timbers, had he borne a hand in the late glorious engagement,” was received with plaudits.’¹¹¹ Similarly, the light-hearted references to the progressive nature of Nelson’s wounding had their tarist parallels as well, in songs like ‘The Greenwich Pensioner’ and ‘Crippled Jack of Trafalgar’.¹¹² At this point, it becomes interesting to consider the degree to which Nelson himself, and the naval officers from whose ‘further particulars’ nautical anecdotes were sometimes gleaned, were influenced by contemporary cultural codes. Such an interpretation need not throw their individual agency into question, or collapse their subjectivity into the service of a project in literary determinism. Rather, it is possible to see that a reciprocal dynamic may have been in operation, in which the shipboard theatricality so crucial to the maintenance of naval discipline and the domestic concerns of the theatre of patriotism influenced and determined each other. In this intertextual context, it becomes significant that, like Bannister’s sailor, Nelson referred to his amputated stump as his ‘fin’, and that he was undoubtedly in the habit of making declarations similar to that he is reported to have made in the presence of the king.¹¹³ The larger point, though, is that the trope applied here was one that employed the grotesque in order to efface concerns about male wounding and personal sacrifice. Its application in the case of Nelson indicates that his body could be viewed in the same way, as a reassuring sign of a wider naval loyalty. What Tenerife established, later incidents at the Nile and Boulogne strengthened. A print produced by John Fairburn’s firm after the battle of the Nile shows how Nelson’s body and wounds were coming to be viewed. The Hazards of War or Nelson Wounded took as its subject the severe cut that the admiral suffered on his face during the action. Nelson stands ¹¹¹ Star, 20 Oct. 1797. Emphasis in original. ¹¹² The Greenwich Pensioner. To which are added, &c. (Limerick, 1810), and ‘Crippled Jack of Trafalgar’ in A Garland of New Songs. Containing Crippled Jack of Trafalgar, &c. (London?, n.d.). ¹¹³ See John Drinkwater Bethune, A Narrative of the Battle of St. Vincent; with Anecdotes of Nelson, Before and After that Battle excerpted in King and Hattendorf, Every Man Will Do His Duty.

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bleeding, supported by his officers, and about to quit the deck. In the foreground a wounded sailor clasps his fractured limb. The caption reads: The Courageous Nelson received a Wound in the memorable Engagement of August 1, 1798, but regardless of his fate said, My brave Officers and fellow Seamen stand to your guns, regard not the Wounds of the Body they will soon be healed by the Balsam of Conquest for whilst British Tars preserve Hearts of Oak we can beat a French Enemy tho we had each had one Arm in a Sling. ¹¹⁴

This dialogue was completely imaginary, but more importantly, it gave expression to a desire to view Nelson’s body as a conduit to plebeian patriotism. Nelson’s personal perseverance and fortitude were certainly celebrated, but the significant extension here was in imagining that the corporeal threats faced by common seamen could be dissolved through his example. Significantly, the trope reappeared in relation to almost every other major event of Nelson’s life. After the second attack on Boulogne, in which the British raiding force suffered over 200 casualties, particular attention was paid to the admiral’s solicitude for his men. From Deal a conversation between Nelson and one seaman was reported; ‘his Lordship asked him how he was? the gallant Tar replied, he had lost his arm; to which the Admiral said, “Never mind that, I have lost an arm and perhaps shall shortly lose a leg—they cannot be lost in a better cause than fighting for our country.”—This had such an effect on the sailors, that several of them exclaimed, they only regretted their wounds, as it prevented them from accompanying him in another attack on their enemies, the French.’¹¹⁵ In such formulations (actively encouraged, we note, by the actions and words of Nelson himself ) the admiral’s body became a national symbol through which the loyalty of sailors could be imagined and expressed. Most frequently the vehicle through which this was achieved involved a specific identification with Nelson’s body. From Trafalgar, the anecdote was told of a ‘seaman belonging to the Victory’ whose wound had necessitated amputation. ‘ “Well,” said [the seaman] “this by some would be considered a misfortune, but I shall be proud of it, as I shall resemble the more our brave Commander in Chief.” Before the operation was finished, tidings were brought below that Lord Nelson ¹¹⁴ The Hazards of War or Nelson Wounded, John Fairburn (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings (PAD4242), 24 Nov. 1798. ¹¹⁵ Star, 21 Aug. 1801; this anecdote also reprinted in Charnock, Biographical Memoirs of Lord Viscount Nelson, 340.

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was shot:—the man, who had never shrunk from the pain he had endured, started from his seat, and exclaimed,—“Good God! I would rather the shot had taken off my head, and spared his life!”’¹¹⁶ Numerous examples of this type exist, perhaps the most extraordinary was told in relation to Nelson’s December 1800 visit to the city of Salisbury. It recounted Nelson’s progressive encounters with a trio of veterans, each of whom stood in a perceived special relationship to Nelson’s body: [His Lordship] caught sight of a sailor that had assembled amongst the crowd, before the council house in that city, who proved to be one that had fought under his Lordship at the Battle of the Nile. The recollection of a man who had hazarded his life with himself for the glory of his country, associated with the idea of his having been one among the many humble instruments of his own exaltation, instantly touched his heart. He called him forward, and after cordially expressing [his] satisfaction . . . on meeting with anyone who had borne a part in that proud day, instantly dismissed him with a handsome present. Another man presented himself, who at the Helder Point has met a similar fate with his Lordship off Tenerife in the loss of an arm. Every circumstance of greatness or distinction vanished for the moment from the brave Admiral’s mind: . . . his sympathy was awakened . . . a proof of which his fellow sufferer soon experienced in a generous token of the hero’s feeling. It is a singular fact that Lord Nelson should next discover amidst the huzzaing multitude, a person who had attended him at the time he lost his arm, and had assisted at the amputation. The noble Admiral beckoned him up stairs (of the council house), . . . took him by the hand with a present of his own . . . As the man withdrew, he took from his bosom a piece of lace which he had torn from the sleeve of the amputated arm, declaring he would preserve it to his last breath, in memory of his gallant Commander . . . Lord Nelson bade him farewell with an emotion which no effort could stifle.¹¹⁷

It is the nature of acceptable plebeian intrusions into the civic theatre of patriotism that is being, in part, described (the sailors having been brought up out of the crowd to the ‘stage’ on the steps of the councilhouse). This was facilitated (in the correspondent’s mind) by Nelson’s admirable suspension of concerns of social rank (‘Every circumstance of ¹¹⁶ Sun, 12 Nov. 1805; Naval Chronicle, 14 (1805), 479. For another example from the same battle, see Times, 2 Jan. 1806; Duncan, The Life of Horatio Nelson, 307. ¹¹⁷ Naval Chronicle, 14 (1805), 384. Charnock, Biographical Memoirs of Lord Viscount Nelson, 341–3; and in Collingwood, Anecdotes of the late Lord Viscount Nelson, 136–8. The story first appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 89 (1801), 207.

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greatness or distinction vanished for the moment from the brave Admiral’s mind’). Here Nelson’s body can be said to have functioned as a symbol through which a sense of national community was imagined to have been achieved. It was understood as an object whose display had revealed the enduring loyalty of disabled veterans, and a class-transcendent sense of national community. Also crucial to the contemporary associations circulating around Nelson’s body was the extent to which Nelson’s wounds were located in proximity to a discourse that underlined the obligations of patriotic philanthropy. As has already been indicated, one of the principal means by which the loyalist elite sought to mitigate the domestic effect of the war was through the provision of philanthropic relief. From the ‘Glorious First of June’ on, benefit theatrical performances and thanksgiving day services were organized around the collection of public contributions. Calls for contributions to the funds for the relief of the wounded, widows, and orphans (i.e. the Patriotic Fund and its predecessor drives) appear to have been louder in the thanksgivings held for Nelson’s victories than for the Naval Thanksgiving of 1797. In 1806 James Harrison claimed that ‘a just sense of Lord Nelson’s services . . . has probably contributed, in no slight degree, to the extreme popularity of [the Patriotic Fund] for the relief of the suffering seamen and mariners, and their distressed families.’¹¹⁸ This comment expressed the connection that was sensed between the admiral and the people—a connection further illustrated in the anecdote of the visit to Salisbury, where, it is worth noting, Nelson had disbursed monetary ‘gifts’ to the three veterans who had approached him. In such framings Nelson’s body was held to articulate a commonality of suffering and thus demand a consequent commonality of recognition and relief. The successes of Nelson’s career, and his attention to self-advertisement, account for the scale of his contemporary celebrity. However his celebrity had a unique patriotic affect that was above all related to his body and the fact of his wounding. Other admirals’ careers were read for insights into the operation of merit, other officers were keen participants in the competition for career-advancing publicity. But the wounding of commanding officers was rare, and what really set Nelson apart from his peers who reached (or might have reached) similar levels of success, and ¹¹⁸ Harrison, Life of Lord Viscount Nelson, ii. 46.

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put him in a position to develop a singular power for his image, was the fact that he did not retire from active service after he lost his arm at Tenerife. The relationship between the people, the nation, the navy, and the wounds of the male hero that reached its height in the cult of Nelson, was to be, as the rest of this chapter and the next will reveal, one of his significant legacies to Georgian wartime culture.

CIT Y SWORDS AND PATRIOTIC DUELS This chapter’s focus has been on the ways in which affect for Nelson was constructed along lines that mediated disruptive aspects of the wartime experience, general—but significant and widely held—threats to the stability of the British polity. There was room for cohabitation here. There was room in celebrations of Nelson’s merit, piety, and his body for a general level of public interest, not all of it exclusively loyalist. At first Nelson’s patriotic resolution was largely constructed through literary texts, texts that filtered his image back to a domestic reading audience. It is now necessary to return to the space of urban politics, where Nelson, in the period after the Nile, took his place in an overtly partisan struggle over the politics of the war. The basis of Nelson’s popularity in this period has been characterized as above party, in the sense that his appeal clearly transcended party groupings.¹¹⁹ Closer examination of the period from the Nile to Amiens, though, reveals that there was a significantly partisan dimension to the collateral popularity that was sought in proximity to Nelson. This began shortly after the battle of the Nile, when Nelson gave the sword surrendered to him by the French admiral to the Corporation of the City of London.¹²⁰ Guildhall loyalists chose to reciprocate by voting a sword of their own to the victorious admiral the following autumn. Previous events gave this ceremonial sword a distinctly partisan significance. In January 1798, members of the Whig Club had given a sword to General Kosciusko, leader of the Polish patriots (and the ‘General of Liberty’).¹²¹ By the year’s end, the exigencies of continental war had brought Kosciusko into an alliance with France, thus allowing loyalists to pillory the Whigs with the charge that the sword ‘given to him by a band ¹¹⁹ Jordan and Rogers, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 218. ¹²⁰ True Briton, 18 Oct. 1798. ¹²¹ Morning Chronicle, 10 Jan. 1798.

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of British Patriots’ was to be wielded against ‘this Country’.¹²² The City sword voted to Nelson was framed against this act, their gift to the ‘Hero of the Nile’ directly contrasted in loyalist papers to that granted by ‘a certain Faction’ to ‘a Hero of the Opposition Order’.¹²³ Significantly, the City’s gift came at a time when liberal and radical groupings were becoming disconcerted by the counter-revolutionary nature of Nelson’s activities in Naples. His efforts to re-establish the Neapolitan monarchy, in aid of which he violated a legal truce and became complicit in an execution of dubious legitimacy, disappointed observers in the liberal press.¹²⁴ Eyebrows were further raised when reports of the excessively lavish fêtes held in his honour in Naples reached Britain.¹²⁵ In opposition papers, these were held to parallel the domestic excesses of victory culture, and were presented as examples of gastronomic frivolity, elite indolence, and, even, foreign contamination.¹²⁶ For the Morning Post, unbridled continental festivity had turned ‘a British man of war [into] the real temple of pleasure, fun and frolic’.¹²⁷ Such framings (temporarily at least) put paid to oppositional imaginings of Nelson as an incorruptible figure, to be praised for his modesty and self-abnegation. Predictably, the loyalist press delighted in the opposition’s apparent unease, which dovetailed with their project to imbue ‘national’ heroes with narrowly conservative and counter-revolutionary affect.¹²⁸ The capture of the mayoralty in the autumn of 1799 by Harvey Christian Combe, leader of the ‘friends of peace’ in the Livery, inaugurated a particularly intense struggle over patriotic signs. Combe’s election was the culmination of a multi-year campaign for the office, in which the loyalists who dominated the Court of Aldermen exploited every available ruse to prevent victory for the ‘democratic’ faction in the Common Council. Once in office, Combe continued to advocate an end to the war, and was a constant critic of Pitt’s government.¹²⁹ Combe’s consistent ¹²² True Briton, 5 Dec. 1798. ¹²³ Ibid., 22 Oct. 1799. ¹²⁴ See the exchanges in the Morning Chronicle, 12 Aug. 1799; Morning Post, 13 Aug. 1799; Morning Herald, 18 Aug. 1799; Morning Post, 14 Aug. 1799; 22 Aug. 1799; True Briton, 5 Sept. 1799; Morning Post, 7 Sept. 1799. ¹²⁵ See Morning Chronicle, 19 Oct. 1799; St. James’s Chronicle, 22–4 Oct. 1799. ¹²⁶ Morning Post, 25 Oct. 1799; 26 Oct. 1799; 8 Nov. 1799. ¹²⁷ Ibid., 29 Oct. 1799. ¹²⁸ True Briton, 30 Oct. 1799. ¹²⁹ On City politics in this period, see John Dinwiddy, ‘The patriotic linen draper: Robert Waithman and the revival of radicalism in the city of London, 1795–1818’ in Dinwiddy, Radicalism and Reform in Britain, 1780–1850 (London, 1992), 63–85.

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advocacy for peace provides one context for understanding why City loyalists were so ready to embrace the cause of Captain Edward Hamilton, when news of his exploits in the West Indies reached the capital in January 1800. What qualified Hamilton for particular attention, and raised him up for attention beyond his rank, was the counterrevolutionary symbolism of the action for which he was noticed. Hamilton had recaptured the Hermione, a British naval vessel turned over to the French in 1797 after the mutiny of its crew. On 6 March James Dixon moved the voting of the freedom to Captain Hamilton.¹³⁰ Seven months later, when Hamilton had returned to London, and was in a position to collect the honour, the political significance of the Guildhall stage had become even more pronounced. September 1800 saw a dramatic rise in food prices, and resultant bread riots in London.¹³¹ The manner in which Combe, in his capacity as chief magistrate, responded to the crisis earned him significant popular plaudits. While restoring civil order in an apparently even-handed manner, Combe used the economic powers of his office to intervene in the food supply. And when a merchant was accused of selling provisions on the cheap and without a licence, Combe arranged for the livery to vote the freedom to the accused, thus rendering him immune from prosecution.¹³² Thus the Guildhall stage was appropriated by Combe, this time to honour a popular ‘hero’ of the anti-war movement. Combe’s magisterial interventions were unprecedented in their liberality, but the real manner in which he offended loyalist opinion that autumn was through his efforts to use the food crisis to embarrass the government and discredit the continuing war. Supported by the increasing anti-war party, Combe had the Livery pass an address to the king censuring ministers for the high price of provisions. This controversial petition, presented at court on 16 October 1800, inflamed supporters of the ministry, and elicited attacks on Combe’s exploitation of the mayoral office and its attendant pageantry.¹³³ The True Briton led the charge against Combe and the ‘frippery of modern Patriotism’, pointing out that the lord mayor’s concern for food shortages had not stopped him from indulging in the most lavish level of civic entertainment in years.¹³⁴ ¹³⁰ ¹³¹ ¹³² ¹³⁴

General Evening Post, 6–8 Mar. 1800. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 219–22. Oracle, 6 Sept. 1800. ¹³³ Morning Chronicle, 17 Oct. 1800. True Briton, 18 Oct. 1800.

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Combe, it was pointed out, had repeatedly hosted feasts for the ‘whole Tribe of Opposition’.¹³⁵ Since loyalists were increasingly sensitive to the manner in which the civic stage was being used to advocate against the war, they probably looked forward to opportunities such as the formal presentation of the freedom to Captain Hamilton. In this case, though, they were disappointed. Although the City Chamberlain’s speech framed Hamilton’s recapture of the Hermione in the desirable counter-revolutionary context, excoriating the invidious ‘dissemination of those destructive [ Jacobin] principles which have deluged the world with blood,’ the partisan effect was lost when Hamilton responded with a speech that extolled the virtues of the lord mayor: ‘This honour will be the more valuable to me because it is conferred on me during the mayoralty, and presented to me in the hospitable Mansion House of a Chief Magistrate, whose public services have so justly obtained him the approbation of his fellow citizens.’¹³⁶ Loyalists recaptured the Mansion House in the autumn of 1800 with the election of Sir William Staines, but this did not bring an end to the patriotic struggle on the urban stage. Lord Mayor’s Day, the occasion of the ceremonial transference of civic power, was celebrated that year in a freighted atmosphere as both sides attempted to construct it into a symbolic plebiscite on the war. Given the earlier disturbances, the threat of disorder was genuinely held.¹³⁷ The show was held on Monday, 10 November, the same day that the government tabled copies of the failed peace negotiations with France in order to justify the continuation of the war. Loyalist fortunes that day were bolstered by the last-minute participation of Nelson himself, just returned to Britain for the first time since his victory at the Nile. It was apparently so desirable that Nelson play a role in the day’s festivities that he received special permission from George III to appear at the Guildhall (since protocol dictated that he not appear publicly until formally received at court).¹³⁸ Nelson’s procession into the City was a triumphant one. He reportedly shook hands with ¹³⁵ Ibid., 31 Oct. 1800. Combe was defended on the grounds that the Lord Mayor’s Shew was a feast ‘to the poor as well as the rich’, Morning Herald, 20 Oct. 1800. ¹³⁶ Hamilton’s apparent endorsement of Combe may explain why few papers apart from the Morning Chronicle (31 Oct. 1800) chose to report the event in any detail. A long account of the speech was reprinted in Gentleman’s Magazine, 88 (1800), 1097–8. ¹³⁷ St. James’s Chronicle, 8–11 Nov. 1800; Morning Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1800. ¹³⁸ On this point see Evening Mail, 7–10 Nov. 1800.

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over 2,000 people. More importantly, the crowd honoured him with the ritual of ‘taking out the horses’ and drawing his carriage to the Guildhall. Once there, he was formally presented with the ceremonial sword. In accepting the sword, Nelson gave a short speech that made clear his position on the topic of the day. Dramatically raising the sword up in what the Oracle pointed out was ‘his left and remaining hand ’, Nelson pledged to use it ‘to aid in reducing our implacable and inveterate enemy to proper and due limits—without which this country can neither hope for, nor expect, a solid, honourable, and permanent peace!’¹³⁹ These words—which were not repeated in any opposition newspapers— expressed the aggressive pro-war posture of militant loyalism, and represented a strong check to the policies and opinions of the outgoing lord mayor.¹⁴⁰ But in spite of Nelson’s dramatic intervention, Lord Mayor’s Day did not resolve solely to the benefit of loyalism. For the honour the urban crowd paid to Nelson in ‘taking out the horses’ was also paid to Combe, ‘the late patriotic Lord Mayor’.¹⁴¹ This was a highly symbolic move on the part of Combe’s supporters. ‘Taking out the horses’ was not an incidental or simply conventional act; it was taken as a barometer of popular opinion and was itself frequently contested in accounts of urban ceremonial.¹⁴² Having nailed his colours to the mast, Nelson need not have been terribly surprised at the treatment that ensued from the ‘democratic livery’ the next spring after the battle of Copenhagen (fought 2 April 1801). This was a controversial attack upon the fleet of a neutral country. This—and the fact that Pitt’s Cabinet had planned the campaign— explains the reluctance of the Addington ministry to stimulate popular celebrations. Public Offices did not give the lead in illumination, and in London the lord mayor encouraged the diversion of enthusiasm into the subscription effort.¹⁴³ Once details of the Danish capitulation became known, it was rumoured (but vehemently denied in the ministerial press) ¹³⁹ Oracle, 11 Nov. 1800. Emphasis in original. ¹⁴⁰ Nelson’s speech was extensively reported in the loyalist and Pittite press. See Oracle, 11 Nov. 1800; Evening Mail, 10–12 Nov. 1800; General Evening Post, 8–11 Nov. 1800; St. James’s Chronicle, 8–11 Nov. 1800. ¹⁴¹ Morning Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1800. ¹⁴² Compare, The Times, 10 Nov. 1798; Morning Chronicle, 10 Nov. 1798; The Times, 12 Nov. 1799. See also, Morning Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1799; Oracle, 11 Nov. 1799; The Times, 11 Nov. 1799; Oracle, 11 Nov. 1800. ¹⁴³ Oracle, 17 Apr. 1801; The Times, 17 Apr. 1801; Star, 17 Apr. 1801.

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that St Vincent had blocked the illumination of the Admiralty, knowing the allegedly dishonourable nature of the truce.¹⁴⁴ The ambivalence surrounding the celebration of Copenhagen gave the anti-war grouping in the Livery the opportunity they needed, and when the Court of the Common Council assembled to vote the thanks to Nelson and the commanders in the Baltic, Robert Waithman and the radicals blocked the motion, by pre-emptively moving one of their own which pretended to congratulate the king on his recent recovery.¹⁴⁵ Phrased as it was in the language of contractual monarchy, Waithman’s motion was a calculating procedural tactic designed to expose the intensely partisan enthusiasms of City loyalists. Its reception by loyalists, who opposed it on a range of technical grounds, proved the bias of the Guildhall according to the radical grouping: ‘if the motion had come from the Ministerial side of the Court, no objection would have been made to it; but as this address had not been cooked by the Deputy, it was not palatable.’¹⁴⁶ Debate on the issue consumed the whole day’s session, thus delaying (permanently, as it turned out) the vote on Copenhagen.¹⁴⁷ In October 1801, the ‘unknown men’ of the Addington ministry delivered on their promise of peace. In London, the symbolic struggles over the meaning of war and peace thus had their denouement in the events of Lord Mayor’s Day, 1801. It was pitched as a celebration of the peace, and the arrangements for the pageant exceeded those of recent years. On that day the horses were taken out for three men: Sir William Staines, Alderman Combe, and Admiral Lord Nelson. Staines was the outgoing lord mayor, his popularity with the crowd on this day was ascribed by the Oracle to ‘having, in his mayoralty, brought them peace and plenty’.¹⁴⁸ Combe, of course, had been the long-standing champion of this cause and the honour paid to him was clearly an attempt to recognize that fact. Nelson’s honour is readily explained by his widespread popularity—a popularity that articulated a wide range of meanings. But on this day his presence did have relevance for a larger dynamic within the City. Nelson’s stated opposition to a peace with France, and the significant respect he commanded in militantly loyalist circles, made him ¹⁴⁴ The Times, 22 Apr. 1801. ¹⁴⁵ Oracle, 29 Apr. 1801. ¹⁴⁶ The Times, 29 Apr. 1801. ¹⁴⁷ Subsequent efforts by Samuel Dixon on the thanks for Copenhagen failed largely due to the press of other business. See Oracle, 2 May 1801; 15 May 1801. ¹⁴⁸ Oracle, 10 Nov. 1801; The Times, 10 Nov. 1801.

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a desirable spokesman for the peace of Amiens. The week before he had performed this role for the ministry in the House of Lords. When he came to the Guildhall, then, his presence signified the breadth of support for peace on the part of those who had previously been warm advocates of continuing war. Throughout the 1790s and into the peace of Amiens, then, City loyalists were consistently engaged in efforts to place exclusive interpretations upon patriotism, the war, and its heroes. Their success here is impossible to measure, given that our understanding of the urban theatre of patriotism is inevitably filtered through the textual practices of those who were themselves caught up in the contemporary struggle. It was not the changing contexts of the war with France that explain the apparently transcendent status of a figure like Nelson: the period of the cultural formation of his public image did not simply coincide with an increasingly acceptable, uniform, and shared language of patriotism, and Nelson’s own patriotism was not as non-partisan as has been suggested. Rather, Nelson’s image was a site where the meaning of the war and the desirability of peace was played out (among other tensions). At this point, it seems salutary to observe that the act of ‘turning out the horses’ is analogous to the process by which meaning was constructed in the patriotic public sphere. There was nothing predetermined, or deterministic, about the process of celebrity construction in Georgian Britain. Larger groups of agents, actors, and audiences exerted influences than might be initially guessed. Crowds pulling carriages, the occupants themselves no longer quite sure where exactly they were heading, or how the honour would be framed in the pages of a partisan press, underline the complex forces at play in the construction of the Georgian experience. ‘ THE HEROES OF TRAFALGAR’ For loyalists, Trafalgar represented both an opportunity and a challenge. News of the naval victory that preserved Britain from invasion was an opportunity, in that loyalist inflections could be attached to the vindicated posture of national defence patriotism. But coming as it did, with Nelson’s death, Trafalgar also challenged the wartime public, presenting them with contradictory impulses to both celebration and

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mourning. The customary revelry of victory celebration was even less desirable than before, given the deferential mourning that was called for by the death of the admiral. Loyalist accounts of the Trafalgar illuminations—which lasted six nights—explicitly acknowledged this tension at the same time that they imagined its appropriate resolution. According to the Sun, the Tower and Park Guns were fired at ten in the morning of 6 November, ‘and though the news was not generally known, a partial illumination took place in the evening’. Significantly, the paper claimed, news of the victory ‘did not create any enthusiastic joy, it did not produce any ebullition of popular transport. Joy for the victory was completely absorbed in grief for the loss of Lord Nelson.’¹⁴⁹ The Times concurred, observing that: the victory created none of those enthusiastic emotions in the public mind, which the success of our naval arms have in every former instance produced. . . . No ebullitions of popular transport, no demonstrations of public joy, marked this great and important event. The honest and manly feeling of the people appeared as it should have done: they felt an inward satisfaction at the triumph of their favourite arms; they mourned with all the sincerity and poignancy of domestic grief, their Hero slain.¹⁵⁰

Elite opinion revelled in the idea that ‘[t]he triumph of [the British people’s] arms has been attended with nothing noisy and intoxicating. It has yielded to sorrow for the loss of the Chief who sustained by his life the glory and security of the nation . . . The conduct of the people has been truly manly and decent.’¹⁵¹ However, these were fundamentally imposed constructions. In fact the Trafalgar illuminations saw typical levels of disturbance. On the first night a ‘gang of disorderly persons paraded the streets of Mary-le-bone’ engaging in customary window-breaking in the environs of Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, and Hanover Square. The violence was apparently ‘carried to extremities’, the ‘Mob’ had to be dispersed by the police, and a number of offenders were taken into custody.¹⁵² This was not an isolated incident. Twenty-four individuals, mostly juveniles, were examined at Union Hall on the Saturday after Trafalgar, for various illumination offences, while another group was prosecuted the same day at the Queen Square Police Office.¹⁵³ ¹⁴⁹ Sun, 7 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵⁰ The Times, 7 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵¹ Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 10 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵² Sun, 8 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵³ Ibid., 11 Nov. 1805; see also The Times, 11 Nov. 1805.

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The traditional forms of plebeian festivity posed a challenge for loyalists who were determined to construct an appropriate version of the national reaction to Trafalgar. Such interests favoured practices like those observed at Deal, where the Mayor traversed the town giving public readings of the Gazette that were apparently met with ‘sullen gloom’ and ‘dead silence’ but none of the usual ‘shouts of exultation’.¹⁵⁴ This is not to say all loyalist celebration conformed to the desired pattern. At Dover the local Volunteers observed the victory at the Royal Oak Inn by paying ‘pretty good attention to kind Bacchus’. The local illumination that followed the Volunteer dinner was characterized by a level of inordinate festivity, which the correspondent relating the event disingenuously explained away.¹⁵⁵ Even more determined efforts were necessary to make the behaviour of one very important group conform to the vision loyalists were determined to entertain. On the second night of illumination, a group of sailors assembled across from the Treasury building in Whitehall and participated in the customary practice of extracting money and insisting on the removal of hats from gentlemanly passers-by. As described in The Times, the incident was divested of its intimidating air and distanced from its saturnalian reality. Instead of a group of drunken sailors disrupting public order, the reporter described ‘a squadron of shattered tars were drawn up in line of battle, at anchor, with their lights aloft, all well stowed with grog, flourishing their mutilated stumps, cheering all heads, and making the best of their position, in collecting prize-money.’ Their presence served ‘as if to complete the picture’.¹⁵⁶ The same focus on sailors’ behaviour as a performance—a strategy that served to distance and contain the autonomy of their behaviour— can be seen in an example from Plymouth. Here, when the ships from Admiral Sir Richard Strachan’s squadron landed, the sailors hijacked the hackney-coaches of the town and drove them around the streets. This action temporarily suspended the business of the town, but it was constructed in the press as a performance, given by sailors ‘in their usual eccentric stile’. And the degree to which it could be appreciated by onlookers was significantly enhanced (in the language of the account) by representing the sailor’s customary appropriation of carriages as a virtual ¹⁵⁴ The Times, 9 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵⁶ The Times, 8 Nov. 1805.

¹⁵⁵ Sun, 18 Nov. 1805.

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re-enactment of the battle of Trafalgar. Coaches were ‘form[ed] in the streets the line of battle, as they call it, and then break the line, by making the coachmen turn suddenly, . . . down some narrow street, huzzaing the whole way.’ If readers were still not convinced that these riotous proceedings evidenced appropriate comportment, the account provided further assurances that ‘all is in perfect good humour’. For ‘to their honour, as British Seamen, each man has a knot of love crape ribbon fastened above his left elbow, as mourning for their late beloved Hero, Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson.’¹⁵⁷ Significantly it was participation in the acknowledged customs of social mourning, rather than solely participation in the victory itself, that rendered the tars’ transgressions of the local order momentarily acceptable. In both these cases the image of British seamen can be said to have been textually appropriated for literary consumption. And these were but the first of several instances in which British tars were appropriated by groups seeking to assert their cultural authority in the patriotic public sphere. Perhaps the most notable of these occurred when the organizers of Nelson’s funeral decided to capitalize upon a strong popular sentiment and allow the sailors of the Victory to march in the procession to St Paul’s. This idea, if it did not originate in the public mind, certainly became identified as the public’s most fervent wish.¹⁵⁸ In a similarly calculated move, organizers arranged for Nelson’s lying in state to close with a visit from the admiral’s crew. At a time when the participation of such notable figures as the Prince of Wales and the lord mayor was being publicly disputed, the decision to grant the crew of the Victory a privileged place in the funerary proceedings constituted a significant abrogation of protocol. ‘Protocol’ was a relative concept frequently used to assert elite cultural authority in the patriotic public sphere. Attempts to delay the 1801 illuminations for the proclamation of peace until the ‘official’ arrival of the signed protocols, the decision the following spring to celebrate the passage of the Amiens treaty with a heraldic ceremonial, and the attempts made to subordinate victory festivities to the official cues given by the Park and Tower guns were all of a piece with general efforts to bring patriotic celebrations under elite control. In this sense, the announcement of a heraldic funeral ¹⁵⁷ Sun, 19 Nov. 1805. ¹⁵⁸ See Star, 9 Dec. 1805; Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 1 Dec. 1805; York Herald, 4 Jan. 1806.

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for Nelson held a strong appeal for the consumers of loyalist print culture. Periodicals like the Gentleman’s Magazine had a strong antiquarian bent to their content. In its pages disputatious contributors frequently clashed over the esoteric details of Britain’s past. And throughout the wars of 1793–1815, the periodical brimmed over with fanciful proposals for monuments, commemorative medals, and other ideas for rewarding valiant commanders.¹⁵⁹ These contributions were characterized by a degree of self-conscious display, with readers in a sense competing to make the most appropriate classical and antiquarian allusions. For consumers of the literary ‘field of Mars’, then, Nelson’s funeral was an opportunity to participate in a celebratory exploration of state ritual. This was the audience to which a wide range of explanatory texts and prints were pitched. Even before the funeral, the firm of John Fairburn was selling a sixpenny guide, consisting of complete plans for the various stages of the procession, an explanation of the iconography of the special funeral car constructed to transport Nelson’s body to St Paul’s, and an ‘explanation of the State Barges’.¹⁶⁰ Many of the prints produced in the aftermath of Trafalgar were intended as commemorative items, but a significant subset was designed to appeal to this antiquarian audience. Numerous prints of the celebrated funeral car appeared; their claim to priority over one another was based upon their respective claims to accuracy and verisimilitude, especially with respect to the heraldic particulars. That produced by S. W. Fores ‘assured’ its purchasers of ‘the Correctness of this Print’, and claimed to be ‘complete[d] from the Car itself.’¹⁶¹ Rudolph Ackermann’s ‘Repository of Arts’ produced a range of esoteric items. Within a week of the funeral his shop in the Strand was selling a print detailing the disposition of mourners, clergy, bannerolls, and trophies in the sanctuary of St Paul’s.¹⁶² The next week it added ¹⁵⁹ Gentleman’s Magazine, 83 (1798), 24–7; 84 (1798), 1008, 1014; 86 (1799), 760; 87 (1800), 230, 409; 89 (1801), 125–7, 388; 90 (1801), 971, 1070; 92 (1802), 609; 93 (1803), 206, 396; 94 (1803), 1109; 98 (1805), 1048, 1119, 1202; 102 (1807), 712–14. ¹⁶⁰ Fairburn’s Edition of the Funeral Procession of the late Vice-Admiral Lord Visct. Nelson (London, 1806). ¹⁶¹ An exact representation of the Grand Funeral Car which carried the Remains of Lord Nelson to St. Paul’s on Thursday January 9th 1806, S. W. Fores (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 4369), 13 Jan. 1806. ¹⁶² Plan of the platform and the disposition of the Bannerolls, Trophies, &c., around the Coffin, at the Funeral of the much-lamented Lord Nelson, under the Dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, on the 9th January 1806, R. Ackermann (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF4375), 13 Jan. 1806.

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a print of Lord Nelson’s banner of emblems which explained its heraldic contexts to purchasers and another of Nelson’s funeral barge that included a brief history of the 100-year-old boat itself.¹⁶³ The majority of these prints did not aim to represent the funeral as a general event or spectacle. Rather, they had an instructive and educational quality, and were intended to be actively consumed by a participatory and highly literate audience. This is evidenced in the number of prints in which the elaborate identification of various heraldic details and arrangements of protocol took precedence over other artistic priorities. W. B. Walker’s print of the funeral barge used to convey Nelson’s body in the procession by water was as concerned with the correct details of the ensigns and banners as it was with representing the barge.¹⁶⁴ A print of Nelson’s lying in state at Greenwich employed a letter-key to identify carefully all the items and individuals on display; the same artist’s representation of the procession by water subordinated its field of view to give its purchasers the precise positions of the various barges, their ensigns, and occupants.¹⁶⁵ Active consumption in this elite literary sphere occurred alongside an awareness that the lower orders had taken an unprecedented interest in many aspects of the public mourning. In mid-December 1805 The Times observed that ‘the lower classes’ ‘feel an uncommon interest in the obsequies of the Hero’.¹⁶⁶ Later a letter-writer agreed, commenting that the public ‘seem to think that the apotheosis of their Hero should supersede every other consideration’.¹⁶⁷ With expressions like these in ¹⁶³ Lord Nelson’s Banner of Emblems, as carried in the Funeral Procession of the 9th of January, 1806, from the Admiralty to St. Paul’s, W. M. Fellows (engraver) Rudolph Ackermann (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD 3993), 25 Jan. 1806; This shallop, which brought the Body of the ever to be lamented Lord Nelson from Greenwich to Whitehall Stairs, on the 8th of January, 1806 . . . , Rudolph Ackermann (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAD3935), 21 Jan. 1806. ¹⁶⁴ A correct representation of the Funeral Barge which conveyed the Body of the late Lord Nelson from Greenwich to Whitehall Jany. 8 1806, W. B. Walker (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF4376), 1 Mar. 1806. ¹⁶⁵ A view of the Laying in State of the Remains of our illustrious Hero Lord Nelson in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital, G. Thompson (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAG6708), 15 Jan. 1806; A View of the Funeral Procession by Water of the remains of that great Hero Lord Nelson from Greenwich to Whitehall stairs Jany. 8 1806, G. Thompson (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAG6710), 1 Feb. 1806. ¹⁶⁶ Times, 13 Dec. 1805. ¹⁶⁷ Ibid., 30 Dec. 1806.

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circulation, it is no wonder that Gillian Russell, when considering Nelson’s funeral, saw it largely as a clash between plebeian and elite goals. Moreover, in the general theatrical politics of the winter of 1805–6, Russell charted a significant reconfiguration in the contemporary experience of theatrical performance, in which a Painite ‘open theatre of the world’ clashed with a Burkean vision of political ritual.¹⁶⁸ An understanding of Nelson’s funeral in its political dimensions, though, is not particularly well served by the polarity that Russell establishes. A deeper look at the funerary episode in which Russell saw configurations of theatricality in crisis suggests that it does not resolve quite as neatly as believed. For one thing, the organizers of the spectacle, and public opinion at large, were far more accommodating to popular impulses and far more open to reflexive orientations towards performance, than has been realized.¹⁶⁹ But more particularly, the cultural dynamic exhibited in the period of Nelson’s funeral can be more suitably fitted to those that this study has traced in victory culture at large. Crucial to Russell’s interpretation was her assessment of Trafalgar theatricals. Audiences were held to have resisted these performances, leading to their eventual suppression by authorities. The whole crisis proved, for Russell, that Britons were ‘rejecting the traditional role of the theatre as a political signifier’.¹⁷⁰ Audiences, though, were far less resistant to these theatrical representations than Russell has suggested. The pieces staged at Covent Garden and Drury Lane were well received. And there were no fewer than six separate Trafalgar productions performed on the London stage in the winter of 1805–6.¹⁷¹ The Examiner of Plays, it is true, refused Richard Cumberland a licence for a piece to be produced on the day after the funeral. But this refusal was not a response to any ¹⁶⁸ Russell, Theatres of War, 79–87. ¹⁶⁹ These and other points are made in greater detail in, Timothy Jenks, ‘Contesting the hero: the funeral of Admiral Lord Nelson’, Journal of British Studies, 39 (2000), 422–53. ¹⁷⁰ Russell, Theatres of War, 85–6. ¹⁷¹ They were: The Victory and Death of Lord Nelson (Drury Lane, first performed on 11 Nov. 1805); Nelson’s Glory (Covent Garden, 11 Nov. 1805); He Died for his Country; or Nelson’s Victory (Royalty Theatre, 14 Nov. 1805); an unnamed representation of Trafalgar in ballet (the German Theatre, 27 Nov. 1805); and Naval Victory; or, the Triumph of Lord Nelson a.k.a. The Naval Triumph (King’s Theatre, 8 Dec. 1805). Charles Dibdin’s tribute—delayed by the illness of its lead actor—was eventually performed as The Broken Gold at Drury Lane on 8 Feb. 1806. It, however, differed from the others in being solely a nautical melodrama—not a theatrical representation of the events of Trafalgar.

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sudden crisis in patriotic performance. Rather it was the result of a general prohibition on representations of the funeral ceremony and entirely consistent with loyalism’s continuing sensitivity towards the place religious ceremonials occupied in victory culture.¹⁷² Significantly, the only criticism mounted against any of the Trafalgar theatricals, that of the King’s Theatre 8 December performance of Naval Victory; or, the Triumph of Lord Nelson, was founded in a tension that Russell did not notice. Its ‘great Error . . . was an attempt to personate the departed Hero on the Stage’. ¹⁷³ The objection was to the fact the dying Nelson had been shown ‘in the convulsions of his last moments’.¹⁷⁴ Importantly, the objections to this were raised, not only by the sympathizers of Paine in the pit, but also by Burke’s cohort in the boxes. ‘Many, if not all, the Persons of Fashion present, were honoured with the acquaintance of that great character, and of course, must be deeply affected, at seeing the object of their veneration and respect thus pouring out his soul for his country, even through the medium of dramatic representation. The scene was too strong for the feelings of those who loved and admired him, and therefore we are not surprised that it should have been protested against in the manner it was.’¹⁷⁵ Although the critical sensibilities of those in the boxes were expressed in terms that privileged their place in the larger theatre of patriotism (they could claim to have known the dead hero and could justify their taste with reference to that claim), the greater point is that pit, box, and gallery were united in their reaction. Because of its socially mixed audience, the theatre was a venue where plebeian expressions of patriotism were countenanced and even actively encouraged in the winter of 1805–6. This was dramatically illustrated in the events at Covent Garden on 26 December. The evening’s bill (which featured, among other entertainments, Nelson’s Glory) was continuously interrupted by a sailor of the Victory who repeatedly exhorted the audience to indulge him with a series of patriotic gestures. The tar’s efforts were approved of, and in an ‘extraordinary’ move, at the end of the ¹⁷² [Scales’ edition], A correct account of the funeral procession of Lord Nelson . . . together with his Lordship’s will, &c. (London, 1806), 27. This prohibition was surely the reason that Edmund John Eyre’s The Tears of Britain; or, the Funeral of Lord Nelson while apparently written, was never performed—Eyre was a member of the Drury Lane company. Another published—but apparently unperformed—Trafalgar theatrical was [William Perry], The Heroes of Trafalgar; or British Nuns at Cadiz (Uxbridge, 1806). ¹⁷³ Sun, 9 Dec. 1805. Emphasis in original. ¹⁷⁴ The Times, 9 Dec. 1805. ¹⁷⁵ Ibid. Emphasis in original.

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evening’s performance he was invited by the actors up onto the stage and permitted to lead the audience in another rendition of Rule Britannia. The scene that followed, in which the sailor seized the British flag and refused to surrender it to the actors, was described as one of ‘the most interesting . . . ever exhibited in any theatre’ and was said to have ‘made a wonderful impression on the minds of the spectators’.¹⁷⁶ The activities of this ‘Jack Tar in the Playhouse’ certainly qualify as examples of agency anticipated in Paine’s ‘open theatre of the world’ and as such it is crucial to note that the sailor’s intrusion was approved of strongly. Indeed, an account celebrating the incident was even reprinted in the Naval Chronicle.¹⁷⁷ Interruptions by soldiers and sailors in this period were usually considered disruptive events. The reaction to this sailor’s efforts, then, serves as a further example of the special privileges held to be extended to the seamen of the Victory in the aftermath of Trafalgar. It is important to understand that such approval was contingently advanced. Each of the cultural forms in the patriotic public sphere was governed by its own participatory conventions—the theatre was the most open of these. The same audience which could delight in Jack’s intrusion onto the boards could also find humour in a satirical parody of his attempt to enter into the literary public sphere. In its December number, the European Magazine published a mock account of the battle of Trafalgar, a humorous send-up of the British seaman that parodied the form of the Gazette dispatch.¹⁷⁸ By the time the crew of the Victory marched through the capital in the funeral procession they had achieved a singular status in loyalist print culture. Plebeian festivity at the three days of Nelson’s lying in state at Greenwich had once again threatened the realization of the idealized spectacle. Moreover, the challenge reporters faced in representing these events was complicated by the discovery that some newspapers had passed off completely fabricated accounts of earlier stages of the funerary episode.¹⁷⁹ But when the crew of the Victory arrived for a final audience with their former commander, the tensions that circulated at the lying in state were resolved through descriptions of the sailors’ visit. The published accounts constructed this as a civilizing moment, in which a feral group of ¹⁷⁶ Star, 28 Dec. 1805. ¹⁷⁷ Naval Chronicle, 15 (1806), 18–20. ¹⁷⁸ European Magazine, 48 (1805), 433–5. ¹⁷⁹ See Sun, 25 Dec. 1805; The Times, 26 Dec. 1805; and compare Star, 25 Dec. 1805.

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‘rough and ready’ tars were tamed by appropriate sensibilities.¹⁸⁰ To loyalist writers these veterans of Trafalgar became representative of the possibilities they wished spectacle could tap in all Britons. By this point, rather than being an exclusively plebeian sign, the crew was the object of affective sentiment from several social quarters. They stood at a powerful intersection of collective aspiration that elevated them to the status of a national symbol. In this sense, it is difficult to accept Russell’s view that, in the funeral ceremony itself, when the tars tore off scraps of the Victory’s ensign as souvenirs, the action constituted a politicized challenge to the cultural authorities organizing the event.¹⁸¹ For one thing, that act was universally reported in admiring tones. And for another, the seamen of the Victory were but one of several groups who made attempts to deliberately augment the dramatic nature of their participation in the funeral. The Prince of Wales, the Duke of Clarence, and even as precedent-obsessed a personage as Sir Isaac Heard, Garter, King of Arms, the kingdom’s principal herald, all made similar efforts to invest the funeral with an element of singularity.¹⁸² Considering the degree to which loyalist print culture was working to circumscribe the meaning of Nelson’s funeral in the literary public sphere, it is interesting to note that the government ministers and officials of the College of Arms responsible for the organization of Nelson’s funeral proved exceptionally receptive to popular impulses. The funeral car was designed in a consciously accessible manner, and on the day of the funeral procession itself, every possible deference was paid to the desires of those in the crowd who clamoured forth to view it.¹⁸³ Moreover, at the same time that heralds and ministers were organizing Nelson’s funeral, they were apparently so attracted to the possibilities of patriotic spectacle that they were moving forward with plans to inaugurate an annual ‘Trafalgar Day’, upon which the knights of a new Naval and Military Order of Merit would be ceremonially invested in a pageant at St Paul’s.¹⁸⁴ Loyalist opinion had every reason to be satisfied by the experience of Nelson’s funerary spectacle. Contemporaries were impressed by the scale ¹⁸⁰ The Times, 8 Jan. 1806; Morning Chronicle, 10 Jan. 1806. ¹⁸¹ Russell, Theatres of War, 87. ¹⁸² See Jenks, ‘Contesting the hero’, 444–5. ¹⁸³ Ibid. 438–40. ¹⁸⁴ For this see College of Arms: MS: ‘Order of Merit’ (RR59B), fos. 5–6; PRO 30/8/144 fos. 13–14; BL (Liverpool Papers) Add. MS 38378 vol. 189, fo. 38. I discuss the proposed order, and its significance as a memorial to Nelson, in Jenks, ‘Contesting the hero’, 431–3.

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and solemn nature of the crowd’s involvement on the day of the funeral. And in at least two engravings of the funeral procession the crowd itself became the focus of representation.¹⁸⁵ A good deal of this satisfaction stemmed from the organizers’ perceived success in appropriating naval symbols in a manner which accorded with their general political aims. When the arrangements for the funeral were made by ministers and the heralds, every effort was made to ensure that Nelson’s centrality to the navy, and the navy’s centrality to the state, was symbolically asserted. Pitt was personally involved in these discussions, which sought to recapture for the ministry an association with naval superiority that was being tarnished by the Dundas affair, an ongoing scandal in which Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, the first Lord of the Admiralty, was accused of misappropriating naval funds for personal use.¹⁸⁶ In an unprecedented abrogation of heraldic protocol, the places accorded Nelson’s family in the funeral ceremony were supplanted by naval representatives. The section of the procession usually occupied by the family and household of the deceased was taken over by the naval service. Sir Peter Parker, the Admiral of the Fleet, served as the chief mourner, and nineteen other admirals performed significant roles in the procession. The funeral saw Nelson’s image captured and constrained by a state apparatus interested in emphasizing him as an object lesson in loyal service. Its heraldic trappings contained the image of Nelson within a spectacular apparatus that emphasized identification with the State. The proposed Naval and Military Order of Merit was a further move in this direction. By creating a new order of knighthood specifically designed to honour deserving men of modest social origins, it sought to capitalize upon Nelson’s extant meritocratic associations and appropriately wed them to the loyalist project. ¹⁸⁵ Funeral Procession by water with the remains of the late Lord Nelson, G. Robinson (publisher), National Maritime Museum Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF4367), 1 Feb. 1806; An accurate view from the house of W. Turmard Esq. on the Bankside, adjoining the site of Shakespeare’s Theatre—on Wednesday the 8th of January 1806; when the remains of the great Admiral Lord Nelson were brought from Greenwich to Whitehall, John Thomas Smith (artist, engraver, publisher), National Maritime Museum Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF4378), 15 Feb. 1806. ¹⁸⁶ The Dundas affair, which began in March 1805, led to Melville’s resignation in April, and an impeachment trial from April to June 1806. He was acquitted. See Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 82–8; Michael Fry, ‘Dundas, Henry, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8250, accessed 28 Oct. 2005].

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None of this is to deny that tensions existed in the funerary period. Rather, they were simply written out of loyalist accounts. Neither Nelson, the navy, the fundamentally defensive context of Trafalgar, nor the funeral itself, admitted of an easy resolution in the interests of the ministry. Opposition interests, for their part, were determined not to allow this to happen. Throughout the funerary episode, opposition papers, while participating wholeheartedly in the general enthusiasm for the event, paid close attention to the ministry’s moves. After the Prince of Wales had been prevented from appearing in the role of chief mourner, and later when the lord mayor was asserting his rights to a privileged place in the procession, these were the papers that joined together to denounce the ‘pretence of etiquette’ with which ministers were justifying their organizational decisions. At times they compared what they saw as the ministerial attentiveness to the funeral pageant as a metaphor for their general handling of the war—a point made by the Bury and Norwich Post in expressing the wish that ‘as much pains had been taken in arranging the business of the [late allied] campaign, as in arranging this procession’.¹⁸⁷ In the end, the funeral’s political significance was passionately contested in struggles over the participatory significance of its most prominent naval symbols. The crew of the Victory had been so centrally located in anticipations of the funerary experience that it comes as no surprise to find the nature of their participation challenged. Since it had been expected that the sailors would ceremonially ‘turn out the horses’ for the funeral car, and that they would carry the coffin into St Paul’s themselves, some considered their role to have been insufficient and expressed regret they were not closer to Nelson’s body.¹⁸⁸ The sense that the sailors had not been used to the best effect (to which loyalists could certainly subscribe) was given a decidedly partisan twist in several oppositional papers in the funeral’s immediate aftermath. After the ceremony, Sir Isaac Heard ‘benevolently’ gave the funeral car to Greenwich Hospital, on the understanding that proceeds from its display would benefit the Marine Society. Heard’s philanthropic gift (which was apparently made over the objections of other interested parties) was publicly ¹⁸⁷ Newcastle Advertiser and General Weekly Post, 7 Dec. 1805; Morning Chronicle, 14, 16 Dec. 1805; Bury and Norwich Post, 8 Jan. 1806. ¹⁸⁸ Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 12 Jan. 1806; [Scale’s Edition], A Correct Account of the Funeral Procession of Lord Nelson, 18.

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contrasted with the ‘mercenary aggrandizement’ exhibited by the vergers of St Paul’s, who, it had been revealed, were personally pocketing admission charges to Nelson’s tomb—an act which was seen to typify the excesses of old corruption.¹⁸⁹ The reporting of this incident linked the vergers’ venality to the treatment the seamen of the Victory received on the evening of the funeral, when no meal had been provided for them ‘after the fatigues of the day’. Thus, the manner in which this narrow clique rewarded itself was contrasted to the neglect of the ‘defenders of our country’.¹⁹⁰ In the version of events reported in Nelson’s native county of Norfolk—a county where loyalists would have liked to believe the hero’s example was encouraging young men to enlist for the navy— the story was given a spin that articulated a further social complaint. Not only had the crew of the Victory been neglected, claimed the local paper, ‘report further states that several of them have since been pressed and sent on board the tender off the Tower.’¹⁹¹ In these examples a familiar dichotomy re-emerged. Naval heroism was once again articulated as an incorruptible patriotic counterpoint to the venality of the domestic state. Not that these notions had ever disappeared. At least two published Trafalgar thanksgiving sermons employed Nelson as a foil to highlight the venality of Pittite government. John Styles’s thanksgiving sermon decried the ‘venality, corruption, and public vice’ of ‘a Melville and his colleagues’ in starkly millenarian terms: it did not bode well for the nation that ‘the patriot [Nelson] is laid low, while the man whose hand is polluted with a bribe, sits in health with all his blushing honours thick upon him.’¹⁹² Similarly, the sermon of Charles Abbot, chaplain to the Whig Duke of Bedford, saw Nelson’s example as an opportunity to denounce the sham quality of elite patriotism.¹⁹³ Sentiments of this nature could appear in unexpected quarters. Most of the pamphlet biographies published in the immediate aftermath of Trafalgar were wholly loyalist, but Joshua White’s Supplement to the Life of the Late Viscount Nelson (1806) used Nelson’s memory to criticize ¹⁸⁹ Sun, 15 Jan. 1806; Times, 15 Jan. 1806; Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 18 Jan. 1806, cols. 79–80. ¹⁹⁰ Star, 13 Jan. 1806. ¹⁹¹ Bury and Norwich Post, 15 Jan. 1806. ¹⁹² John Styles, A Tribute to the Memory of Nelson; A Sermon, delivered at West Cowes, November 10, 1805 (Newport, 1805), 9, 17–18. ¹⁹³ Charles Abbot, DD. A Sermon preached in the Parish Church of St. Mary Bedford, on Sunday, November the 10th, 1805, on the death of the late Lord Viscount Nelson (Bedford, 1805), 12.

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the level of aristocratic support for the Patriotic Fund, and extended its criticisms to aristocratic celebrations of victory culture in general.¹⁹⁴ Articulations of Nelson’s heroic incorruptibility became increasingly relevant in the weeks after the funeral, largely due to the manner in which the death of Pitt was presented by loyalism. Days after Nelson’s funeral, Pitt died at Bath. His friends and supporters immediately launched an effort to construct their former leader as a national patriot and hero.¹⁹⁵ Another state-funded heraldic funeral was held for Pitt at Westminster Abbey, and plans for various monuments and memorials began. Crucial to these efforts was the assertion of Pitt’s place in celebrations of Britain’s naval superiority. The heroic sacrifice of his life was linked to Nelson’s death by supporters on the floor of the House of Commons. In the Gentleman’s Magazine a correspondent suggesting improvements to Nelson’s monument in St Paul’s went on to propose an inscription for the monument to Pitt, ‘that greater Hero, and yet moreto-be-lamented Patriot’. The language of this inscription was narrowly partisan, speaking of Pitt’s victories over ‘the Revolutionary Demon’, and noting the ‘Disrespect’ he had received ‘from a certain class of his Countrymen and Fellow Citizens’. It also sought to construct recent naval victories as a prime ministerial achievement, particularly emphasizing that his premiership saw ‘the Glories of the British Navy carried to a pitch far, very far, surpassing that which astonished the civilised world in the Days of his illustrious Father’.¹⁹⁶ Another plan for the Guildhall monument to Pitt similarly privileged ‘the unprecedented splendour of success which crowned the British navy while Mr. Pitt was Minister’.¹⁹⁷ These are examples of a commemorative effort to bring Pitt into direct proximity to Nelson and the navy in the early months of 1806, and thus neutralize the truth of the collapse of the Third Coalition after Trafalgar. Efforts to construct a place for Pitt in the patriotic discourse of 1806 came at a time when the print culture of loyalism was producing a cascade of Nelsonic material. By late January hastily composed efforts in patriotic verse were sharing space on booksellers’ shelves with published ¹⁹⁴ Joshua White, Supplement to the life of the late Viscount Nelson . . . With a narrative . . . of all the ceremonies attending the funeral; . . . to which are added extracts of his Lordship’s will, etc. (London, 1806), 6, 74–5. ¹⁹⁵ For the posthumous cult of Pitt, see James J. Sack, ‘The memory of Burke and the memory of Pitt: English conservatism confronts its past’, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), 623–40. ¹⁹⁶ Gentleman’s Magazine, 100 (1806), 788. ¹⁹⁷ Ibid., 100 (1806), 790. Emphasis in original.

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sermons from the General Thanksgiving, guides to the funeral, and an increasing number of Nelson biographies. The latter were so numerous that Nelson’s family—disturbed by both the quality and the competition—publicly announced their disapproval.¹⁹⁸ Nor were they the only group resisting the appropriation of Nelson’s meaning. On 8 February, Charles Dibdin’s nautical melodrama The Broken Gold was performed at Drury Lane. The piece incurred the disapproval of the audience, many of whom ‘took offence at the too frequent and too fulsome allusions to the virtues of sailors, the recent victory, and the name of Nelson’. Given that Dibdin was the period’s most celebrated composer of naval verse and song, the reaction to the play seems further suggestive of increasing resistance to the appropriation of naval symbols by loyalists. That a figure ‘whose lyric powers’ were widely associated with ‘national tastes’ and the ‘purest sentiments of patriotism’ should be so determinedly ‘attacked almost from the first scene by a small party [in the Pit]’ can be taken as a plebeian objection against elite cultural authority.¹⁹⁹ Certainly the episode testifies to a general sense that, by this point, naval symbols were being advanced with an excessive frequency. For, in the aftermath of the funeral, resistance was increasingly forming in response to loyalism’s appropriation of Nelson and the navy. Serious criticisms of this, and of the patriotic public sphere in general, were the subject of Edward Montagu’s The Citizen; a Hudibrastic Poem, in five Cantos. To which is added, Nelson’s Ghost, a Poem, in two parts. The latter was another attack on the vergers of St Paul’s—that ‘rapacious dark-rob’d crew’ and ‘lucre seeking throng | [making] a show of when he’s gone’. Crucially, the poem (in which Nelson’s ghost returned to exhort his countrymen to leave his body in peace) was delivered in the person of a neglected seaman, a veteran of Trafalgar now ‘doom’d my weary days, alas! | In anxious cares and grief to pass’. Once again, this calculated deployment of a hero of Trafalgar challenged the loyalist appropriation of the crew of the Victory, and returned attention to the tar as a representative victim of elite venality and indifference. In the longer poem to which Nelson’s Ghost was appended, it was the civic theatre of patriotism that was subjected to satirical attack. The Citizen was a ribald poem in which the artificiality and pretensions of City patriotism were laid bare. ¹⁹⁸ Monthly Repository, 1 (1806), 108–9. ¹⁹⁹ European Magazine, 49 (1806), 134–5.

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By taking as its subject the adventures of a City politician on his rise to the lord mayoralty, the poem portrayed the patriotism of Gazette-reading politicians as empty and self-serving display. Pittite taxation policies that perpetuated the war came in for frequent attack, and the coffee-house consumers of literary culture were presented as engaging with the war as if it was a game played for their amusement. While the recent struggles over the role the Guildhall would play in the funerary pageant provided an immediate context for the poem, it is important that it be read as a larger attack on practices in the patriotic public sphere. Tellingly, The Citizen was flagged as a poem in the hudibrastic (or mock-heroic) tradition, a genre in which the heroic tradition itself was the object of criticism.²⁰⁰ The selection of a distinctly critical and English literary form was significant, because it underlined that Montagu was challenging the very forms of elite culture. It opposed his work to the classical forms of most Nelsonic verse, and aligned him with a group of English writers who had levelled their cannons at the elite cultures of their own day.²⁰¹ Montagu’s poem represents a significant moment in the contest over the place of naval symbols in the construction of national identity, because his work constituted a criticism of the fundamentally ‘foreign’ practices of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. Classical forms in both literature and art were censured, and in this way, the criticism of elite patriotism was extended to include not only concerns for its social exclusivity, but also for its marginally ‘English’ nature. Sentiments like those expressed in The Citizen and Nelson’s Ghost gained strength from the possibilities and expectations sensed for victory culture in the aftermath of Trafalgar. A perception that Nelson’s popularity was widely distributed among the various ranks of society (encompassing ‘every Briton, from our gracious Sovereign to the poorest subject’) combined with loyalism’s mourning impulse, to create the hope that his funeral would realize the long-desired reform of victory culture. William Carey, author of an essay published in the January 1806 issue of the European Magazine, was concerned with ensuring that the opportunity ²⁰⁰ George Wasserman, Samuel ‘Hudibras’ Butler (Boston, 1989), 73. ²⁰¹ As its title indicates, The Citizen is a work in the mock-heroic tradition of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. For its part, Nelson’s Ghost plays on the title of another work by one of Butler’s literary heirs, this being Thomas D’Urfey’s 1682 poem, Butler’s Ghost. D’Urfey’s poem was a partisan Tory riposte delivered in the midst of the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis. See James L. Thorson (ed.), Butler’s Ghost (1682): A Photoreproduction with an Introduction by James L. Thorson (New York, 1984).

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was not lost—that it not ‘be suffered to expend itself in ardent expressions which expire in a moment’. The inhabitants of Liverpool, who held a public meeting and voted a public monument just days after hearing of the victory provided Carey with the example. The erection of local monuments throughout Britain was the means by which Carey felt victory culture could be placed upon a lasting footing. Monuments appealed to Carey, in part, because they represented the opportunity for ‘the distinguished few who have power to direct the many’ to effect a veritable reform in victory celebrations. Rather than allowing ‘the industrious members of society to expend their money and their spirit in squibs and rockets, in bonfires and intoxication’ or permitting the enthusiasm of ‘persons of a higher class’ ‘to be lost in the well-meant thunder of bumper toasts,’ Carey hoped that efforts might be directed into public meetings for the raising of funds.²⁰² The desire to reform the patriotic public sphere was shared by a range of figures. John Thelwall, the former radical activist and poet, was another. In 1805 Thelwall was one of the many who admitted the necessity of the 1803 war against Bonapartist expansionism. The Trident of Albion, which he published in December 1805, has been noticed as evidence of the apparently universal appeal of national defence patriotism in the period after the Nile.²⁰³ The work consisted of three parts: an introductory essay on Thelwall’s theories of elocution, the text of the poem The Trident of Albion, and the text of a lecture Thelwall had given on the patriotic utility of oratory that concluded with an ‘Address to the Shade of Nelson’. When its component parts are considered complementarily (as Thelwall requested), it becomes clear that rather than representing (as Thompson appears to have felt it did) any outright capitulation to loyalism, The Trident of Albion was a project very similar to Major Cartwright’s Trident (as the title may have been intended to suggest).²⁰⁴ For the Trident of Albion was not a typical venture onto the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’—a fact that Thelwall was keen to emphasize. In 1805 Thelwall was an itinerant lecturer, a self-proclaimed ‘professor of the science and practice of elocution’. The Trident of Albion was as much about his philosophy of language and oratory as it was about patriotic ²⁰² European Magazine, 49 (1806), 21–3. ²⁰³ Rogers and Jordan, ‘Admirals as heroes’, 214–16, believe the shift began as early as the Nile and certainly by Brumaire, Thompson, Making, 451–6, saw it begin after Amiens. ²⁰⁴ See Thompson, ‘Hunting the Jacobin Fox’, 137.

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enthusiasm. In fact, Thelwall held the two to be fundamentally linked. Although he disclaimed holding any overt political opinions at this time, there was a fundamentally democratic remit to his ‘science of elocution’. In a challenge similar to that posed by John Horne Tooke to the orthodox theory of language, Thelwall held that eloquence in public speaking was potentially ‘universal’—it was ‘attainable by all’.²⁰⁵ This had an emancipatory political significance to Thelwall, in the sense that oratory to him was the vehicle through which an activist citizenry of enthusiastic defenders was to be created and sustained. The ‘Address to the Shade of Nelson’ that closed the volume, was intended as an example of the kind of patriotic oratory that Thelwall wished (in the interests of national defence) to establish on a national basis. He saw this as a revival of the practices of the ancient Greeks and the English under Alfred, marking another sense in which his project was informed by the thinking of restorative radicalism. His vision of ‘a willing soldiery’ roused to ‘irresistible enthusiasm’ by the ‘elocutionary energy’ of its commanders carried an implicit criticism of Britain’s existing martial culture, and scattered throughout the text of the ‘Oration’ are references that provide clues as to the substance of his objections.²⁰⁶ His characterization of contemporary works of classical history (central texts in gentlemanly reading culture) as ‘dull abridgements, that burthen the memory with mere names and dates, and uninstructive catalogues of sieges and battles’ suggests that he was not impressed by the products of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’.²⁰⁷ And Thelwall was critical of the military’s techniques for fostering loyalty and commitment from its troops, taking issue with those who held that discipline was the key to martial success, arguing instead that ‘the Camp’ would be better characterized by ‘the energies of genius and the cultivation of intellect’.²⁰⁸ As for martial spectacle—‘the parade of military array’—Thelwall held it was inferior to oratory in its ability to inspire and impress.²⁰⁹ The placement of Britain upon a dependable military footing involved a greater acknowledgement of the intellectual capacities of both officers and troops than currently allowed. In this context, Thelwall has to be considered alongside ²⁰⁵ John Thelwall, The Trident of Albion, An Epic Effusion; and an Oration on the Influence of Elocution on Martial Enthusiasm; with an Address to the Shade of Nelson: delivered at the Lyceum, Liverpool, on Occasion of the Late Glorious Naval Victory (Liverpool, 1805), 9–10. ²⁰⁶ Ibid. 48. ²⁰⁷ Ibid. 46. ²⁰⁸ Ibid. 51. ²⁰⁹ Ibid. 57.

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Major Cartwright and William Frend, as figures who sensed the political significance in altering the meaning of the military experience, and in extending the participatory boundaries of the patriotic public sphere.²¹⁰ The Trident of Albion differed from other poems in that it had been composed as a public recitation. Thelwall’s poem was only one of at least 36 relating to Nelson or Trafalgar published between November 1805 and December 1806. Of these, 21 have survived, 15 of which were available to be consulted for this study (see Appendix 2). The profiles of many of the poets conformed to the expectations of gentlemanly literary culture: Edward Atkyns Bray, of the Middle Temple; the Revd James Beresford, Fellow of Merton College; George Taylor, of the Bank of London; the Hon. Martin Bladder Hawke; Richard Lowe, ‘Master of the Academy, Panton Square, Haymarket’ all represented typical professional pursuits. Other familiar faces belonged to an authorial cohort that included William Thomas Fitzgerald, the popular loyalist versifier and member of the Literary Fund; the loyalist pamphleteer Denis Lawler; Catherine Ann Lightfoot, author of a previously published loyalist poem; the 7th Earl of Carlisle; and the anonymous author of Ulm and Trafalgar (better known to history as George Canning). The broadly uniform social background of these contributors masked significant variety in the patriotic content of this poetic sample. A number of submissions were militantly loyalist in their message. Victory in Tears; or, the Shade of Nelson. A Tribute to the memory of that immortal hero, etc., written on 20 November 1805 and dedicated to Spencer, attacked French tyranny in the strongest language. Its content betrayed a concern with the enervating effect of Nelson’s death on national morale, and the government and heralds were called upon to make worthy use of the funeral. Nelson’s shade appeared to speak for the loyalist project, exhorting his fellow Britons to ‘prize the structure Time has tried, | That stands the tempest, and that stems the tide’. Lightfoot’s effort also belongs to this class, but the case for loyalism was most forcibly put in The Progress of Glory, in the Life of Horatio Lord Nelson, of the Nile. It announced the principles of the counter-revolution, with whose banner stories (i.e. the sufferings of the French royal family, the Catholic clergy, royalists, ²¹⁰ Cartwright himself was later to publish a poetic argument for parliamentary and economical reform, see [John Cartwright], The Ghosts of Nelson, Pitt, and Moore (London, 1811).

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and émigrés, and the behaviour of Bonaparte at Acre) its footnotes were laden. The restoration of the Bourbons was laid out as a war aim, and the presence of British radicalism in the 1790s was explained away as the work of French revolutionary agents. Not all the Trafalgar poems were so resolutely loyalist. Charles Abbot’s A Monody on the Death of Horatio Lord Nelson (Bedfordshire, 1805) has not survived, but we can be reasonably sure that it advanced the same contingently whiggish perspective on the war that he had presented in his Thanksgiving Day sermon. John Thelwall was not alone in the delimited national defence patriotism articulated in The Trident of Albion, but was joined by a number of poets whose verses did not rise above the celebration of Britain’s preservation from invasion.²¹¹ Most of these works sold for around 2 shillings. The most expensive, by far, was Laurence Hynes Halloran’s The Battle of Trafalgar; a Poem. To which is added, a Selection of Fugitive Pieces, chiefly written at Sea, published by Joyce Gold (of the Naval Chronicle) in the late summer of 1806. Halloran’s poem retailed for 10s. 6d., a price it was able to command because its author was an eyewitness to the event. Halloran was chaplain of the Britannia and secretary to Admiral Lord Northesk at the battle of Trafalgar. His poem deserves close inspection, but not because it can claim any particular representativeness of the genre. Rather, Halloran’s poem indicates the importance of avoiding making overarching generalizations about the content of the Trafalgar poems. For The Battle of Trafalgar continued to contest naval patriotism, even while working within the conventions of literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’. Ultimately, the poem serves to show how fixed these conventions were held to be. At its outset, Halloran’s poem underlined the importance of one’s identity in claiming a place in the patriotic public sphere. Halloran staked his claim to public attention upon his naval service and the proximity to the battle he could claim through it—but even that was not quite enough. In order to have his work read seriously it was desirable to claim membership in the gentlemanly literary community. Thus ²¹¹ See for instance, George Taylor, An Elegy on the lamented though glorious Death of Admiral, the Right Honourable Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson, duke of Bronti, &c. commander in chief in the Mediterranean, with An Address to Britannia (London, 1805); Thomas Crichton, Verses to the Memory of Lord Nelson and in commemoration of the glorious victory obtained over the combined fleets of France and Spain, 21 Oct., 1805 (Paisley, 1805).

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Halloran began his poem by pointing out that although he was a member of the naval service, he was possessed of a classical education. Acknowledging this was crucial to Halloran’s object. The way in which he constructed his patriotic and authorial identity undermined the firm patriotic identities that some loyalists were interested in constructing, and gave his poem its critical edge. Halloran presented himself as a naval chaplain whom economic hardship had driven to sea and conceived of his naval career as a period of literary exile. ‘Forc’d, reluctant’ into the service by the exigencies of the wartime economy, Halloran considered himself unjustly excluded ‘from literary ease’ (i.e. from gentlemanly literary culture). In fact, the polarization of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’ to the experience of life at sea constitutes the central tension of The Battle of Trafalgar. Throughout the poem, the sufferings of the sailors are contrasted to the comforts of Britain’s elite; the fraternal egalitarianism of shipboard community to the vagaries and inequalities of domestic society. Readers who purchased Halloran’s work expecting an enthusiastic and descriptive account of the battle were probably not disappointed—but along with it they received an honest but unsettling description of life in Nelson’s fleet, one that articulated some long-standing complaints (and Halloran’s personal frustrations). The regrettable impact of the war on domestic society was made explicit, with Halloran particularly raising the spectre of infidelity on the part of sailors’ wives. Nelson’s ghost makes an appearance in Halloran’s poem as well, once again as an advocate for justice. Consistent with The Battle of Trafalgar’s themes of neglect and inequality, the shade of Nelson called for the promotion of his protégés (the junior officers and midshipmen of the Victory). Halloran detailed their cause in a footnote, accusing the Admiralty of parsimony and neglect. The claim that the navy was unappreciated was further developed in another note that inveighed against the court-martial of Admiral Sir Richard Calder. The inclusion of incidents relating to the internal politics of the victorious fleet was a necessary feature of Halloran’s work, in part because the marketing of his poem depended upon the provision of details that could not be found elsewhere. But the complaints made were not incidental—rather they were crucial to one of the major structures of the poem, in which the navy was held to be fundamentally isolated from British society. Halloran explicitly acknowledged that this was a struggle over the ownership of the nation in a passage where he contrasted the

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heroic endeavours of sailors to the passive participation of his elite audience, whom he addressed as ‘pamper’d sons of luxury and pride’. In this way, Halloran’s poem constituted a challenge to loyalism’s claim to define the meaning of naval service and to assert any particular patriotic significance for a life spent at sea. Significantly, the poem concludes with Halloran imagining himself in the retirement to be occasioned by the return of peace. It will find him, surrounded by his family in domestic bliss, living the life of leisured literary consumption. That an envied witness to the greatest naval victory in his nation’s history in the end desired nothing more than to exchange places with his readers was a significant statement about the patriotic public sphere that would have been lost on few at the time. The full membership that Halloran anticipated though, in his case, was not to be. The profits of The Battle of Trafalgar did not allow for a leisured retirement. He served again as a chaplain in South Africa, quitting after a dispute in 1810. When he returned to Britain it was discovered he was a clerical impostor. Halloran had claimed to have held a Doctorate of Divinity since entering the navy in the 1790s, but was in fact only a deacon. Convicted of forgery at the Old Bailey in 1818, he was transported to New South Wales.²¹² Although it might be tempting, at this point, to dismiss Halloran as a literary charlatan, his case is instructive. It reveals that, to observers on the outside, the patriotic culture of the literary public sphere was an intersection of status and power worth entering. When social (or literary) identities are assumed, it can be taken that contemporaries find them worth assuming. In this sense, Halloran serves this study well as a particularly dramatic example of exactly what, in The Battle of Trafalgar, he claimed to be—a man excluded from full participation in the patriotic public sphere. The fact that the navy could serve as a vehicle to which Halloran could attach his critique of British society is a powerful comment on the multiple and contested understandings of the navy circulating even in the aftermath of Trafalgar. The content of the patriotic public sphere could never have been controlled or limited in the manner that Richard Warner apparently feared. Too many exigent factors were at play that effectively foreclosed ²¹² Francis Watt, ‘Halloran , Lawrence Hynes (1766–1831)’, rev. S. C. Bushell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/12021, accessed 28 Oct. 2005].

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the opportunities for completely stable and hegemonic meanings to arise. The brutal experience of war and its effects upon British life (and lives) was not effaced or denied. But it was cloaked in partisan argument and distanced through cultural practices that privileged elite sacrifice, and mediated the threats posed from plebeian quarters. Representations of the violence and wounding of naval combat were but one area in which the meanings of war, and its implications for masculinity, were contested. Another was Nelson’s body, which eventually functioned as a symbol capable of bridging the plebeian and elite experiences of the war. In these struggles over the meaning of heroic masculinity, the tactics and strategies employed were not those of a super-determined linguistic structuralism, nor were they of a hegemonic and conspiratorial nature. Rather, the agency of several groups, and the agendas of many factions, played a role in shaping the meanings that circulated (and for various audiences, must have ‘settled’) in the patriotic public sphere. Agency was granted to a wide range of groups—literate heroes, the urban mob, poets and playwrights. Moreover, specifically located practices of textual production and authorship played a significant role. Much of the debate and struggle over the meaning of the navy was itself a by-product of the promotional dynamic within the navy itself. The texts that sustained naval patriotism—that fed the Naval Chronicle, for instance—were generated by the need officers felt to promote and advance their own careers, to seek their own self-fashioning in the public and Admiralty eye. Once presented for domestic consumption, they raised issues and generated debates and perceptions far beyond the intention of their original authors. The membership of the literary public sphere was—as was shown in the last chapter—heavily monitored. But those who could claim membership had plenty of freedom to construct patriotism as they saw fit. Similarly, while loyalist print culture could work—as at Nelson’s funeral—to project appropriately stable and privileged readings of public spectacle, the reality was that the urban crowd could never be completely written out of events and had many opportunities to render its own verdict. In fact, one important theme that emerges from this chapter concerns loyalism’s almost furious effort to contain and mediate perceived plebeian threats and dissatisfaction. The discourse employed by loyalism in the patriotic public sphere was not empty propaganda, but rather was a cultural product informed and influenced from a variety of directions.

5 Lord Cochrane in Radical Westminster Lord Cochrane was, after the death of Nelson, the greatest naval commander of that age of glory. Equal to his great predecessor in personal gallantry, enthusiastic ardour, and devotion to his country, he was perhaps his superior in original genius, inventive power, and inexhaustible resources. . . . It was his misfortune to arrive at manhood and high command only towards the close of the war, when the enemy’s fleets had disappeared from the ocean . . . More truly than Alexander the Great, he might have wept that there no longer remained a world to conquer. His coolness in danger was almost unparalleled, even in the English navy, and in the days of Nelson and Collingwood; his men, nevertheless, had such confidence in his judgement and resources, that they would have followed wherever he led, even to the cannon’s mouth. Henry Raikes, Life of Admiral Sir J. Brenton¹

‘The enemy’s fleets had disappeared from the ocean’ but that hardly meant that the navy was to disappear from the landscape of early nineteenth-century cultural politics. The navy remained an important imaginary in British political culture up to the last days of the war and beyond. For the diminution in the number, scale, and strategic import of naval engagements had little effect on the place of the navy within patriotic and loyalist discourse. There may not have been specific battles out of which to construct victories and heroes, but there was no end to the uses to which naval symbols could be put. There were provincial, ¹ Cited in William Townsend, Modern State Trials, 2 vols. (London, 1850), ii. 109.

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civic, and national memorials to erect, debate, and dedicate, as well as other admirals to bury.² Naval heroism remained as publicly prominent as ever, sustained by collective revisitation in poetry, stage, and song. Nor was the urban stage necessarily quiet. In the City, for instance, the opportunity to contest naval symbols in the years after Trafalgar held respectable pace with the earlier period. Due to the fact that many of the naval officers voted the freedom remained at sea for long periods of time, the period after 1806 witnessed a healthy procession of naval captains arriving at the Guildhall to formally receive the honour.³ The appearance of Admirals Northesk and Strachan to receive their swords on 23 July 1810 may have been particularly well timed from the loyalist point of view.⁴ It came when loyalism was facing a radical movement that had been revived by the events of the Duke of York affair (which raised perceptions of aristocratic corruption in the management of the war) and the confinement of Sir Francis Burdett in the Tower of London.⁵ During this, City loyalists had been forced to swallow the presentation of the freedom to Colonel Wardle, the instigator of the Duke of York affair. Such ceremonial struggles were effectively contests over collective memory as it related to established figures and established events. But rather than navigate through these shoals, as potentially instructive as that project would undoubtedly be, this chapter will retain the focus on immediate contemporaneity. In so doing, the figure that demands attention is Thomas, commonly known as Lord Cochrane, heir to the earldom of Dundonald, and arguably the central figure in the cultural posture of the navy in the period between Trafalgar and Waterloo. First returned to the House of Commons as the member for Honiton in 1806, Cochrane—a successful naval officer who was the veteran of many intrepid actions—went on to enjoy one of the longer parliamentary careers of those who were activists in the radical cause. Re-elected as one of the members for Westminster in 1807, Cochrane held the seat until ² Yarrington, The Commemoration of the Hero, passim. ³ For a complete guide, see London’s Roll of Fame (London, 1884). ⁴ Gentleman’s Magazine, 108 (1810), 83–4. ⁵ On these events, see Dinwiddy, ‘The patriotic linen draper: Robert Waithman and the revival of radicalism in the city of London, 1795–1818’ and ‘Sir Francis Burdett and Burdettite Radicalism’ in Dinwiddy, Radicalism and Reform in Britain 1780–1850 (London, 1992), 63–85, 109–23; Harling, ‘The Duke of York affair’.

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1818, when he departed to fight for South American independence. Cochrane was Sir Francis Burdett’s seatmate during the heyday of ‘Radical Westminster’. He presented petitions for parliamentary reform and led the extra-parliamentary opposition to Burdett’s imprisonment in the Tower in 1810. Cochrane was involved in the early contests and struggles for Westminster radicalism, and yet he has been decidedly overlooked within its historiography.⁶ Cochrane’s parliamentary career receives more extended treatment in the Cochrane biographies, particularly in Donald Thomas’s 1978 work, Cochrane: Britannia’s Sea Wolf and in Christopher Lloyd’s 1947 biography Lord Cochrane: Seaman, Radical, Liberator. Thomas sees Cochrane’s career as characterized by the same intrepidity, impetuosity, and iconoclasm that informed his overall personality. Certainly this is an appropriate theme for a biographer to pursue; the point simply needs to be made that such a treatment risks replicating aspects of the heroic narrative of popular radicalism from which historians of the period have begun to emancipate themselves. Early examinations of the leading figures of popular radicalism tended to employ an explanatory framework for political activism that sometimes equated political disaffection with personal disaffection.⁷ This was the treatment Cochrane received from E. P. Thompson, who presented him as a mere fellow-traveller in the radical cause, a figure whose radicalism had been suggested by a ‘mixture of the private grievances of a serving officer and of general disgust at the corruptions and insincerities of political life’.⁸ Cochrane, in this sense, was not seen as fundamentally part of the radical movement; the fact that he was an aristocrat and naval officer meant he had little relevance for the narrative of working-class politicization that Thompson had in view. For his part Lloyd recognized the significance of Cochrane’s radical politics, but it was never his intention to place Cochrane in any particular relationship to either popular radicalism, or the political culture of his day. Personality and politics were inseparable in the radical political style of the period, not because personalities necessarily explained what motivated men in politics, but because personalities were a major vehicle ⁶ See Arthur Aspinall, ‘The Westminster Election of 1814’, English Historical Review, 40 (1925); Thompson, Making; J. Ann Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London 1796–1821 (Oxford, 1982); Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism. ⁷ See, for example, W. Baring Pemberton, William Cobbett (Harmondsworth, 1949), especially 180–5. ⁸ Thompson, Making, 523.

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through which politics were displayed. This was the sense in which Cochrane’s career was crucial and in which he made a contribution to the contemporary purchase of popular radicalism. Certainly he deserves to be accorded far greater significance as one of the major public faces put on the radical movement. Moreover, Cochrane was perhaps the central living figure around which naval imaginaries were constructed in the period between Trafalgar and Waterloo. Cochrane’s marginalization within the historiography of the ‘heroic age’ of popular radicalism becomes even more of a mystery when one considers that many of its narrative tropes—demagoguery, dissidence, trial, exile, imprisonment, triumphant return—are manifestly present in the Cochrane tale.⁹ As this chapter will reveal, this was no coincidence. Lord Cochrane was fundamental to the articulation of popular radicalism in ways that historians have failed to acknowledge. In part, this was because he served in Burdett’s shadow. But another fundamental reason for Cochrane’s neglect, I argue, was exactly that feature of his political character that made him so important to contemporaries, and so valuable to the electoral purchase of popular radicalism. This was the fact he was a naval officer—a ‘political admiral’—but one active, crucially, in the radical cause. As previous chapters have shown, political admirals were an important presence on the national political scene, particularly in the borough of Westminster. By at least the 1790s, political admiralship was almost an exclusively loyalist posture and naval officers who served as MPs were widely viewed in radical circles as placemen. The politically conservative inclination of parliamentary naval officers was a topic considered by a radical letter-writer to the Naval Chronicle. The acquiescent voting records of naval officer MPs was seen as a consequence of their maritime careers. Military training made them unduly deferential, inclined to ‘lean a little to the support of ministers’. At the same time, an inability to participate in British political culture made these national heroes effectively aliens to their fellow countrymen. Those ‘constantly ⁹ Kevin Gilmartin, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1996); Epstein, Radical Expression; id., ‘Our real constitution: trial defence and radical memory in the Age of Revolution’, in James Vernon (ed.), Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1996); Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld; Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795–1840 (Cambridge, 1988); John Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (Oxford, 1985); see also Thompson, ‘Hunting the Jacobin fox’.

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employed in their profession . . . will not have the experience of country meetings, or parish vestries’. The result was that naval officers are unfamiliar with the ‘situations . . . genuine notions, or the true interests of honest John Bull ’.¹⁰ Not surprisingly, then, Cochrane’s naval career has been seen, and was seen at the time by some members of the Westminster Committee, as a liability. And Cochrane himself has been characterized as a less-than-ideal radical politician, too independent, and too distracted by naval affairs and service to play the role that the Westminster Committee apparently desired.¹¹ Cochrane was not without his critics, or rivals, and there was an attempt to replace him in 1812. That effort was facilitated by Francis Place, a figure to whom we are quite possibly indebted for the low regard with which Cochrane is held. According to Place, Cochrane was ‘distrusted by many, he had purposely absented himself when Sir Francis made a motion on the reform of parliament, had paid little attention to the Electors, except attending public meetings— he was an Officer in the pay of the Government and might be out of the country at any time. It was not thought [in 1812] that a majority of the electors would poll for him.’¹² As this comment reveals, Place’s concerns were not limited to his assessment of Cochrane’s ability to perform the quotidian duties of a radical MP, but can be seen to extend to Cochrane’s very political style. For Cochrane’s neglect, Place noted, did not extend to the public meetings of the Westminster electors. This was because, as Place possibly recognized, Cochrane was aware that his political career depended, not on his deference towards the managerial inclinations of the Westminster Committee, but to his wider public image. This, I suggest, was part of a broader concern that Place had with Cochrane’s candidacy and with his influence over the electoral expression of Westminster radicalism. ‘ THE ZEALOUS FRIEND OF REFORM’ Cochrane’s political career was made possible by the altered contexts of the war that resumed against Napoleonic France in 1803. Bonaparte’s subversion of the revolutionary project and the aggressive war he waged ¹⁰ Naval Chronicle, 19 (1808), 387–9. ¹¹ Hone, For the Cause of Truth, 162. ¹² British Library, Add. MS 27850 [The Francis Place Papers], fo. 255.

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led many in oppositional circles to abandon their anti-war stance and to emerge as restorative radicals seeking reform as the necessary preliminary to final victory.¹³ This was the reconfiguration that saw radicals like John Thelwall and William Frend turn away from a policy of peace and that brought former loyalists like William Cobbett and Henry Hunt into the radical camp.¹⁴ Crucially, this reconfiguration greatly facilitated radicalism’s most overt contestation of naval patriotism, a contestation that was realized in the character of Lord Cochrane. From the start the young naval captain showed a strong proclivity to deploy naval spectacle in his parliamentary contests. Cochrane’s arrival in Honiton in 1806 created a ‘considerable sensation’.¹⁵ He had ‘set out’ . . . ‘from the port of Plymouth in a true-seaman-like style, accompanied by two lieutenants and one midshipman, in full dress, in one carriage . . . followed by another, containing the boat’s crew, new rigged, and prepared for action. This procession entered Honiton amidst the plaudits of many of the electors . . . .’¹⁶ And his inaugural action at Westminster in 1807 was characterized by a similar sense of theatricality: . . . on the day of nomination, the preliminary forms having been gone through, his lordship leaped out from the hustings, and, standing upon a narrow wooden bar, which separated the constables from the populace, addressed them at considerable length, and with much animation. He observed, that if the electors should not like him when they had heard him, they might reject him at once. He stood upon the footing of perfect independence, unconnected with any person whatsoever. . . . and he pledged himself to hunt down plunder, peculation, sinecure placemen, and pensioners, wherever he could find them. He was the friend of his country and its constitution. He was not entitled to speak of services himself, but he meant to pledge his past conduct and character as a security for the performance of his promises.¹⁷

The electioneering traditions of Westminster ‘political admiralship’ paid early dividends for Cochrane. In his maiden speech ‘his Lordship appeared a great favourite with all ranks’.¹⁸ He won the obligatory show ¹³ On these developments see J. E. Cookson, The Friends of Peace (Cambridge, 1982), 163–85. On restorative radicalism, see Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 96–104. ¹⁴ See Peter Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism, 3, and Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, 23–4. ¹⁵ Thomas, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Autobiography of a Seaman, 2 vols. (London, 1860), i. 202. ¹⁶ Naval Chronicle, 22 (1809), 18, (citing Public Characters for 1809–10). ¹⁷ Ibid., 22 (1809), 19. ¹⁸ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 124.

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of hands that preceded the formal announcement of the poll,¹⁹ and led the other candidates for the first four days of the election. (At this election Sheridan, who had succeeded to Fox’s seat in 1806, ran as a Whig; Sir Francis Burdett ran as a radical candidate under the auspices of the Westminster Committee; James Paull ran as a rival radical, and John Elliot, a loyalist brewer, carried the banner for the Portland ministry.) Attended at the hustings by ‘several naval officers and other friends’, Cochrane was determined to wrest maximum advantage out of his naval character.²⁰ His first political dinner of the campaign, held on Saturday, 8 May at Willis’s Rooms, was attended by between 70 and 100 persons, ‘a great proportion of whom were naval officers’.²¹ The day before, at the nomination, both his mover and his seconder focused exclusively on his naval career when recommending him to the Westminster crowd. Captain Cochrane ‘was one for whom little need be said; for his actions spoke for him. He was a man of station, young in years, but advanced in the service of his Country . . . ’ The seconder proposed Cochrane’s naval position was ‘a recommendation; for it should be recollected, that the Bulwark of Great Britain was her Navy; there were 120 thousand men in that Navy . . . who could represent so well as a Naval Officer, who was eminent among them, and beloved by them.’²² This carried the implication that Cochrane was to be a sort of ‘Member for the Navy’, a sense that accorded with the spirit of Cochrane’s own speeches. At the nomination he raised what was to become his persistent theme: that as a naval officer he was especially well qualified to root out naval abuses.²³ While this was, in a small sense, a riposte to those who argued that the perennial absence of naval officers on service should exclude them from parliament, it was more fundamentally related to Cochrane’s own political creed. Cochrane’s political image was that of a warrior against corruption, a heroic captain determined ‘to hunt down plunder, peculation, sinecure placemen, and pensioners, wherever he could find them’.²⁴ In making this case, Cochrane was particularly eager to avail himself of the associations with masculinity that circulated around the posture of the political admiral. On his first day at the hustings, Cochrane had: lamented . . . that those who took such pains to shew that naval men were not fit to be returned, did not also mention all the other classes of men who were at least ¹⁹ Ibid., fo. 117, 127. ²² Ibid., fo. 117.

²⁰ Ibid., fo. 124. ²³ Ibid., fo. 117.

²¹ Ibid., fo.147. ²⁴ Naval Chronicle, 22 (1809), 19.

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equally unfit. Besides the holders of pensions, places, sinecures, there was another description of wealthy men, who he thought equally unfit to be returned. Could any person suppose those persons whose chief ambition was to display their horses, their curricles, and their skill in driving through Bond Street, were fit and proper persons to be returned to parliament? Would it be supposed that those who were principally intent on shewing their pretty persons to the Ladies, and who wished to get into the House of Commons as a mere fashionable evening lounge, were the persons who would most benefit their country by obtaining seats there? [Loud cries of Bravo! bravo! from the mob] It was his opinion, that a naval or a military man, who had some experience in his profession . . . might be of some use there.²⁵

It was no coincidence that this comment appeared during a period when two of Cochrane’s civilian rivals, Burdett and Paull, had recently proved their manliness in a celebrated duel.²⁶ And this was just one example of the ways in which Cochrane exploited associations arising from his status as a sailor. Another concerned the very space he occupied on the Covent Garden hustings. Day after day, Cochrane addressed the audience, not from the enclosed stage populated by the candidates, agents, and election officials, but from the thin wooden rail that separated the hustings from the crowd below. Thus the naval candidate delivered his speeches raised up on the very edge of the crowd—an act that referenced the boarding of a captured prize at the same time that it symbolized his greater proximity to ‘the people’. This mimetic act was so crucial to Cochrane’s image and resonated so well with the masses, that Sheridan sought to combat it and attempted it himself. The Whig candidate earned some laughs of his own when ‘He regretted he did not possess the youthful agility, nor the stout sea-legs of the Noble Lord, he could not come forward to the same perch from which the Noble Lord usually addressed them.’²⁷ This effort to disarm with humour continued days later, when (unimpressively assisted by members of his committee) Sheridan himself mounted the ‘perch’ on the rail of the hustings.²⁸ Sheridan probably felt compelled to imitate Cochrane’s action because he identified it as one of the means by which the naval captain was establishing a powerful rapport with the assembled Westminster electors. ²⁵ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 127. ²⁶ M. W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett and his Times (1770–1844), 2 vols. (London, 1931), i. 192–218. ²⁷ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 155, 153. ²⁸ Ibid., fo. 171.

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Cochrane’s style of candidacy was an amalgam of staged corporeal gesture and calculatedly colourful oratory. He was radical, not only in his commitment to an attack on corruption, but also in his willingness to defy the conventions that applied even to the ‘gentleman leader’. His vivid tales of the sufferings of the common sailor held a real appeal for the crowd. His claim that ‘all for the sake of economy’ ‘men were kept at sea, without being landed, for eight months, within sight of their coast, and fed on salt provision till they were all over scorbutic, and then they were drenched in lime juice, and thrown into consumptions in order to cure the scurvey’ was met with acclamations.²⁹ On the second day of the election his cataloguing of naval abuses went over particularly well, the crowd interjecting with appropriate huzzahs and acclamations as he decried examples from the ‘systems of tyranny and abuse in the Navy’.³⁰ On the third day, Cochrane recounted the story of a navy ship he had once been ordered to supply with victuals: He remonstrated [with his superiors], declaring his opinion she was unfit to go to sea, and that if she was sent the first intelligence from her place of destination would be, that she had foundered. By G—— it was exactly as he had foretold; in spite of the remonstrance she was sent to sea, and vessel, crew and all, went to the devil (loud laughter.) By G—— it was no laughing matter; for, alike the fable of the frogs, though it might be fun to some, it was d——d hard fare for brave men whose lives were so valuable to their families and their country (applauses).³¹

Critics objected to his ‘Billingsgate language, and profane swearing, by which he attempts to ridicule and disgrace his profession,’ but it seems to have held a sensational appeal for elements of Cochrane’s audience, to whom his violations of the gentlemanly code represented a general riposte to elite hegemony.³² It operated as a tactic to attract popular outrage to Cochrane’s cause and to emphasize the sense in which his candidacy articulated the sufferings of the people. There was apparently no end to the audience’s enthusiasm for this material, probably because it represented the arrival at the hustings of the ultra-radical taste for scurrility and invective of which Iain McCalman has made us aware.³³ On another day, Cochrane called the commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet ²⁹ Ibid., fo. 150. ³⁰ Ibid., fo. 129. ³¹ Times, 11 May 1807. ³² Ibid., 12 May 1807. ³³ McCalman, Radical Underworld, passim.

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a borough-monger, part of his claim that parliamentary influence determined the allocation of naval commissions.³⁴ More seriously, he characterized St Vincent as a parasitical profiteer, comfortably ensconced in London while ‘deriving a large revenue from the labour and blood of the active citizens on board the fleet.—(Applause).’³⁵ His further claim that ‘he could repeat such a state of the Navy of the country as would make the blood of every man who heard him boil with indignation’ was met with approving cries of ‘Hear! hear! ’³⁶ In such ways, Cochrane sought to establish the political imaginary of the navy as one of the issues at the Westminster election of 1807. The dynamic on the hustings that year was unique. Five candidates were standing—only three of whom made appearances in Covent Garden. This unusual state of affairs was explained by the fact that both Paull and Burdett were convalescing after their duel. They were represented at the hustings by their agents, who made speeches on their behalf. Since the ministerial candidate Elliot frequently had difficulty obtaining a hearing from the crowd, and because Paull withdrew on the sixth day, the main contest was between Cochrane, Sheridan, and the proxies of Burdett. Tensions between these three camps were significantly greater than it has been customary to admit. Cochrane’s radical candidacy was not a coalition with that of Burdett, as is sometimes implied.³⁷ The members of the Westminster Committee who came forward to promote Burdett sought to emphasize the ‘independence’ of a candidacy free from corruption. They were not keen to discover a candidate making claims to radicalism, patriotism, and independence—and exploiting a political style that had operated at the expense of their own political success for over a generation. The attitude of members of the Westminster Committee (to be considered as distinct from both Westminster electors and non-voting members of the crowd) towards Cochrane was positively hostile.³⁸ The immediate response of radical organizers to Cochrane’s candidacy was to combat it with the customary claim that naval officers ³⁴ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 155. ³⁵ Naval Chronicle, 17 (1807), 424 ³⁶ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 155. ³⁷ Thompson, who believed Cochrane’s candidacy was a ‘last minute replacement’ for that of Paull, Making, 505; Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism, writes as if it was an explicit coalition, 42–9. ³⁸ Cochrane voted against Catholic Emancipation in the late parliamentary session. This was another reason, perhaps, why he was not approved of by the Westminster Committee— as well as being another potential explanation for his popularity with electors.

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were absentee parliamentarians, as well as practical placemen. But the check to Cochrane’s candidacy required expanding. At one point the chairman of Burdett’s committee, Joseph Clayton Jennings, attempted to forestall Cochrane’s claims to independence by claiming he had sought Burdett’s second-place votes.³⁹ Jennings’s speech on the second day responded to the interest in Cochrane’s naval candidacy and attempted to disarm the issue of naval reform by pointing out that if a naval MP like Cochrane had been absent at sea during the events leading to the impeachment of Lord Melville, the most recent triumph of radicalism (which had been achieved by one vote), would not have occurred.⁴⁰ As the election progressed, Cochrane’s repeated speeches against naval abuses failed to convince the Westminster Committee and the attack upon him intensified. On 14 May Cochrane was confronted on the hustings by Peter Finnerty, a radical pamphleteer and Burdettite activist, who attempted to connect the naval officer’s candidacy to the Portland ministry.⁴¹ This effort continued the next day (the eighth day of the contest) when another activist in the Burdett–Sheridan cause accused Cochrane of shamefully neglecting members of his family.⁴² Cochrane fared no better from the supporters of Paull during his brief candidacy. The speech by which Paull pulled out of the race and threw his support behind Sheridan, defended St Vincent—‘who had upheld the glory and prowess of the British flag off Cape St. Vincent’ and ‘whose sagacious mind, in opposition to intriguers, and a false system of etiquette, selected the immortal Nelson’ for the expedition to Egypt—against Cochrane in the strongest terms.⁴³ The agent who delivered this speech for Paull later warned the electors ‘that although the Noble Lord [Cochrane] now hoisted the Constitution Jack, he would, as soon as he got into port, put up the Portland Flag’.⁴⁴ Claims by the Westminster Committee that Cochrane was a Treasury candidate flying false colours allowed them to dismiss his occupation of ³⁹ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 116. ⁴⁰ Ibid., fo. 128. A motion censuring Melville passed the Commons by one vote. This led to his impeachment, trial, and subsequent acquittal in the Lords. See Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 84–6. ⁴¹ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 159. ⁴² Ibid., fo. 165. ⁴³ Ibid., fo. 157. Although Paull ended his candidacy on the second day, his supporters maintained the cause until the sixth. ⁴⁴ Ibid., fo. 179.

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Figure 5. Burdett Campaign Handbill, Westminster election, 1807. British Library Add. 27838 fo. 131. By permission of the British Library.

an important national symbol in the same manner as they had done with earlier political admirals. But they clearly understood what was at stake, as evidenced in the election handbill circulated in the committee’s canvass, in which Nelson was used to combat the naval patriotism Cochrane had at his disposal (see Figure 5).⁴⁵ And after the election, a Burdett election victory song ‘A song on the purity of Election’, sung to ⁴⁵ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 131.

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the tune of ‘Hearts of Oak’, reprised the effort made for Tooke in 1796 to position radical patriotism.⁴⁶ The radicals were not alone in their effort to neutralize the effects of Cochrane’s candidacy. An interest in staking a claim to martial patriotism was no doubt why Elliot was introduced to the Westminster electors as a man who ‘has served his country in an eminent degree; as Colonel of the Westminster Cavalry’. His nomination was moved and seconded by two fellow officers, and he was referred to by supporters as ‘Colonel’ Elliot for the duration of the election.⁴⁷ But the candidate most determined to contest the navy was Sheridan. At his first appearance on the hustings, Sheridan seems to have tried to form an implicit coalition with Cochrane. Citing his respect for Sir Samuel Hood, his ministerialist seatmate at Westminster, Sheridan declined to challenge Cochrane’s candidacy strictly on the basis of his being a naval officer.⁴⁸ Later Sheridan reminded electors of his conduct in the mutiny of 1797 ‘when he alone of his party stood forward on the occasion of the Mutiny at the Nore’.⁴⁹ On day six, Sheridan’s campaign to appear as the candidate with the true interests of the navy at heart became even more pronounced. Pointing to his recent position as treasurer of the navy, he announced that he would be happy to cooperate with Cochrane in any reformation of real abuse. And he went on to detail an abuse that he found particularly galling—the practice whereby criminals could evade trial and imprisonment by entering the navy. ‘This was casting a stain upon the Navy which ought not to be cast; the Navy ought to be as clear from reproach, and as sound as the oak which affords timber for the ships—(loud applauses, and bravo! bravo! )— The real British Seaman was a different kind of character, and this practice would have the effect of producing sedition and of destroying that great bulwark and national defence (loud applause). He would recommend that instead of sending such persons to the Navy, that the Government make them Customs and Excise Officers, Clerks of the Treasury, Gentleman Ushers, Magistrates, in short anything but British Seamen.’ Crucially, at this point, having established himself as a defender of the navy against corruption, Sheridan then presented himself as the defender of its honour against Cochrane, and challenged the implications that ⁴⁶ Ibid., fo. 174. ⁴⁷ Ibid., fo. 117; fo. 125. ⁴⁸ Ibid., fo. 137. The mixed response to this announcement seems to indicate that some traditional supporters of Sheridan were having problems identifying sympathetically with a naval candidate. See especially, fo. 128. ⁴⁹ Ibid., fo. 150.

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Cochrane had made against the character of St Vincent. Sheridan argued that Cochrane’s criticisms (of both St Vincent and of the state of the navy) were tantamount to sedition, in that they were likely to have an effect on naval discipline. It was not ‘proper to detail [charges of abuse] in this place, . . . they got into the Newspapers, and those Newspapers were circulated through the whole of the Navy, and might produce considerable mischief—(bravo! bravo! and continued applauses).’⁵⁰ Perhaps the most powerful testament to Sheridan’s sense of the importance of naval patriotism is given in a handbill circulated by his supporters. It indicates that contesting patriotism was the overwhelming priority of Sheridan’s canvass. The handbill presented nine reasons to vote for Sheridan, the first being that he ‘has been the greatest friend to the Navy, and Saved the Country from Mutiny’. Indeed, five of the nine reasons applied directly to patriotic issues—strong evidence, if more is needed, that the contestation of the navy in particular, and patriotism more generally, was an important dynamic at Westminster in 1807.⁵¹ Cochrane himself considered his contest with Sheridan over naval reform to have been one of the decisive features of the contest—but in the end Sheridan’s effort to claim naval enthusiasm for his cause collapsed and he was soundly defeated.⁵² On 23 May the final poll elected Burdett (5,134) and Cochrane (3,708) over Sheridan (2,645), Elliot (2,137), and Paull (269). In spite of the Westminster Committee’s hostility towards him, Cochrane received the majority of Burdett’s second votes, as well as the majority of Elliot’s. When compared to the results of 1806, which returned Hood and Sheridan, the crucial importance of political admiralship for Westminster conservatism is revealed. Hood’s first place poll of 5,478 had, within six months, dissolved into Elliot’s fourth place showing at 2,137. Many reasons have been proposed for why the two ‘radical’ candidates emerged triumphant in 1807, but the most obvious explanation— that the particular political style that had sustained Westminster since 1780 was appropriated by Cochrane—has not been noticed.⁵³ Given, as we have seen, the importance which naval associations played in ⁵⁰ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 155. ⁵¹ Ibid., fo. 151. ⁵² Dundonald, Autobiography of a Seaman, i. 217–19. ⁵³ See especially, Thompson, Making, 504–8; J. A. Hone, For the Cause of Truth, passim; Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism, 42–9.

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Gardner’s win at Westminster in 1796, it should be apparent that Cochrane’s candidature in 1807 played a fundamental role in the reconfiguration of Westminster politics after 1807.⁵⁴ Loyalists, for one, appear to have been aware that their priority was to confront Cochrane’s naval associations. In October 1812, Burdett and Cochrane were re-elected without opposition. In 1814, when Cochrane was seeking re-election, the Liverpool ministry’s only thought was to effect a challenge in the form of another naval officer. One could not be found, but the incident reveals the degree of importance naval associations had achieved on the hustings. From Francis Place on, accounts of the Westminster election of 1807 have focused upon the organizational innovations of the Westminster Committee. Thompson saw its significance as being ‘a half-way house between the patrician techniques of Wilkes and more advanced forms of democratic organisation’.⁵⁵ ‘Advanced’, of course, is the crucial word here, betraying an interest in narrating political development at the cost of the underlying continuities still powerfully at work in the wider political culture. Was Thompson’s treatment of Cochrane explained by the fact that the naval officer did not conform to the notions of plebeian agency and politicization he was interested in tracing? A provocative charge, but the truth seems to be that he simply failed to realize that Cochrane’s candidacy was a rival venture. Had Thompson examined Cochrane’s speeches (and, of course, we cannot be sure he did not) it is unlikely that he would have been moved to include him in his list of ‘prominent’ figures who came to represent ‘articulate Radicalism’ on the national stage for the next fifteen years, and who first came together at the Westminster election of 1807.⁵⁶ This, of course, only underlines the point—that a developmental narrative of popular radicalism tends to place an inordinate emphasis on behaviours considered rational and progressive, but ignores the complexities (and power) of ‘radical expression’.⁵⁷ This is, at bottom, the problem with existing treatments of ⁵⁴ Curiously enough, Spence’s work, which itself argues for a fundamental reconfiguration of the English political scene with the election of 1807, an election seen to have announced the ‘birth of romantic radicalism’, finds no significant place for Cochrane. Spence, ibid. ⁵⁵ Thompson, Making, 508. ⁵⁶ Ibid. ⁵⁷ For works which recognize this, see Epstein, Radical Expression; McCalman, Radical Underworld; Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790–1822 (Oxford, 1994).

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the Westminster election of 1807; they tend to be written with a view to political theory and behaviour, rather than with attention to political culture. Continuing in a vein that modern historians have largely inherited from the diaries and scrapbooks of Francis Place, Thompson went on to describe 1807 as radicalism’s victory for a new form of independence ‘from patronage, bribery and deference’.⁵⁸ But Cochrane had his own brand of ‘independence’, which was significantly different.⁵⁹ While it, too, eschewed bribery, it exploited deference and licensed passions he was determined to exploit. Cochrane may have benefited from the congruency of his political style to that of Burdett—himself an independently minded opponent of corruption, albeit in aristocratic rather than naval garb. Cochrane’s achievement, in this sense, was to confirm the purchase of the navy as a vehicle for popular reformist politics. That in so doing he incurred the hostility of the Westminster Committee was the result of a political strategy to which they were deeply committed and Cochrane’s political style, to which the majority of them seem to have been opposed. Lest Cochrane’s claim to radical credentials be called into question completely, it is important to note that he had an important ally in his effort at Westminster. Cochrane had the support of Cobbett, whom he had met at the Honiton election in June 1805 during his unsuccessful first attempt to get into parliament.⁶⁰ In May 1807 Cobbett had been a confirmed radical for only about a year. Still his imprimatur was considered vital enough by the Westminster Committee that they actively reprinted and circulated handbills of Cobbett’s letters to the electors in which he called upon them to secure a victory for Burdett.⁶¹ Whether the Westminster Committee intentionally failed to circulate those letters in the series in which Cobbett called upon electors to give their second votes to Cochrane, is unclear—but if they were reprinted as handbills they were not assiduously hived away in Place’s scrapbook. Cobbett had always placed considerable importance on the necessity of contesting national identity. He was attentive to patriotic elements in the manner to ⁵⁸ Thompson, Making, 509. ⁵⁹ And which he debated on the hustings one afternoon, with Peter Finnerty. British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 159. ⁶⁰ It was, in fact, at ‘Cobbett’s prompting’, that Cochrane contested Westminster. Thorne, House of Commons, 462. ⁶¹ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fos. 156, 170–1, 172.

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be expected of a former loyalist and had been a consistent supporter of the entire war. This perhaps explains why he embraced Cochrane when other leading radicals would not. At the same time, then, that the leaders of the Westminster Committee were confronting Cochrane in Westminster, Cobbett was busily writing missives from his farm at Botley, advocating for Cochrane, and even defending him from Sheridan’s attacks. His letter of 20 May requested support for Cochrane, based on ‘his unequivocal pledge, that he will vote for such a reform as shall banish place-men and pensioners from the House of Commons, and . . . that he will, to the utmost of his power, support every motion for the exposure of a waste of the public money’.⁶² Two days later Cobbett considered Cochrane’s candidacy important enough that he wrote another letter to the Westminster electors, one he hoped would reach them before the close of the poll. The majority of it was concerned with exculpating Cochrane’s candidacy from the attacks of Sheridan.⁶³ When the results of the final poll were announced at the hustings, Cochrane was accorded the customary chairing, in which the familiar devices of political admiralship were displayed. ‘Preceded by a model of his Lordship’s frigate the Pallas, carrying a number of his officers and seamen,’ ‘The yard arms, top-gallant masts’ of which ‘were decorated with favours, with a profusion of flags, naval and others,’ Cochrane, seated in a landau, was ceremonially processed around the environs of the borough.⁶⁴ Burdett—who had not appeared on the hustings during the entire period of the election—was not around to be chaired himself. But a month later the Westminster Committee sought the advantages of urban display, and proceeded with a postponed chairing for Burdett, held on 29 June 1807. Place, whose papers leave the best account of this chairing, declined to participate on the basis of his general opposition to pageantry and spectacle, even if deployed as radical expression. Place’s opposition stemmed from the same abhorrence for plebeian festivity that informed his writings on manners and morals. And while the majority of the Westminster Committee did not share Place’s concern for exploiting popular desires, they did have definite ideas about the type of radical display to be used. The form they had in mind distinguished itself from that of Cochrane’s chairing and the forms typically associated with urban ⁶² Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 23 May 1807, col. 929. ⁶³ Ibid., col. 932–4. ⁶⁴ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 190.

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patriotic space. Great efforts were made to ensure that public order reigned and that Burdett’s chairing impressed observers with the selfcontrol and respectability of the radical movement. Burdett’s electors were to muster in advance and march in their vestries; it was ‘particularly requested, for the sake of avoiding confusion, that no person will attempt to join the procession after it is arranged in Covent-garden’.⁶⁵ Bills posted by the Committee throughout Westminster made two significant requests of participants: one, that all resist ‘allow[ing] themselves to be irritated by an Insult that the enemies of Freedom may offer, with a view to create disorder and confusion’ and two, ‘that no Person will attempt to take the Horses from the Car’.⁶⁶ The latter was advertised on the grounds that it was ‘beneath the dignity of man to draw his fellow creature’, and was a conscious effort to give an egalitarian taint to the procession and distance it from the implications of authority and deference that were associated with the ‘taking out of the horses’.⁶⁷ But if in this way Burdett’s chairing rejected aspects of the symbolism available to the naval hero, in other ways it sought to appropriate its attendant heroic imagery. Burdett was chaired on an elaborately constructed classical car, decorated with ‘the figure of Britannia, with a spear crowned with the Cap of Liberty’. On a ‘Gothic Chair [sat] the Hero of the day. He sat with his head uncovered, and his wounded limb rested on a purple cushion.’⁶⁸ Such an act made obvious associations with the heroic sacrifice and the special claims to public notice that wounds conferred. But the display of wounds also had a more particular currency in the context of Westminster elections, and followers of the radical cause would have been attuned to the significance of Burdett’s display. Commodore Sir Samuel Hood’s candidacy at Westminster in 1806 had been characterized by pronounced efforts to appropriate Nelsonic association to the ministerial cause. Like Nelson, Hood had lost an arm. During that election, Cobbett furiously described to his readers how Hood’s ‘wounded arm was projected out to the people’ on the hustings while ‘his great coat [was] studiously turned back to expose his star and tawdry ribbons’.⁶⁹ Solicitude for Burdett’s own wound continued when the chairing procession delivered him to the victory dinner at the ⁶⁵ British Library, Add. MS 27838, fo. 217. ⁶⁶ Ibid., fo. 218. ⁶⁷ Ibid., fo. 217. ⁶⁸ Ibid., fo. 220. ⁶⁹ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 10 (1806), col. 760.

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Crown and Anchor. Burdett ‘was raised in his chair upon the table by Mr. Adams . . . the worthy baronet had placed the knee of his wounded leg on the seat of the chair, and so supported’ delivered a speech which concluded when ‘the Honourable Baronet, expressing, by his manner, great sense of pain, in consequence of standing’ was entreated by cries of ‘Sit down, sit down’ to oblige his supporters.⁷⁰ Burdett’s chairing represented a compromise between those whose radicalism represented embourgeoisification and those willing to capitalize on plebeian cultural distinctiveness. But most of all it pointed to the increased importance that wounded bodies and heroic identities had come to play in the public spaces (and texts) where late Georgian citizenship was contested. In this sense, the display of Burdett’s wound was but one of many symbolic challenges to forms more commonly associated with loyalism.⁷¹

VICTORY, COCHRANE, AND REFORM Almost immediately upon his arrival in the Commons Cochrane’s indefatigability in the radical cause was revealed. On 7 July 1807 he introduced a motion for an inquiry into places, pensions, and sinecures enjoyed by members of the House and their families. Its aim was ‘to prove, whether there was any possibility of making those who had lived and grown rich upon the public money, feel for the extraordinary burdens under which the people laboured’.⁷² Supported by members of the opposition, the motion was stifled through ministerial amendments. Cochrane’s efforts were described in the next issue of Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register. To the text of Cochrane’s ‘very excellent motion’, Cobbett prefixed an earlier speech of Cochrane’s that had the effect of framing the move within the critique of popular constitutionalism.⁷³ The same issue also contained coverage of Cochrane’s next political move, on 10 July, in which he attempted to launch an investigation of ⁷⁰ British Library. Add. MS 27838, fo. 220. ⁷¹ See also Kevin Gilmartin’s analysis of the forces at play in Henry Hunt’s processional entry into London in September 1819. This featured several references to the wounds of the heroic men and women of Peterloo, see Gilmartin, Print Politics, 127–39. ⁷² Parliamentary Debates, 7 July 1807, cols. 745–6. ⁷³ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 12 (1807), col. 92.

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naval abuses. Significantly, the abuses that Cochrane attacked were united by a sense of popular injustice—the same sense of popular injustice that he had exploited at the hustings. The poor condition of vessels, due to which ‘the lives of many officers and men are in constant peril’, ‘the extreme length of cruises and hardships that our seamen have suffered’, and the system of economy that riddled the Naval Hospitals, were contrasted to the vision of a ‘commander in chief resid[ing] in London, enjoying not only the salary of his office by claiming the emolument of prize money, gained by the toil and danger to which those engaged in the active service and defence of their country are exposed’. ‘The grievances of the navy have been so severe, through rigour and misapplied economy, that I can see nothing in the character of that body more meritorious than the patience with which they have suffered those grievances.’⁷⁴ The navy, through such representations, became a national symbol of neglect and suffering, its patriotic importance underlining the dangers and insult of the neglect visited upon the people. This was to be a repeated theme in Cochrane’s speeches, whereby the navy became a symbol of popular heroism, seen to be struggling patiently against the corrupt state. The parliamentary reaction to Cochrane’s attack was outrage and the political admirals (Sir Samuel Hood, now member for Bridport, Admiral Harvey, and Admiral Markham) launched a vigorous counter-attack, most of which took the form of panegyric on St Vincent. Cochrane’s rebuttal was singular for its venom (he reportedly told Admiral Markham his ‘services had been more conspicuous on shore than ever they had been at sea’) and punctuated by repeated calls for order.⁷⁵ As reported in the columns of Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, Cochrane’s attack can be judged as a success. It revealed Cochrane to be struggling against the combined sophistry of the parliamentary naval interest and the hostility of ‘the London daily press’.⁷⁶ Moreover, the attack served to dramatically contrast the panegyrical veneer that loyalist discourse draped around public discussions of the navy with the robust honesty claimed by a representative seaman. In making his case to the Commons, Cochrane used the same stories he had told on the hustings—most notably, his allegations concerning the sinking of the sloop Atalante and the schooner Felix. The unparliamentary language he used in this effort ⁷⁴ Parliamentary Debates, 10 July 1807, cols. 755, 756, 759, 758, 760. ⁷⁵ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 12 (1807), col. 125. ⁷⁶ Ibid.

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has been seen as detrimental to his cause, but there is a sense in which it operated to good effect.⁷⁷ It legitimized the language of the hustings. Thus, when his speech was decried as ‘inflammatory’ in the loyalist press, Cobbett could represent the episode as another moment in which the popular voice was repressed through the sophistry and tortured logic of elite political rhetoric.⁷⁸ In making his motions concerning naval abuses, Cochrane had expressed the hope that they ‘will not like those on a former occasion be got rid of by a blind vote of thanks, or by any subterfuge of a previous question’.⁷⁹ The comment is significant, because attacks on the elite and parliamentary apparatus by which victory culture and naval patriotism were supported, came to constitute a central theme of Cochrane’s parliamentary career. In the autumn of 1807, Cochrane was ordered back to sea and thus effectively taken out of parliamentary commission. During his absence he played the leading role in the British attack on the French fleet anchored at Basque Roads. At the instigation of the Admiralty, Cochrane planned and led the expedition—an expedition that was not as successful as it might have been due to Admiral Lord Gambier’s reluctance to follow-up on Cochrane’s initial attack. The victory at Basque Roads attached genuine naval accolades to Cochrane’s public image, and bolstered his public standing. He arrived in London on 21 April 1809, in time to witness the victory illuminations held in his honour.⁸⁰ Although his naval rank as a captain argued against it, Cochrane’s rank in the peerage was enough to earn him a knighthood in the Order of the Bath. Cochrane, however, had no desire to play a supporting role in the latest ministerial staging on the theatre of patriotism. From the first, Cochrane’s success at Basque Roads was capable of sustaining reformist associations, due to the fact that his appointment as a junior officer over the heads of others within the Channel Fleet, could serve as a criticism of naval interest. These associations increased in the imbroglio that followed. Cochrane challenged Gambier’s self-serving account of the battle, and announced his intention to oppose any potential vote of thanks. This was delayed, as Gambier sought to clear his reputation in a court-martial. A compliant court-martial absolved Gambier of ⁷⁷ Donald Thomas, Cochrane: Britannia’s Sea Wolf (New York, 1978), 117. ⁷⁸ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 12 (1807), col. 123. ⁷⁹ Parliamentary Debates, 10 July 1807, col. 768. ⁸⁰ Star, 24 Apr. 1809.

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Cochrane’s charges, paving the way for the delayed vote of thanks that the ministry insisted on pursuing. Thus on 29 January 1810, Cochrane led the opposition to the vote of thanks to Gambier, which passed by the embarrassing margin of 161 : 39.⁸¹ Most observers have seen Cochrane’s campaign against Gambier as approximating a personal vendetta.⁸² Not commonly noted is the fact that, quite apart from whatever Cochrane’s ultimate motivation or offence was, there was a political direction to this effort. It was consistent with his general attack on the artificiality and dishonesty that pervaded official victory culture. And it was well received by others in the radical movement, dovetailing as it did with the parliamentary critique of restorative radicalism. Cochrane’s case against Gambier was followed in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register and in The Statesman.⁸³ Days later, Cochrane attended the Westminster Meeting on parliamentary reform, where both he and Burdett received the thanks of the electors for their ‘general conduct in parliament’. His speech on this occasion ‘strongly enforced the necessity of Parliamentary Reform’ and then ‘branched off into a severe attack on the Naval Government of the country’.⁸⁴ Nor was Cochrane the only radical ploughing the furrow of naval abuses. Colonel Wardle launched a parliamentary attack on the sale of offices in the naval department under Lord Barham on 15 February 1810, which Cochrane himself followed four days later with the beginning of his campaign against the rapacity of the Admiralty Courts.⁸⁵ This all occurred in a period when a significant cohort of radical members with claims to military and naval expertise were actively agitating in the interests of the ‘nation’.⁸⁶ Cochrane’s attacks on the administration of the navy pursued canonical radical themes—the pecuniary aggrandizement of civilian office-holders, the resultant inefficiencies for the war effort, and the alienation of the true patriots whose services were neglected.⁸⁷ And he maintained this ⁸¹ Sun, 30 Jan. 1810. ⁸² Thomas, Cochrane, 177–89; Warren Tute, Cochrane: A Life of Admiral the Earl Dundonald (London, 1965), 112–14; Ian Grimble, The Sea Wolf: The Life of Admiral Cochrane (London, 1978), 115–16. ⁸³ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 17 (1810), cols. 176–92 , 210–13. ⁸⁴ Sun, 10 Feb. 1810. ⁸⁵ Ibid., 16 Feb. 1810. ⁸⁶ Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism, 110. ⁸⁷ For radicalism’s efforts in these areas see Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 88–104.

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parliamentary attack even as general political attention shifted dramatically in the spring of 1810, to the events surrounding Burdett’s confinement to the Tower. As the sole remaining member for Westminster, Cochrane was thrown into the role of official parliamentary spokesman for Burdett’s cause. His continuing efforts on naval issues were by no means ancillary to the Burdett affair, for it is necessary to remember that Burdett’s confinement to the Tower on a question of privilege had its origins in his opposition to the secret parliamentary investigation into the failure of the Walcheren expedition. As important a moment for the extra-parliamentary opposition movement as the Burdett agitation was, it is important to recognize that it grew out of a vigorous parliamentary effort by radical and Whig MPs to assert their claim to monitor the naval and military condition of the nation. These efforts were crucial to both groups’ patriotic posture. It was in the context of this strategy that Cochrane made a noteworthy speech, in which he contested the meaning of perhaps that most important of patriotic symbols. On 11 May 1810, in a debate on the naval estimates, Cochrane launched an attack on the system of naval pensions. The speech that he delivered on this occasion amounted to a statistical grotesque, in which Cochrane attempted to convert the heroic body of wounded seamen into an important metaphor for naval (and social) iniquities. Cochrane began by pointing out some of the more egregious disparities in the pension system, disparities which saw ‘13 daughters of admirals or captains, several of whose fathers fell in the service of the country, receive [pensions] less than dame Mary Saxton, the widow of a commissioner’. He continued: This pension list is not formed on comparative rank or merit, length of services, or any rational principle, but appears to be dependent on parliamentary influence alone; for lieutenant Ellison, who lost his arm, has 91l. 5s.; and captain Johnson, who lost his arm, has only 45l. 12s. 6d.—Lieutenant Arden, who lost his arm, has 91l. 5s.; lieutenant Campbell, who lost his leg, has 40l.; and poor lieutenant Chambers, who lost both his legs, has only 80l. while sir A. S. Hammond [former controller of the navy?] retires on 1,500l. per ann.—The brave sir Samuel Hood, who lost his arm, 500l.; while the late secretary to the Admiralty retires, in full health, with a pension of 1,500l.—To speak less in detail, 32 flag officers, 22 captains, 50 lieutenants, 180 masters, 36 surgeons, 23 pursers, 91 boatswains, 97 gunners, 202 carpenters, 41 cooks, cost the country 4,028l. less than the net proceeds of the sinecures of lord Arden, 20,358l.; Camden, 20,586l.; Buckingham, 20,693l. . . . All that is paid to all the wounded officers of the British navy and to the wives and children of those dead

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or killed in action, does not amount, by 214l., to as much as lord Arden’s sinecure alone, 20, 358l.—What is paid to the mutilated officers themselves, 11,408l. 16s. is but half as much—Is this justice? . . . I find upon examination, that the Wellesleys receive from the public 34, 129l., a sum equal to 426 pairs of lieutenant’s legs, calculated at the rate of allowance for lieutenant Chamber’s leg.—Calculating by the pension for captain Johnson’s arm, viz. 45l., lord Arden’s sinecure is equal to the value of 1022 captain’s arms . . . ⁸⁸

This ‘most extraordinary calculation of the numbers of arms and legs’ was a bracing satire and a rare example of plebeian corporeal sufferings being brought into mainstream political discussion.⁸⁹ Yet it was consistent with Cochrane’s overall purpose—to underline the degree to which patriotic categories were fundamentally inverted under a system of corruption. As was the case with his efforts concerning votes of thanks, Cochrane’s purpose was to strip away the veneer that surrounded patriotic culture and to reveal its contradictions. This was the sense in which Cobbett responded to Cochrane’s words. ‘His lordship deals in facts,’ Cobbett announced, ‘ . . . I insert the Speech, which will not fail to speak for itself.’⁹⁰ The sense, then, that Cochrane’s brusque oratorical style, so effective on the hustings at Westminster, was equally effective when transposed into the radical press, by virtue of its ability to stand in powerful contrast to the practised and polished rhetoric of loyalism, needs to be taken into account in estimations of the utility of his political style. In this context, it is interesting to note that Cochrane’s opponents did not consider that his attacks called his patriotism into question. Such was the cultural authority that inhered to the image of the ‘political admiral’ that no effort was made to deny Cochrane’s own position or honour and accusations of disloyalty do not appear to have been made. Instead, a common tactic was to use elements of the sea-officer image against him. Thus when Wellesley Pole responded to Cochrane’s speech in parliament, he made an effort to present Cochrane as an overly credulous tar. He regretted ‘that the noble lord . . . suffer[ed] himself to be guided by others, who were perpetually leading him astray. There was, to be sure, a considerable degree of eccentricity in the noble lord’s manner, but at the same time he had so much good British stuff about him, and so much knowledge of his profession, that he would always be listened to ⁸⁸ Parliamentary Debates, 11 May 1810, col. 1007. ⁸⁹ Ibid., col. 1015. ⁹⁰ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 17 (1810), col. 739–40.

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with great respect.’⁹¹ This was more than simple parliamentary politeness; the same strategy was employed by loyalist newspapers that professed regret at the sight of a naval officer heading up the extraparliamentary opposition during the Burdett affair.⁹² The posture of political admiralship, then, did not always work to Cochrane’s advantage. While it gave him advantages, it also allowed loyalists (and subsequent historians) to marginalize him by pointing to the apparent inconsistencies of his politics and position. It might be objected that Cochrane’s campaign against naval abuses was ancillary to the wider project of radicalism, that it was not of interest to the electors of Westminster, and that it essentially represented the ability of a privileged naval figure to pursue a personal vendetta on the national stage. But it is important to view Cochrane’s efforts in light of the Dundas affair. On that occasion, it had been naval issues that had been central to the revival of the extra-parliamentary movement.⁹³ Cochrane, we might note, began his political career around this time. In June 1806, in the immediate aftermath of Melville’s impeachment, Cochrane stood unsuccessfully for Honiton, in league with Cobbett, one of the central campaigners in that cause. There is no reason, then, to believe that the political purchase for naval issues had waned by the time Cochrane got into parliament. And there is evidence to suggest that Cochrane’s parliamentary presence made some in the radical movement aware of the possibilities suggested by his approach. Cochrane’s early activities at Westminster were clearly what spurred a series (of over thirteen) essay-length letters ‘On the Parliamentary Duties of Naval Officers’ published in the Naval Chronicle between April 1808 and June 1810.⁹⁴ Almost all were written by the same individual—‘E.G.F.’—a radically minded ex-naval officer. The declared purpose of the correspondence was to counsel naval parliamentarians on the political issues of the day and direct them towards a suitably reformist position. ‘E.G.F.’ had an ambitious political goal—he hoped to convince his ‘brother sailors in ⁹¹ Parliamentary Debates, 11 May 1810, col. 1016. ⁹² Morning Post, 18 Apr. 1810; 20 Apr. 1810. ⁹³ Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 82–8; Dinwiddy, ‘The patriotic linen draper’, 68. ⁹⁴ Naval Chronicle, 19 (1808), 387–9; 465–9; 20 (1808), 29–34; 115–19; 125–9; 206–10; 299–303; 362–9; 21 (1809), 31–4; 34–6; 122–3; 209–11; 23 (1810), 287–90; 461–4.

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either house’ to take the lead in a campaign to reform abuses and overthrow corruption.⁹⁵ He would ‘rejoice to see the naval phalanx either leading in such a cause, or at least firmly and ardently supporting its progress . . . For the sale of liberty and old England, my gallant brother tars, do not sit on your benches in Parliament without one broadside in so noble a cause. Wage noble war against corruption, and consider infamy in all its branches as your direct foe.’⁹⁶ In pursuit of this goal E.G.F.’s essays became progressively more expansive, eventually rising to include parliamentary reform, the Convention of Cintra, and the abolition of the salt tax.⁹⁷ It is an interesting comment on the readership of the Naval Chronicle that no correspondent took issue with these radical positions. According to E.G.F., the work was ‘read by a very large majority of the people of these islands’ and it may well have been the case that Cochrane’s radical politics struck a chord with large numbers of them.⁹⁸ When he arrived at Malta in 1811, to investigate the Admiralty prize courts there, the naval officers on the station ‘look[ed] on him as their champion’.⁹⁹ The fact that his political critique rapidly extended to encompass the full range of abuses and evils that beset the British political system only proves the point that efforts like Cochrane’s campaign against naval abuses were centrally conceived within the overarching discourse of popular radicalism. That it was the patriotic significance of the navy itself that was being fought over at this time is evidenced by another event from the spring of 1810. On 11 May, the same day that Cochrane attacked the iniquities of the naval establishment in the Commons, he had that very morning attended the public funeral of Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood at St Paul’s Cathedral. Almost nothing is known about the organizational history of this event, but it seems credible to assume, judging from the precedents of Nelson’s funeral and the arrangements made for other admirals who died during the period, that the decision to inter Collingwood at St Paul’s had a ministerial provenance.¹⁰⁰ And coming as it did, at the height of the Burdett agitation, and in the wake of the ⁹⁵ Naval Chronicle, 21 (1809), 32. ⁹⁶ Ibid., 20 (1808), 209. ⁹⁷ Ibid., 20 (1808), 299–303; 362–9; 21 (1809), 31–4. ⁹⁸ Ibid., 19 (1808), 387. ⁹⁹ Ibid., 25 (1811), 300. ¹⁰⁰ In August 1799, Earl Howe was buried at his family seat in Nottinghamshire; Admiral Gardner’s funeral took place at Bath Abbey in January 1808. Star, 27 Aug. 1799; Courier, 14 Jan. 1809.

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Walcheren expedition and scandals of the Spanish campaign, loyalists must have been attracted to its potential as an event that rekindled memories of naval supremacy. Although Cochrane never served with Collingwood, he made sure to put in an appearance, and was noticed as one of the prominent naval figures who attended, along with Lords Mulgrave and St Vincent.¹⁰¹

AN ‘INFAMOUS IMPOSITION’ IN THE PATRIOTIC PUBLIC SPHERE Cochrane and Burdett were re-elected without opposition for Westminster in 1812 and Cochrane remained active as the foremost advocate of naval reform. He continued to perform his role as the bugbear of loyalism, but eventually, in early 1814, circumstances arose that made possible his effective dismissal from the patriotic public sphere. As it turned out, the timing of his exit informed the context for the government’s final wartime exercise in naval patriotism. On 21 February 1814 ‘a Sittingborne post-chaise, decorated with laurel and containing two persons dressed as Officers, and wearing white cockades, passed through the City by way of London Bridge, but were lost sight of before they arrived west of Temple Bar. They pretended to come from France, via Dover, with dispatches for Government, announcing the death and defeat of Bonaparte, the arrival of the Allied Armies at Paris, and the defection of all the cavalry, and a great portion of the infantry opposed to the Allies.’¹⁰² This was one of several period attempts to manipulate prices on the stock exchange and in this it met with the expected success. Prices rose sharply, then dropped as the news was discovered to be false. Initial outrage, part of which was a reaction to the fraudulent exploitation of the official intelligence network of the literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’, was heightened, in loyalist circles, by the discovery that Lord Cochrane was potentially involved. Cochrane’s problems stemmed from the fact that his uncle Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone MP was involved in the fraud, and thus his associations with the conspirators led to his conviction in a trial that ¹⁰¹ Dundonald, Autobiography of a Seaman, ii. 165; Morning Post, 12 May 1810. ¹⁰² Morning Post, 22 Feb. 1814.

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most modern commentators have found to be deeply flawed (particularly as it concerned Cochrane).¹⁰³ The crime itself was rarely prosecuted and the investigation was handled by a special Sub-Committee of the Stock Exchange that published its report determining the guilt of those involved well in advance of the trial. Initially the case against Cochrane and his co-accused was to be heard at the Old Bailey. It was moved to the King’s Bench, a move that drew suspicion on two fronts. It brought the case into the purview of Lord Ellenborough, the notorious opponent of radicalism, and it allowed the prosecution to take advantage of the potentially more compliant protocol of the Special Jury. The defendants themselves were tried together (a move that most experts agree was responsible for Cochrane’s conviction since the jury were instructed to apply the same verdict to all), the defence was presented exceptionally late in the evening, and Ellenborough erred in his instructions to the jury. Since the procedural rules of the King’s Bench required that all the convicted parties had to be part of an appeal, Cochrane lost his chance for appeal when Cochrane-Johnstone fled to the continent.¹⁰⁴ Modern writers, not surprisingly, are only exceeded in their criticism and outrage by the radical press of the day. Cobbett devoted great attention to the defence of his protégé—two entire numbers of the Weekly Political Register were given over to the cause in the spring of 1814. In this sense, Cochrane’s trial deserves to be placed within the narrative of the trials of radicalism and to be seen as part of the partisan vendetta to which Burdett, Cobbett, and Hunt were subjected in the governmental repression that returned after 1809.¹⁰⁵ More particularly, though, the trial and the general loyalist persecution of Cochrane need to be seen as a struggle to expel a significant figure from the political realm, and, by implication (given Cochrane’s stature as one of the foremost practitioners of ‘political admiralship’) to expel his radical presence from the patriotic public sphere. Nothing illustrates the desire to remove Lord Cochrane from Westminster’s patriotic stage better than the sentence passed upon him. In a move designed to dishonour and discredit him, the convicted hero was ordered to stand in the pillory. The pillory at this point was a rare sentence. It had fallen into increasing disuse and was the subject of calls ¹⁰³ Cochrane was eventually pardoned in 1832. On his innocence—and the guilt of his co-accused—see Thomas, Cochrane, 212–44. ¹⁰⁴ Townsend, Modern State Trials, ii. 1–111. ¹⁰⁵ Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt, 30.

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for abolition and the reform of criminal punishment.¹⁰⁶ It is significant, not only that Cochrane—an aristocrat, naval hero, and member of parliament—was sentenced to the pillory by the justices of the King’s Bench, but also that the sentence was intended well in advance. Long before Cochrane’s trial was held on 8 June 1814, shortly after the report of the Sub-Committee of the Stock Exchange, the intention of applying the punishment of the pillory and of expelling Cochrane from parliament were publicly expressed in loyalist circles.¹⁰⁷ The pillory appealed to loyalists because it represented the possibility of achieving a victory over radical patriotism in the context of Westminster’s urban space. An interlude in the stocks, in which the base scorn of the mob could be visited upon Cochrane, was the spectacle that was sought. However, this portion of the sentence was eventually mitigated because popular opinion was manifestly not splitting in the expected manner. Even after, and perhaps because of, his conviction, popular support for Cochrane reached a crescendo. The government’s initial thought was to retake Westminster with a naval candidate of their own. But such was the apparent popularity of Cochrane that in the end no rivals came forward. With Cochrane in prison, Burdett spoke on his behalf. It was here that the intention to turn the shame of the pillory into a display of popular support for Cochrane was specifically advanced, as Burdett announced his intention to stand in the pillory with Cochrane, should the sentence be carried out. ‘In endeavouring to knock up Lord Cochrane, [Lord Ellenborough] had knocked up the pillory. It would hereafter be difficult to persuade men, who knew what glory it had formerly been to follow Lord Cochrane, that it could be disgraceful to stand where he had been seen.’ ¹⁰⁸ Faced with the possibility of a radical demonstration, the government abandoned the penalty of the pillory. The extent to which the entire episode with Cochrane was held to be part of one final wartime struggle over the loyalist and radical constructions of patriotism and the national will, is evidenced in the numerous squibs and ‘Patriotic Paradoxes’ that appeared in the press. Most of these picked up on Burdett’s inversion of the meaning of the pillory, following through in ways that, crucially, linked the cultural position on Cochrane’s ¹⁰⁶ See Gregory T. Smith, ‘The state and the culture of violence in London, 1760–1840’ (University of Toronto Dissertation, 1999), esp. 385–8. ¹⁰⁷ Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 25 (26 Mar. 1814), col. 397. ¹⁰⁸ Sun, 12 July 1814.

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sentence to the fundamentals of the radical programme. The Morning Post itemized its: PATRIOTIC PARADOXES .

That the trial by Jury is a great and invaluable blessing; the boast and privilege of a country; but that the verdict of Juries is only to be regarded when the guilty are acquitted and the innocent condemned. That the fact of a man’s having been convicted of a low and infamous crime, sentenced to an ignominious punishment, and in consequence kicked out of the House of Commons, constitutes a new claim on the public respect and gratitude; and that a fraudulent attempt to pick the pockets of other people, is a strong qualification to be chosen one of the guardians of the purse.¹⁰⁹

In the Sun, a paper that pursued Cochrane with particular vigour, the link was even more explicit: the new system. Purity of Election and Reform of Parliament. The Trial by Jury, which experience has shewn to be irreconcilable with the Liberty of the Subject, will be abolished, and the Trial by Mob substituted, as shorter, more consonant to unanimity, and less liable to popular objection . . . The Chairing of Members, on being elected to Parliament, will be declared a felony, by an Act intitled, ‘the Seat of Honour Repeal Act;’ and the Pillory instituted as a more appropriate mode of expressing the applause of Constituents . . . Though there shall be two codes of law, they shall be so brief and intelligible, that errors in judgement must become impossible. These shall be a law for Patriots, and the law for Corruptionists: the first declaratory that a patriot can do no wrong—the second, that a Corruptionist can never do right . . . Garrat to be raised into a Parliamentary Borough . . . ¹¹⁰

But the campaign against Cochrane and the effort to manage the membership in the patriotic public sphere (even if at the war’s end), was ¹⁰⁹ Morning Post, 23 July 1814. ¹¹⁰ Sun, 27 July 1814. Garrat was the site of mock elections in the period, see John Brewer, ‘Theater and counter-theater in Georgian politics: the mock-elections at Garrat’, Radical History Review, 22 (1980), 7–40.

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not confined to printed loyalist satire. As the next section shows, it even informed and interacted with the London celebrations of the peace of 1814.

THE SERPENTINE FLOTILL A AND THE FIRESHIP OF THE TALENTS On 1 August 1814 the final victory celebration of the war was held in London. This was the Grand Jubilee—a large-scale arrangement of public entertainment and patriotic display held in the parks of the capital. For Linda Colley, the Grand Jubilee marked another moment at which the Georgian monarchy sought to contain popular nationalism. Colley saw the selection of the 1 August date as significant; necessitated by the Prince Regent’s desire ‘to subsume national achievement in and connect it with the glorification of the monarch’. Since 1 August marked the centenary of the accession of the house of Hanover to the British throne, the effect was that this victory celebration ‘coincided with and was indeed overshadowed by the centenary celebrations for the House of Hanover’.¹¹¹ This interpretation is in need of revision, in part because the selected date had little to do with any conscious effort to advance the hegemonic conception of majesty. The fête was initially supposed to coincide with the visit of the Allied sovereigns to London in the second week of June, but the elaborate preparations (got up under the direction of Sir William Congreve and John Nash) could not be completed in time.¹¹² When initial plans were eventually announced, they comprised a wide variety of public entertainments and fireworks scheduled for 12 August, the Regent’s birthday.¹¹³ Finally, the date of 1 August was determined upon, but this had the effect of bringing into play not only the centenary of the Hanoverian Succession, but also the anniversary of the battle of the Nile.¹¹⁴ The chosen date, then, was a rolling one, selected as organizational ¹¹¹ Colley, ‘Apotheosis’, 110. ¹¹² Edward Orme, An Historical Memento, representing the different scenes of public rejoicing which took place the first of August, in St. James’s and Hyde Park, London, in celebration of the Glorious Peace of 1814, and of the centenary of the accession of the illustrious House of Brunswick to the throne of these Kingdoms (London, 1814), 51. ¹¹³ Sun, 28 June 1814. ¹¹⁴ Morning Chronicle, 5 July 1814.

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exigencies arose. In this light it makes more sense for us to view the Grand Jubilee as a project that ended up privileging no particular reading, an interpretation justified by the fact that contemporaries were equally undecided as to its symbolic purpose or meaning. As The Times observed when surveying the event’s accumulated symbolism, ‘a sort of general celebration is made of War, or Peace, and of the Accession of the House of Brunswick’.¹¹⁵ This general celebration, though, was informed by particular contexts. Two that we have been tracing revealed themselves powerfully in the experience of the event. For the Grand Jubilee witnessed an important attempt to articulate national ceremonial according to the accepted exclusionary precepts of the patriotic public sphere. At the same time, popular support in the metropolis was rallying to Lord Cochrane, prompting loyalism to reach out to the masses through the device of naval patriotism. The polysemic nature of the Grand Jubilee was a consequence of the deeper dynamic discernible in its organization, the desire to construct the event as a political victory for conservative forces. Edward Orme’s commemorative account of the Grand Jubilee featured a historical essay by the Tory journalist F. W. Blagdon, in which the victory of 1814 was presented as a victory not only over Napoleon, but also over domestic political opponents. Blagdon described a war fought on two fronts, by allied armies in the field, and by loyalist politicians against ‘graceless demagogues . . . these perverse and seditious writers’. With victory and peace, ‘the time is come for good men to exult, and for the too numerous disaffected to retire in dismay, at the total destruction of their hopes and views, which they had basely cherished for the long period of twenty-one years’.¹¹⁶ These points needed to be made, largely because oppositional groupings were so persistent in their attacks upon the Grand Jubilee. Contrary to the suggestions of Russell, coherent critical perspectives on performance were not at the root of contemporaries’ objections.¹¹⁷ It was the political usage to which the performances were being put—not the forms themselves—that were the source of objections. Oppositional groupings protested the triumph of loyalism’s version of victory culture, ¹¹⁵ The Times, 2 Aug. 1814. ¹¹⁶ Orme, An Historical Memento, . . . in celebration of the Glorious Peace of 1814 . . . , 6. ¹¹⁷ Russell, Theatres of War, 88–94.

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loyalism’s narrative of the war, and loyalism’s interpretation of the meaning of the peace. And in their effort to mobilize opposition to the fête, they availed themselves of existing arguments, even advancing a range of arguments related to the reform of plebeian culture. Whigs and radicals were not motivated, per se, by radical snobbery; rather their anger was generated by the possibilities of success the project posed. Consequently the opposition worked to place both its attack on the Grand Jubilee (and their defence of Cochrane), in some familiar discourses. Thus, they argued against the fête employing criteria related to economy, national identity, constitutionality, and public safety. As the project developed, it can be argued that a greater degree of concern was being paid to put victory culture on a new footing, in order to replace the tensions, problems, and criticisms that had typically plagued earlier festivities. By the late spring of 1814, these concerns were particularly pronounced. The Grand Jubilee was only the last of several official commemorations of the peace in the capital. News of the defeat of Bonaparte had been met with an initial victory celebration and attendant illuminations from 11 to 13 April. The visit of the allied sovereigns in late June was marked with further illuminations, and an official heraldic ceremonial was observed. And on 7 July a thanksgiving attended by the Prince Regent and both Houses of Parliament was held at St Paul’s. These were all narrow elitist affairs. The general public was not welcomed to the thanksgiving at St Paul’s, nor were they invited to participate in their own parishes since the government did not see fit to declare the day a general observation. When combined with the numerous private balls, dinners, and fêtes held in honour of the peace and the visit of the allied sovereigns, the picture of an increasingly exclusive series of commemorations emerges. This was noted, and generated criticism. As the Morning Chronicle remarked, ‘What an idea of the magnificence of England must these fêtes give to foreigners!—all by subscriptions—each paying his shot. None of the old and obsolete hospitality of the ancient Barons, who threw open their palaces to Princes; but on the improved shop-keeper plan of pic-nic, where every man contributes his quota.’¹¹⁸ It is possible that the Regency court became consciously sensitive to the accusation that the people were excluded from the victory ceremonials, ¹¹⁸ Morning Chronicle, 28 May 1814. Emphasis in original.

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and that this accounts for why a fireworks display developed into a participatory festival featuring a range of amusements, including a balloon ascent, naumachia, and Hyde Park fair. The event had always been intended for the general public, but by the time official plans were formally announced in late June, they betrayed a desire to resolve the question of popular participation in an innovative manner. The problem for organizers was how to avoid the charge of exclusivity without compromising public order, alienating an elite audience, or opening the event to brutish plebeian pursuits and entertainment. The plan was for a spatially segregated event in which the different ranks would be united through a common field of view. Ticketed admission to a secure enclosure within St James’s Park would meet the needs of those members of the ‘middle class’ who did not welcome ‘promiscuous admixture with the immense crowd’.¹¹⁹ The general public was permitted free admission to the Green Park and all of Hyde Park, this being consistent with the Regent’s desire that ‘every class of the population . . . should have the most ample enjoyment, and that the poor should possess it gratuitously’.¹²⁰ According to this arrangement, the fireworks and Nash’s elaborate displays would ‘be visible to all the people assembled . . . [and thus] no partiality can be complained of ’.¹²¹ Partiality, though, was complained of, and by almost every group invited to the ostensibly communal event. Plebeian participants attempted to sneak into the reserved areas of St James’s Park, but were kept out by soldiers. Denied entrance, ‘The mob without endeavoured to vent their anger against the envied occupiers of the inclosure, and especially against the soldiers, by a very liberal and ingenious application of all the slang at their command.’¹²² An equivalent sense of offence was felt by the middle classes, some of whom believed their interests were being sacrificed to curry favour with the lower orders. When a slight alteration to the original plans was announced, that would have increased general access to those areas of the Park previously understood to be exclusively reserved for ticketed accommodation, a letter-writer to The Times protested in terms that made clear the nature of his claim to priority of participation in the patriotic public sphere. ‘If this arrangement has been made to multiply general gratification, the Public should ¹¹⁹ Edward Orme, An Historical Memento, . . . in celebration of the Glorious Peace of 1814 . . . , 45. ¹²⁰ Ibid., 46. ¹²¹ Sun, 28 June 1814. ¹²² Morning Chronicle, 2 Aug. 1814.

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understand, at whose cost this their increased pleasure has been obtained.’ Such a slight would offend middle-class ticket-holders, ‘that class of persons in this country who have most severely felt, and most patiently supported, the burdens of the State during the late tremendous conflict’.¹²³ This group’s disappointment only increased on the day in question, when ‘no persons of distinction, in rank or politics’ deigned to appear in the Green Park galleries constructed so that dignitaries could appear in the vicinity of the ticketed crowd.¹²⁴ Concerns about exclusion from the patriotic public sphere were particularly cogent in the late spring and early summer of 1814, due to the presence of two other important imbroglios that, in their respective ways raised the issue. Cochrane’s exclusion from the patriotic public sphere has already been discussed—it is merely necessary to remark upon its chronology, which followed closely the anticipation of the Grand Jubilee. The same period also witnessed some opening acts in what was eventually to become the ‘Queen Caroline Affair’. With the visit of the allied sovereigns to London in June, the exclusion of the Princess of Wales from Court became the subject of public attention and of Whig activism. The problem was complemented by the related question of the freedom sought by Princess Charlotte and her desire to support her mother’s cause.¹²⁵ Whig and oppositional politicians, then, were operating on several fronts, and it seems Caroline was already beginning to symbolize a popular sense of grievance and exclusion from participatory political culture.¹²⁶ As the Morning Chronicle summarized it, in an attack on the Court published on the day of the Grand Jubilee, ‘the public have heard much of political exclusions, and more of domestic ones . . . The exclusion of the “old friends” ushered in the “new era” and its splendid course has been subsequently marked by exclusions from Drawing Rooms, Fêtes, and Cathedrals on Thanksgiving Days.’¹²⁷ The political ¹²³ The Times, 30 July 1814. ¹²⁴ Orme, An Historical Memento, . . . in celebration of the Glorious Peace of 1814 . . . , 59. ¹²⁵ Details of these events provided in Flora Fraser, The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (New York, 1996), 236–51. Stephen C. Behrendt discusses the political significance and popular aspirations attendant upon Princess Charlotte in Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte (New York, 1997), 1–33. ¹²⁶ McCalman, Radical Underworld, 163. On the Queen Caroline Affair itself, especially in respect to its context as an episode in the loyalist-radical struggle, see Jonathan Fulcher, ‘The loyalist response to the Queen Caroline agitations’, Journal of British Studies, 34 (1995). ¹²⁷ Morning Chronicle, 1 Aug. 1814.

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exclusion that the paper had foremost in mind concerned, of course, the Whigs themselves, but it is important to note, at a time when they were the leading defenders of the princess and Lord Cochrane, as well as the foremost critics of the Grand Jubilee, the effort they were making was to make an alliance with popular interests. With concerns about political and social exclusion in circulation, it is interesting to consider one strategy that the organizers of the Grand Jubilee pursued in order to cultivate popular support. The government was interested in the popularity of the event—and it invoked the full range of national iconography—naval, martial, and royal. Of these, the naval associations were relied upon with a particular vigour, expressive of the degree to which they remained heavily contested at this point, some eight years after Trafalgar. In late June (before the plans for the Grand Jubilee had been formally announced) the Morning Chronicle had attempted to score points off the Prince Regent by pointing out ‘that the Naval Officers appear to have been excluded (we hope not intentionally) from all the public fetes given in honour of the Peace. At Carlton House scarcely one naval uniform has been seen, except in the character of the Commissioners of the Admiralty.’¹²⁸ Days later the Prince Regent, accompanied by the allied sovereigns, went to Portsmouth for a Grand Naval Review. This progress was so symbolically desirable that it took place even though, in the eyes of one sympathetic loyalist paper, there were scarcely enough ships of line present to merit the trip.¹²⁹ The Morning Chronicle may have lived to wish it had never questioned the Court’s commitment to the navy because, in its final form, the Grand Jubilee asserted loyalism’s possession of naval heroism to an unusual degree. The Royal Booth was emblazoned with the inscription ‘Nelson of the Nile’ twinned alongside ‘Wellington’.¹³⁰ A ‘Naval Arch’ ‘which formed a bridge from the lawn of the Queen’s House to the Green Park, was a tribute to our gallant Officers in the Navy.—The names of Howe, Duncan, St Vincent, Collingwood, Broke, Saumarez, Exmouth, &c. were displayed in large letters, with chaplets of laurel.’¹³¹ And central importance was accorded to the naumachia, or sham naval fight, acted out on the surface of the Serpentine. Perhaps the most powerful evidence, though, of the sense in which martial and naval heroism were seen as ¹²⁸ Morning Chronicle, 22 June 1814. ¹²⁹ Sun, 20 June 1814. ¹³⁰ The Times, 2 Aug. 1814. Emphasis in original. ¹³¹ Star, 2 Aug. 1814.

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central to the Grand Jubilee can be seen in those signs voluntarily appropriated by the publicans who set up their refreshment booths in the Hyde Park fair. Theirs was a ‘bacchanalian corps. There is about fifty Lord Wellingtons in the field, ten Marquises of Granby, a dozen Dukes of Marlbro’, Nelson’s innumerable . . . ’ And the booths on the Serpentine adopted names suitable to their proximity to the naval battle: ‘Trafalgar Bay—Aboukir Bay—Cadiz Harbour—the Tagus—Bordeaux— Cove—Waterford—the Elbe—-and other harbours where there was good anchorage, grog, and provisions.’¹³² In light of all this, it is difficult to retain Colley’s sense that concerns for majesty rivalled and ‘overshadowed’ the victory celebration—in fact, it might be said the opposite is true. Of these deployments of naval imagery, the naumachia was arguably the most significant to contemporaries. Its inclusion in the entertainments proposed for Hyde Park was seen by both supporters and detractors alike as a deliberate condescension to popular interests. Because of this, it became one of the most hotly contested features of the entire Jubilee. The first parliamentary discussion of the jubilee preparations saw Tierney make the sham naval fight on the Serpentine River a particular object of derision and this was merely the first salvo in a discussion that raged well into August.¹³³ The proposed naumachia was of an unprecedented scale, much larger than audiences would have been familiar with from the exhibitions at Sadler’s Wells and other London theatres in this period. The boats for the ‘Serpentine Flotilla’ were 42 in number, 40 feet long and 12 feet wide, equipped to carry 10 small guns each, and manned by crews of 30.¹³⁴ Their size alone was enough to generate significant attention. This, and the very public nature of their construction in Hyde Park, supported a series of criticisms that demanded to know where the money funding this spectacle was coming from. When Tierney first raised the question of the naumachia in the Commons, he had scoffed that ‘he was pretty sure that John Bull would never relish the representation of a sea fight on the Serpentine river, by boats that were to pass for two and three deckers!’¹³⁵ By which he meant, simply, that an audience of sincere and ‘true-born Englishmen’ would see ¹³² ¹³³ ¹³⁴ ¹³⁵

Morning Chronicle, 9 Aug. 1814. Parliamentary Debates. Series 1, Vol. 28. (7 June–30 July 1814), cols. 419–23. Morning Post, 2 July 1814. Parliamentary Debates. Series 1, Vol. 28, col. 421.

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straight through so artificial an attempt to seek their approval and acquiescence. This comment was motivated by an awareness that the crucial issue was the extent to which loyalism was seeking a political victory in the arena of cultural politics. Concerns over theatricality and performance and over the desirable manner of representing war were probably of little concern to Tierney and the Whigs at this time.¹³⁶ The Grand Jubilee and the naumachia were attacked on a number of counts—for the expense, for concerns that the public purse and public departments were being employed without appropriate approval, for concerns the preparatory constructions were taking place on the Sabbath, and also for concerns that the suspension of work on a weekday would be seen to license idleness in the lower orders.¹³⁷ Whig and radical critics of the Grand Jubilee certainly did make a common alliance with those who hoped for the reformation of popular culture; as we have seen, this was a persistent feature in anti-war and anti-illumination discourse. But criticisms that the intended entertainments were common ‘mummeries’ was largely a sophism.¹³⁸ The same political groupings tended to oppose the politicized dimensions of thanksgiving days. It was the political agenda of loyalism and its claims over national identity, not the theatres of war themselves, that were the real object of the attack. This can be clearly seen in the inconsistent matter in which the proposed pursuits were filtered through the prism of national identity. Critics of the Grand Jubilee opposed the Hyde Park fair for its vulgar and base pursuits; at the same time, they argued against the naumachia, claiming that its Roman antecedents and resemblance to the despotic spectacles of the French state made it inconsistent with the national character. Loyalists (with some justification) pointed out that, according to this criterion, critics would have to accept that the activities of the Hyde Park fair qualified as resolutely ‘English’, while the naumachia and related visual displays ought to be accepted as attempts to improve the popular culture. Would critics then prefer, instead of ‘a mimic scene of the marine warfare’ ‘a different and more manly course of amusements’ including pugilistic displays, bull-baiting, badger fighting, and football? ¹³⁹ From the perspective of attitudes towards theatrical forms, there was no ¹³⁶ ¹³⁷ ¹³⁸ ¹³⁹

Pace Russell, Theatres of War, 93. Morning Chronicle, 2 July, 8 July 1814; Morning Post, 4 July 1814. Morning Chronicle, 21 July 1814. Morning Post, 9 July 1814. Emphasis in original.

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critical consistency to the attack on the Grand Jubilee: the criteria concerning national identity and taste shifted as the exigencies of debate demanded. But there was a wider political consistency to the attack on the Grand Jubilee, one that conformed to a familiar oppositional discourse in which the Prince Regent and his Court were seen as parasitic profiteers, funding their gratification from the national purse, all the while ignoring the real political nation that demanded to be recognized. That the struggle over the naumachia in particular represented a struggle over the nation, the navy, and national identity can be seen in a series of satirical exchanges published that summer. These satires played with the literary forms of reportage associated with nautical intelligence. In them, naval news—or, ‘Ship News Extraordinary’—became itself symbolic of the nation, as the form was deployed to illustrate the respective alienation of Whigs, radicals, and the ministry, from the national interest.¹⁴⁰ The Sun printed one of the first of these, in which the parliamentary opposition was mocked for having taken the ‘new Navy in the Serpentine’ so seriously. Pretending to inform its readers that the concern was justified, as the small boats were in fact destined for service in the ongoing war on ‘the Lakes of Canada’, the general intent was to emphasize the marginality of the opposition from national rejoicing.¹⁴¹ The Morning Chronicle responded with satires of its own that ridiculed the preparations as playthings of the Prince Regent, but perhaps its most significant deployment of this satirical form appeared in a pretended description of the naumachia itself. It challenged the basis of national pride displayed in the Park, through reference to the controversies surrounding the Princess of Wales. The paper’s reports of the ‘Naval Action Which Took Place in Hyde-Park’ recounted the travails of a first-rate—the Princess of Wales— as it attempted to maintain its place in the line of battle. Attacked by the Eldon and the Regent, it was defended by a small frigate, the Royal Charlotte, whose intervention concluded by being ‘towed off by the Bedford’.¹⁴² This satire was printed and circulated as a handbill.¹⁴³ In it, the naval form operated to present the shameful struggles within the Royal Family, rather than naval superiority and national pride, as the real Brunswick legacy. ¹⁴⁰ For examples, see Sun, 1, 4, 12, 13 July 1814; Morning Chronicle, 13 July and 4 Aug. 1814. ¹⁴¹ Sun, 1 July 1814. ¹⁴² Morning Chronicle, 4 Aug. 1814. Emphasis in original. ¹⁴³ British Library, Add. MS 27850.

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The naumachia was contested because it had important work to do in attaching naval enthusiasm to the loyalist cause. And, remembering that the events of the Westminster election formed an important backdrop to the Grand Jubilee, it is worth noting that organizers may have intended the display to be even more overtly partisan. The naumachia entertainment itself was divided into two separate acts. The first featured an engagement between two American and two British frigates, which concluded with one of the American frigates being boarded by the British crew, who ‘cleared [the decks] in a moment, and the Union Jack was hoisted over the stripes and stars of the Jonathan’. Such boardings were a relatively rare occurrence, and engagements with American vessels had been themselves rare enough that this was clearly intended as an explicit reference to Captain Philip Broke’s celebrated storming of the Chesapeake in June of 1813. This had a manifestly political significance, since ‘the gallant Captain Broke’ was the intended government candidate for the recent Westminster election.¹⁴⁴ In the end Broke did not stand, but the first act of the naumachia (planning for which was well under way by the time the Westminster election wrapped up on 16 July) may well have been initially intended as a compliment to a new naval member for Westminster. Evidence suggests that elements in the assembled crowd at Hyde Park resisted the loyalist associations that were being imposed. Numbers of the crowd, no doubt, had been in attendance at the hustings to hear Burdett describe ‘the flotilla in Hyde Park’ as a governmental ‘hoax’ of a piece with Cochrane’s expulsion from the Commons.¹⁴⁵ The politically active elements of the urban mob had been effectively cued to protest the naumachia. And the crowd’s dissatisfaction appears to have been expressed. The correspondent in the Star resorted to sophistry in order to explain the crowd’s silence at the conclusion of the first act: ‘so much a matter of course was the [British victory], that the spectators did not allow their exultation to exhibit itself even to a single cheer.’ A considerable delay occurred between the first and second acts of the naumachia, during which the crowd became unsettled. At this point, according to the same writer in the Star, ‘Conjecture was busy, and some rash spirits even went the length of imagining jealousies among the superior officers.’¹⁴⁶ Although the chronicler chose to efface these interjections ¹⁴⁴ Morning Post, 11 June 1814. The War of 1812 was ongoing at this point. ¹⁴⁵ Ibid., 18 July 1814. ¹⁴⁶ Star, 2 Aug. 1814.

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with humour, such references to generalized command rivalries would have reminded all of the partisan dimensions of naval patriotism. Thus although the naumachia had been intended as a loyalist triumph, elements present at the event tried their level best to make sure that the navy’s place as a metaphor for governmental misrule remained. Partisan and class politics—not performance—are the key towards understanding the cultural politics of the Grand Jubilee. Russell is correct to point out that the problem with open state spectacles was that the audience response could not be controlled—but once again, it appears that contemporaries may not have been particularly exercised on this point. Rather than suppress theatricality, or turn fundamentally against spectacle, the strategy they pursued was to get their imagined version of events out as quickly as possible. In the case of the Grand Jubilee, the effort commenced early. Crowds arriving at the Parks found the environs plastered with handbills designed to counteract the criticisms of the Whigs and radicals: Let not the people listen to those who would poison their minds—to those who are the constant enemies of public joy. Let them be assured that the object of this peaceful festival is to give to all ranks and orders a grateful occasion of indulging in the full participation of happiness, which, after an arduous and trying contest, crowned with unprecedented success, Peace has entitled them to.¹⁴⁷

Given the intensely partisan nature of the Georgian public sphere, it seems unlikely that loyalists ever expected unanimous approval for the cultural projects upon which they embarked. And neither did radicals. Both saw their efforts as tactical broadsides in a long-term struggle. The challenge for chroniclers of these events was to fit them to the perceived interests of political community. For the correspondent of the Star this posed little problem. The coverage he devoted to the naumachia accorded it a centrality in the proceedings that would have met with the approval of the organizers. True, his account contained veiled references to audience dissent, but these were partly obscured by sophistry and forms of playful satire that limited the acknowledgement of dissent to those who may have already been aware of it. The treatment he accorded the elite was significant to his understanding of the manner in which the patriotic public sphere was held to be constituted. The elite and ¹⁴⁷ Ibid.

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middling audience assembled in St James’s and Green Park only had to hear ‘the sound of cannon in Hyde-park’ and ‘The naval heroes of England instantly became the topic of conversation in every circle, and their share in the splendid and happy occasion then celebrating was acknowledged with gratitude and with glory.’¹⁴⁸ For them, victory culture was about communion—about asserting identity through proximity to the privileged consumption of national knowledge. While it is clearly too much to say that the naumachia was solely conceived of in relation to the travails of Lord Cochrane, it is nevertheless clear that oppositional sensitivity to the loyalist monopolization of naval symbols came at the precise time when the naval figure most notably associated with radical politics was, both figuratively and literally, chased from the patriotic public sphere. Furthermore, explicit connections between Cochrane’s plight and the naumachia were made in the satirical exchange over the ‘Serpentine Flotilla’. The day after Cochrane was nominated as the sole candidate for Westminster in a large public meeting in Palace Yard, a ‘Ships News Extraordinary’ in the Sun announced that Cochrane had been offered command of the ‘Serpentine Fleet’ in return for a pardon, but that he had turned it down claiming ‘It is a Hoax, and I will have nothing to do with it.’¹⁴⁹ The next day the paper continued in this vein and printed a letter from the seamen of the Serpentine vessels, responding to Cochrane’s rumoured commission, expressing their hostility to him and his political brethren. ‘We want no Chaps who are fitter for the Hulks than for his Majesty’s navy in commission,’ it announced, in words that once again, presented tars as the policemen of the patriotic public sphere.¹⁵⁰ The attempt to capture, for one final time, the popular meaning of the navy for loyalism had variegated effects. The Grand Jubilee was the last effort made to consecrate wartime loyalism with claims of plebeian support. One of the final acts in the struggle over the navy in the wars of 1793–1815 took place at Westminster Abbey, on 11 August 1814. Shortly after midnight, heralds from the College of Arms arrived at King Henry VII’s Chapel, to perform the never-before-used ceremony of ¹⁴⁸ Star, 2 Aug. 1814. ¹⁴⁹ Sun, 12 July 1814. Emphasis in original. ¹⁵⁰ Ibid., 13 July 1814. Emphasis in original.

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Figure 6. Things as they have been—things as they now are. Portrait of Lord Cochrane taken during his confinement in the King’s Bench prison in 1814 the morning dress as he then was. S. T. Taw (artist), E. Niaws (engraver), R. Bothside (publisher), National Maritime Museum, Prints and Drawings Collection (PAF 4148), 8 May 1815. © National Maritime Museum. Used by permission.

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degradation.¹⁵¹ Cochrane’s insignia, helmet, and sword were removed from his stall and his banner kicked out of the chapel and down the steps.¹⁵² This event, with its narrow, antiquarian significance and its conscious eschewing of spectators, symbolized Cochrane’s expulsion from the elite and official corridors of the patriotic public sphere, and his erasure from the literary culture of the field of Mars (see Figure 6). But as Cochrane himself had already shown, the borders of that culture were pliable, contestable, capable of exploitation and accretion. ¹⁵¹ James C. Risk, The History of the Order of the Bath and its Insignia (London, 1972), 11, 30. ¹⁵² Morning Post, 12 Aug. 1814.

Conclusion Naval patriotism did not begin in 1793—nor did it end in 1815.¹ But in those years it was central to Britain’s political culture in ways that have not been recognized. Its contestation in the period was pronounced— and important—because of the revolutionary stresses to which the British fiscal-military state was subjected. Even though the navy had a prehistory as a national symbol its cultural importance arguably increased between 1793 and 1815. In order for this to occur, naval victories—and naval heroes—were indisputably necessary. But it was the role naval imaginaries played in articulating political debate that entrenched them in political culture. Here naval symbols proved remarkably flexible. After the ‘Glorious First of June’ they were used by loyalists advancing comfortable notions of naval superiority and ideological unity, patrician forces confronting the crowd’s presence in victory culture, Whigs opposing the war, and radicals seeking political reform. This catholicity was maintained beyond the 1790s. The next decade saw naval symbolism become the vehicle for critiques of ‘Old Corruption’, the site of a discourse over the body and masculinity, and a consistent feature of Westminster politics in the age of radicalism. These usages sustained naval patriotism, developing it to the point where it could be powerfully present even in the absence of dramatic naval actions. In this sense, the continuing contestation of naval patriotism after Trafalgar testifies to the integral place it had claimed in Britain’s wartime political culture. Given, then, that naval symbolism occupied a place in late Georgian Britain’s political culture, what wider conclusions obtain? The finding is significant in several respects. There are implications for our understanding of loyalism, Whiggery, and radicalism. Each has been revealed to have a more complex relationship to patriotic expression than previously believed. Loyalism—too often viewed as a static and homogeneous discourse—was responsive to cultural pressures and concerned about the ¹ Margarette Lincoln’s Representing the Royal Navy: British Sea Power, 1750–1815 (Aldershot, 2002); Behrman, Victorian Myths of the Sea.

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patriotic fervour it sometimes licensed. Whigs actively resisted being pushed to the patriotic sidelines, and constantly challenged loyalism in victory culture. The role that naval patriotism played in the development of Westminster radicalism needs to be acknowledged. Cochrane synthesized the restorative radical agenda with the extant oppositional critique of victory culture and wielded them more effectively than anyone had done in the 1790s. Naval symbols were highly actionable within the late Georgian political firmament. The fact of their continuous contestation by all parties is this study’s broadest conclusion, and the one with the widest relevance. For almost a hundred years, historians locating their studies in the late Georgian period have been inclined to consider the absence of revolution in Britain. Explanations encompassing the strength of British institutions, the overall ‘cohesion’ of the British social structure, the comparative weakness of revolutionary movements, the enduring constitutional tradition within radicalism, and sundry other political, social, and religious factors have been suggested.² Supplementary to these, the viability of Britain’s political culture may have played a role. As James Epstein has pointed out, ‘Textual and ritual meanings are produced within fields to which individuals and groups have unequal access based on prior conditions of power and authority. From this it follows that “shared” meanings—rituals, symbols, texts, ideologies that have dominant force within particular historical moments—often constitute the symbolic capital over which the most intense struggles occur.’³ The history of the navy considered as a political symbol illustrates this. In this sense it resembled the place occupied in British political culture by another potent rhetorical symbol of the period—the constitution.⁴ Both were contested—and the fact that political debate could be contained within them arguably lessened the impulse towards wholesale revolution. Political and symbolic language accommodated and permitted oppositional and reformative discourse. This conferred a legitimacy that made new languages and new symbols unnecessary. Does this mean the contestation of the navy within Britain’s political culture exhibited tendencies towards the consolidation of national ² For a summary of this literature, see Royle, Revolutionary Britannia, 1–12. ³ James Epstein, ‘From ritual practice to cultural text’, in id. (ed.), In Practice: Studies in the Language and Culture of Popular Politics in Modern Britain (Stanford, Calif., 2003), 85. ⁴ For which see Epstein, Radical Expression, 3–28.

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identity? Twenty-two years of contestation augmented its importance within political culture, but this did not mean that it resolved in a stable manner. Did patriotic identity ultimately enable political citizenship? Not entirely, in part because, as this study has emphasized, patriotic subjectivities, modulated as they were by social rank and partisan politics, were very contingently offered. Accepting a political culture’s ability to accommodate dissenting politics is different from ascribing overwhelming explanatory power to an overarching sense of national identity. When, during wartime, national identity is contested to the vigour and degree revealed in this study for the case of the navy, any sense that it constituted a coherent and politically actionable force must be undermined. As has been shown, patriotic struggles belie the notions of social harmony and political consensus frequently associated with the twin concepts of national unity and national identity. Understanding that contestation continuously conferred legitimacy on political symbols does not require that we accept them as primary mechanisms of social cohesion. What then to make of the rising chorus of historians who point to the contested nature of patriotism in the period?⁵ This study joins with them to qualify the implications of a body of scholarship that emphasizes the process of national identity formation in late eighteenth-century Britain. In spite of some necessary caveats, this literature tended to polarize oppositional activity to patriotic behaviour. In Colley’s words, political activism and patriotic activity expressed as ‘support for the state’ was arguably more common ‘than opposition to the men who governed it’.⁶ This study confirms that both oppositional and loyalist groups occupied patriotic space, to a degree that has not been sufficiently recognized. In a sense, this finding bolsters, rather than denies, aspects of Colley’s overall argument. When the post-war reform movement cast its calls for the franchise in the symbolic language of patriotism they were not simply acknowledging that they adhered to an overarching sense of Britishness, a loosely held national identity.⁷ They were contesting the very nature and significance of that identity. And, in so doing, they were articulating a continuity in radical and oppositional expression that existed throughout the French Wars. Moreover, patriotic symbols like the navy were ⁵ Cunningham, ‘The language of patriotism’; Taylor, ‘John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England c.1712–1929’; Harling, ‘Leigh Hunt’s Examiner and the language of patriotism’; id., ‘The Duke of York affair (1809)’. ⁶ Colley, Britons, 372. ⁷ See ibid., 334–50.

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advanced and contested for a far more complex set of reasons than has been usually allowed. It was not only the social utility of appearing a ‘patriot’, or the delimited and contingent awareness of Britishness that resulted in patriotic expression. The entering of patriotic spatialities and the assumption of patriotic identities was closely linked to wider political and social challenges. But if patriotic expression, as I have argued in the case of the navy, meant more than a simple posture of national defence, and more than ascription to a loose notion of ‘Britishness’, the sense in which it could have operated as a socially cohesive force for late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society is thrown into question. The process of national identity formation laid out in Britons operated on the implicit understanding that patriotic participation was an opportunity almost universally offered, and frequently taken up. ‘Patriotism—in the sense of a British identification with British independence against the foreign forces that threatened it—transcended the divisions between the social classes.’⁸ But where Colley finds community, fraternity, the local celebration of national identity, plebeian acquiescence and middle-class activism, this study has uncovered circumscription, resistance, contests for cultural authority, and even outright hostility. In so doing, it has expanded upon her awareness of the class tensions within patriotic culture.⁹ A fundamental feature of the patriotic public sphere has to be its contingency, a contingency that was certainly eroding throughout the period, but the source of conflict nonetheless. Those who chose to enter the patriotic public sphere in this period were best advised to be well versed in its conventions. This applied equally to pseudo-laureates and plebeian poets, ‘political-dramatists’, volunteer corps, victorious tars, heroic admirals, and politicians of all stripes. The dynamics of the patriotic public sphere explored here suggest that the collective and harmonious national identity that Colley identified was perhaps only present in two senses: first, as the self-validating loyalist construction of their lived experience, and secondly, as the distant dream of those who hoped to ‘reform’ victory culture. For the victory culture of the period 1793–1815 cannot be said to have decisively endorsed a patriotism that validated the direction of state consolidation. As this study has shown, it is now no longer possible to ⁸ Colley, Britons, 319. ⁹ These were most strongly expressed in Colley, ‘Whose Nation?’

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accept the view that victory celebrations in particular, and patriotic culture more generally, resolved in clearly imperial and statist directions. This activity was significantly more complex. While the victory celebrations of the period have been identified as an effective device for ‘promoting loyalty and support for the war’, the evidence from this study is that their political resolution was significantly obviated by wider class tensions.¹⁰ Patriotic culture was as much about struggle over the meaning of the nation, the navy, and direction of the war, as it was about the straightforward celebration of British supremacy. The controversies and tensions of projects like the Naval Pillar, Nelson’s funeral, the Grand Jubilee, and the struggles in the urban space of victory celebrations and City ceremonial, collectively argue against any notion that patriotic activity articulated fundamentally coherent meanings for contemporary Britons. That they were unable to do so was because both elite and plebeian groups, at various times, sought to maintain the boundaries of the patriotic public sphere and to invest their patriotism with exclusivity. Although these boundaries varied depending upon the cultural form they took, they were consistently firm throughout the period. This discovery suggests that studies of patriotic culture and behaviour that have assumed the unproblematic percolation of stable meanings throughout the social strata may be significantly optimistic and overdetermined. Did the market processes of consumption and social emulation effectively transmit dominant meanings to the bottom of the social order? The evidence here suggests otherwise. Contemporaries were distinctly aware of the delimited nature of the patriotic public sphere, and their experience of its value and utility were informed by that recognition. State formation and indoctrination in norms of British citizenship was not necessarily the goal of many of these efforts, nor was it necessarily their result. Patriotic endeavour and the politics of the patriotic public sphere in the period were consistently subjected to class and partisan tensions. Participation in the patriotic public sphere did not serve as a wholly harmonizing or cohesive social force. The struggles and tensions discernible on the factory floor were equally, if perhaps more insidiously, present on the city streets, periodical forms, poetic genres, and parade grounds that constituted the patriotic public sphere. ¹⁰ Morris, The British Monarchy and the French Revolution, 150. See also Macleod, A War of Ideas, 185.

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As the work of a number of historians has reminded us, a variety of potent patriotic signifiers circulated throughout victory culture.¹¹ In drawing attention to the place of the navy in these affairs this study has not sought to elevate the importance of naval symbols above any others. Although the navy was but one of many patriotic symbols whose possession was contested, it did perform a unique role in the patriotic culture of the period. Of greatest importance was that the navy was able to stand— perhaps more powerfully than its rivals—as a metaphor for the British nation. The existence of the powerful plebeian sign, ‘Jack Tar’, was of great advantage here. It is important to remember that ‘Jack Tar’ was not an exclusively naval figure, but a stereotype applied generally to all British mariners. This reflected the reality of naval recruitment, in which mariners moved back and forth between the merchant service and the king’s service as the exigencies of war demanded. Both in reality and in symbol, tars were citizen-sailors. As such, they were able to represent a wider range of national and popular aspirations than was the case with many other signs and stereotypes of the patriotic public sphere. The volunteers have been seen as British versions of the republican citizensoldier.¹² However, so much uncertainty, novelty, and social tension surrounded the volunteers (who, after all, were relative late-comers to patriotic culture) that they were prevented from functioning as effective patriotic signs. British tars, however, were capable of capturing a range of associations. Their socio-economic identities were distinctly liminal, moving as they did between the free labour market of the merchant service and the appropriation of their labour by the state. And in political terms, as has been amply demonstrated, their identities were understood as being no less contingent. In offering this explanation for what was powerfully unique about the navy as a patriotic symbol, it is this class dimension that suggests itself as the most compelling means of differentiation. While a number of other explanations do present themselves, and were not entirely without significance, ultimately none of them can account for the dynamics and processes this study has revealed. The intrinsic importance of a navy to an island nation, an existing historical record of British naval success, the relative encumbrances faced by the army, and the broad rhetorical appeal ¹¹ Colley, ‘Apotheosis’, and Britons, 195–236; Morris, The British Monarchy and the French Revolution; Taylor, ‘John Bull and the iconography of public opinion in England c.1712–1929’. ¹² Colley, Britons, 283–363.

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of national defence patriotism clearly assisted. It was the navy’s ability to articulate patrician–plebeian tensions that explains its relevance for partisan politics. Without the images of ‘Jack Tar’ or the heroic admiral it would not have been able to perform the role it did in the political culture. This, ultimately, made the navy different from other national signs. Although it is perilous to draw any firm comparisons in the absence of an independent study of the cultural politics of the British army in this period, is seems clear that, even when the army experienced great success, the scale and meaning of its cultural commemoration differed from that of the navy. A look at army patriotism would certainly reveal partisan inflections and tensions in victory culture. These are immediately observable in the oppositional celebration of Sir John Moore in 1809, and the victory celebrations for Salamanca and Vittoria.¹³ It would be interesting, though, to see whether popular political tensions manifested themselves in the symbolic celebration of the army. When, from 1808, the army finally entered victory culture, aristocratic elements were in the foreground.¹⁴ Wellington, the figure credited for those victories, was an unapologetically elitist figure very publicly allied to a particular political faction. Historians recognize that the politics of the army during the period of the Duke of York affair were firmly placed in a discourse of patriotic restoration, national renovation, and reform.¹⁵ If the experience of naval and heroic symbolism at Westminster during the same period is any indication, such associations might only have been expected to foster, rather than diminish, the active contestation of martial symbols and signs. However, the historian who has looked at British martial spectacle in the period is impressed with the distinctly conservative ideologies that were articulated and effected.¹⁶ Army spectacle rehabilitated the army’s contemporary reputation. More importantly, it transmitted distinctly authoritarian and hierarchical values to the British people, ultimately serving as a sort of conservative vision of the ideal ¹³ For Moore, see Parliamentary Debates 15: 1–11, 38–105, and Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon (New Haven, 1996), 77; on Salamanca, Star, 19 Aug. 1812; on Vittoria, Star, 9 July 1813. ¹⁴ See Simon Bainbridge’s account of the war poetry of the Peninsular campaign in British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 148–89; and of Waterloo in, Napoleon and English Romanticism (Cambridge, 1995), 153–60. ¹⁵ Spence, The Birth of Romantic Radicalism; Harling, ‘The Duke of York affair’. ¹⁶ Myerly, British Military Spectacle, 150–65.

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social order. It was politically resisted (in part, because of its success), but the army itself does not appear to have been contested in ways similar to the navy. If this was the prevailing social image projected by the army, it certainly differs from that of the navy, and the difference can be located in its ability to encompass plebeian agency. Contemporaries seem to have found it resistant to the expression of popular politics and—as a result—less capable of useful partisan renderings. This finding is additionally significant for discussions of national identity as they have recently played out in British historiography. These studies have paid significant attention to ethnicity. Employing broad concepts of ‘otherness’ they have largely explored British national identity with comparative attention to perceptions of Frenchness, or the tensions of three-kingdom identity.¹⁷ Surprisingly, this examination of naval symbols has turned up comparatively little interest or attention to these issues on the part of contemporaries. Rather, what this study has revealed is the sense in which struggles and contests over identity and citizenship within British political culture, struggles and contests articulated over discernibly partisan and plebeian–elite divides, were privileged in a great deal of the contemporary involvement in the patriotic public sphere. This finding is significant, particularly when considered alongside studies that have underlined the persistence of localism in Britain at this time.¹⁸ If local identities mitigated those of region and ethnicity, this arguably elevates the importance of symbolic imaginings of national community in the period. The discovery of the importance that domestic political and partisan struggles played in the articulation of the naval components of national identity has further significance for another existing tendency in studies of eighteenth-century British national identity, those concerning the ¹⁷ Colley, Britons; Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism; Laurence Brockliss and David Eastwood, A Union of Multiple Identities: The British Isles, c.1750–c.1850 (Manchester, 1997); Murray Pittock, Inventing and Resisting Britain: Cultural Identities in Britain and Ireland, 1685–1789 (London, 1997); Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 1999); Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge, 2003). ¹⁸ Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1–15; David Eastwood, Government and Community in the English Provinces 1700–1870 (New York, 1997). See also Conway, teasing out the interplay of national and local identities in an earlier conflict, The British Isles and the American War of Independence, 166–202.

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conclusions that have been drawn from investigations of images of heroic masculinity. Work by Kathleen Wilson on Admiral Vernon and, more recently, on Captain Cook, has served to underline the importance of empire in understanding the political and cultural significance of British heroes. Indeed, Wilson’s work more generally sees the empire as the engine driving national identity and the politicization of the middling classes in this period. Vernon’s contemporary popularity was overtly political. He was an imperial, oppositional, and naval hero whose popularity articulated the importance of imperial economic and antiWalpolean anti-corruptionist politics in urban provincial culture.¹⁹ Similarly, the contemporary celebrity of Captain Cook was interpreted for English audiences as validating their cultural superiority, and served to present imperial expansion and adventure as a necessary national project.²⁰ Interestingly, these imperial contexts were muted in the vectors of patriotic heroism explored in this study. This underlines the strong degree to which the heroes of the wars of 1793–1815 had their meaning constructed in terms that privileged domestic political contexts. Wilson has seen Cook as a ‘new kind of national hero’, one who, in contradistinction to the ‘militaristic and sanguinary’ heroes of the earlier eighteenth century, articulated an ‘alternative masculinity’ and heroism representing humanitarianism, sensibility, as well as personal courage.²¹ The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars witnessed the return of this aggressively heroic masculinity. It was evident in the political posture of political admiralship and in the stereotypes that circulated around the persons of the British tars. Certainly these heroes exhibited aspects of gentlemanly cultivation, and religiosity, but this was clearly a long way from the philanthropic dimensions of Cook’s character. And, as the civilizing project of the Naval Chronicle reminds us, there was a strong sense in which this normative naval masculinity was held to be perhaps too rough-hewn. Perhaps of greater significance is the degree to which oppositional and radical groups found this prevailing heroic model irresistibly appealing. The political postures of Tooke, Burdett, Cochrane, and the efforts to construct Richard Parker and Robert Faulknor as heroes, collectively augur for an interpretation of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ¹⁹ Wilson, The Sense of the People, 137–205. ²⁰ Wilson, ‘The island race’, in Claydon and McBride, Protestantism and National Identity, 265–90. ²¹ Ibid. 272.

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political culture which recognizes that, in order to position oneself as a representative of the people, a fundamentally heroic identity needed to be assumed. The manner in which a range of groups across the political spectrum attempted to deploy heroic masculinity to their own benefit underlines that there was far more at issue here than straightforward concerns of patriotic emulation. The cult of the hero in this period has been seen primarily in terms of creating a service ethic for elite Britons.²² The percolation of heroic identity throughout political culture more generally, though, shows that the contemporary cult of the hero involved more than the promotion of state service. As we have seen, the celebrity of individual heroes was less straightforward than has been suggested. Rather than being universally swallowed as models for emulation, heroic careers could be read in a range of ways. Naval careers—and the navy itself—could become effective symbols of the prospect of national decline. It was this fact that helped sustain them after Trafalgar. As the contemporary affect for Nelson most powerfully demonstrates, the process of constructing heroes was manifestly complex. Moreover, Nelson’s image articulated some apparent paradoxes. It served to mediate a series of concerns about the tensions dividing and threatening wartime society. Recent work by Michael Lieven reveals a similar dynamic at play in a late imperial episode in British hero-making, and it may well be the case that the greatest cultural resonance is, in fact, reserved for heroes whose images contain intrinsic contradictions, that contest as they celebrate.²³ This throws into question another tendency in many writings on national identity. That is, the sense in which their characterizations and representations of heroic images and symbols are often presented as clearly defined, apparently stable binaries to which ‘others’ are easily opposed. This is not to say that polarities are not visible in the cultural politics of the period. Indeed, this study underscores the sense in which Britain’s post-1789 political discourse was characterized by strong tendencies towards hagiography and demonology. If in examining the manner in which naval symbols, heroes, and stereotypes were contested in this period, a discernible middle ground has seemed to dissolve away, this is attributable to the discursive polarity of the day. In a finding that ²² Colley, Britons, 177–93. ²³ Michael Lieven, ‘Heroism, heroics, and the making of heroes: The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879’, Albion, 30 (1998), 421.

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conforms to Dror Wahrman’s recent arguments concerning the signifier ‘middle class’ as an artefact of political discourse, it is salutary to note that it was only with the debates over accessibility to the Grand Jubilee that the identity and interests of a ‘middle-class’ actually entered into a debate over the nature of the patriotic public sphere.²⁴ In its emphasis on the diachronic manner in which loyalism and radicalism contested the meaning of the navy in the period 1793–1815, the findings presented here prefigure those Jonathan Fulcher has made for the immediate post-1815 period, and point to a continuity in British political culture generally in the long eighteenth century.²⁵ Fulcher has closely examined contests between loyalists and radicals over the categories of the constitution, the people, and the monarchy. Collectively this work suggests that the exploration of the dynamic between loyalist and radical discourse throughout the period ought to be the subject of greater attention than it has been until now—and that, quite possibly, it deserves to find its place in the narrative of British political culture before the reform bill. In the end, it has to be observed that the internal complexities of British political culture during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when pro-war, anti-war, republican, radical, loyalist, liberal, cosmopolitan, and chauvinistic agendas overlapped and reconfigured themselves in a range of unanticipated ways, worked to prevent any easy process of heromaking, and any simple experience of patriotic culture. ²⁴ Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c.1780–1840 (Cambridge, 1995); id., ‘ “Virtual representation”: parliamentary reporting and the language of class in the 1790s’, Past and Present, 136 (1992), 86–113. ²⁵ Fulcher, ‘The Loyalist Response to the Queen Caroline Agitations’, 481–502; id., ‘The English people and their constitution after Waterloo: parliamentary reform, 1815–1817’, in Vernon (ed.), Re-reading the Constitution (Cambridge, 1996).

APPENDIX 1

Members of Parliament for Westminster, 1790–1818 (Naval Officers in boldface. Uncontested by-elections in italics.)

Date of Return 2 July 1790 13 June 1796 15 July 1802 13 February 1806 7 October 1806 19 November 1806 23 May 1807 8 October 1812 16 July 1814

Members (two) Charles James Fox Admiral Sir Samuel Hood, Bt. Baron Hood (Ireland) Charles James Fox Admiral Sir Allan Gardner, Bt. Baron Gardner (Ireland) Charles James Fox Admiral Sir Allan Gardner, Bt. Baron Gardner (Ireland) Charles James Fox (re-elected after appointment to office) Hugh Percy, Earl Percy (elected without opposition after the death of Fox) Commodore Sir Samuel Hood Richard Brinsley Sheridan Sir Francis Burdett, Bt. Captain Thomas Cochrane, Lord Cochrane Sir Francis Burdett, Bt. Captain Thomas Cochrane, Lord Cochrane Captain Thomas Cochrane, Lord Cochrane (re-elected after expulsion from the House)

Source : Thorne, The House of Commons, 266–7.

APPENDIX 2

Published Trafalgar poems 1. T RAFALGAR P OEMS N AMED IN ROBERT WATTS , B IBLIOTHECA B RITANNIA ; OR A G ENERAL I NDEX OF B RITISH AND F OREIGN L ITERATURE (L ONDON , 1824) Nelson; an Elegy (London, 1805). The Death of the Hero; Verses to the Memory of Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1805). Abbot, Charles. A Monody on the Death of Horatio Lord Nelson (Bedfordshire, 1805). Bellew, Robert. Trafalgar; a Rhapsody on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Bray, Edward Atkyns. Funeral ode on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Carlisle, 7th Earl. Verses on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Fitzgerald, William Thomas. Nelson’s Tomb; a Poem (London, 1805). Lawler, Dennis. The Tears of Britain; an Elegy on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Lowe, Richard. Verses on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Magness, William. Tribute to the Memory of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Marshall, Thomas. A Poem on the Death of Lord Nelson. With Hints for erecting a Monument to perpetuate his honoured Memory, and that of the Gallant Heroes who with him have fought, bled, and conquered in the cause of Britain (London, 1806). Myers, S. Nelson Triumphant; a Poem (London, 1806). Wills, William. A Poetical Essay on the Engagement of Trafalgar (London, 1805).

2. T RAFALGAR P OEMS M ENTIONED IN C ONTEMPORARY A DVERTISEMENTS Beresford, James. The Battle of Trafalgar; stanzas by the Rev. James Beresford, AM Fellow of Merton College Oxford. To which is added Nelson’s Last Victory; a song by a friend (London, 1805). Button, E. The Battle of Trafalgar, a grand lyrical tribute to the memory of the immortal Nelson. Written by Mr. E. Button and set to music by Augustus Voight (London, 1805).

304

Appendix 2 3. T RAFALGAR P OEMS IN E XISTING L IBRARY C OLLECTIONS (*I NDICATES C ONSULTED FOR T HIS S TUDY )

*Bentley, Elizabeth. An Ode on the Glorious Victory over the French and Spanish Fleets on the 21st of October, 1805, and the Death of Lord Nelson (Norwich, 1805). *Burnham, Richard. Elegy on the Death of Nelson (London, 1805). [Canning, George] Ulm and Trafalgar (London, 1806). *Clarke, William. Verses on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). *Crichton, Thomas. Verses to the Memory of Lord Nelson and in commemoration of the glorious victory obtained over the combined fleets of France and Spain, 21 Oct., 1805 (Paisley, 1805). *Daniel, George, and Edwin Bentley. Stanzas on Lord Nelson’s Death and Victory (London, 1806). *Drummond, Revd William Hamilton, The Battle of Trafalgar (Belfast, 1806). Eden, Sir F. M. Brontes: A Cento to the Memory of Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte (London, 1806). Halloran, Laurence Hynes. The Battle of Trafalgar: a Poem (London, 1806). *Hawke, Martin Bladder. Trafalgar; or Nelson’s Last Triumph (London, 1806). *I. On reading the account of the Victory’s sailing for England, with the captured flags of France and Spain and the body of Lord Nelson, after the victory gained by the British Fleet off Cape Trafalgar, the 21st of October, 1805 (London, 1805). *Montagu, Edward. The Citizen; a Hudibrastic Poem, in five Cantos. to which is added, Nelson’s Ghost, a Poem, in two parts (London, 1806). *The Progress of Glory, in the Life of Horatio Lord Nelson, of the Nile (Whitehaven, 1806). *Richards, George. Monody on Admiral Lord Nelson (Oxford, 1805). Roalf, Capt. Stephen. Heroic Poem on the late Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1806). Rota, P.R. A Loyal Poetic Effusion on the Death of Lord Viscount Nelson (London, 1805). *Sansom, T. True Greatness; or, tributary stanzas to the glorious memory of Lord Viscount Nelson, etc. (London, 1806). *Taylor, George. Elegy on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1805). *Thelwall, John. The Trident of Albion, An Epic Effusion; and an oration on the influence of Elocution on Martial Enthusiasm; with an Address to the Shade of Nelson: delivered at the Lyceum, Liverpool, on Occasion of the Late Glorious Naval Victory. (Liverpool, 1805). Tremenheere, William. Verses on the Victory of Trafalgar and Death and Funeral of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). Verses on the Death of Lord Nelson (London, 1806). *Victory in Tears; or, the Shade of Nelson. A Tribute to the memory of that immortal hero, etc. (London, 1805).

Bibliography 1. NEWSPAPERS, PERIODICALS Analytical Review Anti-Jacobin; or Weekly Examiner Bath Journal Bell’s Weekly Messenger British Critic Bury and Norwich Post Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register Courier Critical Review European Magazine Evening Mail Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal General Evening Post Gentleman’s Magazine Journals of the House of Commons Journals of the House of Lords Lloyd’s Evening Post London Chronicle London Packet Monthly Mirror Monthly Repository Monthly Review Morning Chronicle Morning Herald Morning Post Naval Chronicle Newcastle Advertiser and General Weekly Post Oracle Parliamentary Debates Parliamentary History Parliamentary Register Politics for the People St. James’s Chronicle Star

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Sun The Times True Briton 2. PRINTED PRIMARY WORKS: ARTICLES, BOOKS, LETTERS, BIOGRAPHIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES, PAMPHLETS, SERMONS, AND TRACTS Abbot, Charles. The Diary and Correspondence of Charles Abbot, Lord Colchester (London, 1861). Abbot, Charles, DD. A Sermon preached in the Parish Church of St. Mary Bedford, on Sunday, November the 10th, 1805, on the death of the late Lord Viscount Nelson (Bedford, 1805). Address to the Nation, by the Seamen of St. Helen’s (London, 1797). Archilochus, Jun. The Volunteer Laureate; or, Fall of Peter Pindar. Containing, Odes to Lord Howe, Mr. Pitt and the Swinish Multitude (New York, 1796 edn.). Aspinall, Arthur (ed.). The Later Correspondence of George III, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1962–8). Barrow, John. The Life of Richard Earl Howe, K. G. (London, 1838). The Battle of the Nile; a Descriptive poem, addressed as a Tributary Wreath to Nautic Bravery. By a Gentleman of Earl St. Vincent’s Fleet (London, 1799). The Battle of the Nile, A Dramatic Poem on the Model of the Greek Tragedy (London, 1799). Beatson, Robert. A Political Index to the Histories of Great Britain and Ireland; or, a complete register of the hereditary honours, public offices, and persons in office (London, 1806). Bell, John. Discourse on the Nature of Wounds (Edinburgh, 1795). Benson, Robert. Britain’s Glory; or, a trip to Portsmouth. A Musical Entertainment. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal in the Hay-market (London, 1794). The Blanche Frigate Nelson’s Garland of New Songs, containing 1. The Battle of Trafalgar, as sung in the Theatre, Newcastle. 2. Nelson’s victories. 3. The Blanche Frigate (Newcastle, 1810). Brichan, David. A sermon preached on the Fifth of December, 1805, appointed by Royal Authority a day of general thanksgiving (London, 1806). Bridgeman, G. Account of the Victory over the Dutch Fleet, obtained by Admiral Duncan, Oct. 11, 1797 (London, 1797). British Public Characters (London, 1799). Bromley, Robert Anthony. A Philosophical and Critical History of the Fine Arts, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, 2 vols. (London, 1793–5).

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National Maritime Museum, London Prints and Drawings Collection College of Arms, London MS: ‘Order of Merit’ (RR59B) MS: ‘Funeral of Viscount Nelson’ British Library, London Add. MS 38378 (Liverpool Papers) Add. MS 27850, 27838 (The Francis Place Papers)

Index Abbot, Charles 236, 243 Abercrombie, Lt-Gen. Sir Ralph 147 Ackermann, Rudolph 228 Ackers, Major 141 Addington, Henry ministry of 4, 222, 223 Alfred the Great 175–6, 241 Amiens, peace of 4, 163, 224 Analytical Review 21, 152, 154–5, 156–7 anecdotes of seamen and officers 56, 199, 200–3, 206–7, 215–16 annals of tarism 201, 210, 213 see also anecdotes of seamen and officers Anti-Jacobin 106–7 army 148 see also army patriotism army patriotism 3–4, 297–8 Arrived at Portsmouth 36, 50–4, 86 heroic death in 85 Arundell, Lord 154 Astley’s amphitheatre 55 Baker’s Company 130 Barham, Lord 268 Basque Roads illuminations for 267 vote of thanks for 267–8 Bastia 33 Bath 115, 183, 237 Bath, order of 267, 288–90 The Battle of the Nile (poem) 156 The Battle of Trafalgar (poem) 243–5 Bedford, duke of 32, 179, 236 Bell, John 204 Benson, Robert 36, 40, 47 Berry, Sir Edward 189–90 Birmingham 129 Blackheath 170 Blagdon, F. W. 278 Bonaparte, Napoleon 169, 191, 251 conversion to Islam 187 illuminations for the defeat of 279 rumoured defeat and death of 273 Boulogne 215

Bowyer, Admiral Sir George 211 Boydell, Alderman 129 Brentford Armed Association 131 Bridport 266 Bridport, Admiral Lord 90, 133, 162, 182 victory of (1795) 128, 166 Brighton 136 Bristol 135 Britain’s Brave Tars; or, All for St Paul’s (play) 120–1 Britain’s Glory; or, A Trip to Portsmouth (play) 36, 40, 46–50 Britannia Triumphant over the French Fleet (poem) 154–6 British Critic 21, 152, 153, 154–5, 156 Broke, Captain Philip 286 The Broken Gold (play) 238 Burdett, Sir Francis 249, 262, 268, 271, 272, 274, 299 candidate at Westminster (1807) 253, 260 chairing of 263–5 confinement in the Tower 248, 269 duel and convalescence 254, 256 re-elected for Westminster (1812) 273 supports Cochrane 275, 286 Burgess, Capt. 109 Burnet, Sir Robert 139 Bury and Norwich Post 235 Calder, Admiral Sir Richard 244 Calvi 190 Camperdown, battle of 109, 114, 167 anecdotes of 202, 203 anniversary of 149 illuminations for 115 wounded of 205 Camperdown: Eulogy on the Illustrious Admiral (poem) 117–18 Canning, George 106, 242 Capel, Capt. 126, 127, 130 Carey, William 239–40 Caroline, Queen 281 Cartwright, Major John 175–7, 242

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Chambers, Lt. 210 Charlotte, Princess 281 Charnock, John 159 Chatham, earl of 49, 52 Chiswick, fête at 136 Cintra, Convention of 272 The Citizen; a Hudibrastic Poem 238–9 Clare, earl of 130 Clarence, duke of see William Henry, Prince Clarke, James Stanier 198, 213 founds Naval Chronicle 159 sermons of 160, 191 views on literature 161–3 Cobb, James 37 Cobbett, William 1–2, 6, 11, 14, 17, 22, 252, 265 and Cochrane 262–3, 270, 271, 274 on Sir Samuel Hood 264 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register 15, 274, 265–6, 268 Cochrane, Admiral Thomas Lord 13, 278, 282, 288, 292, 299 arrival in Honiton (1806) 252 attends Collingwood’s funeral 273 awarded Order of Bath 267 at Basque Roads 267 campaign and election for Westminster (1807) 252–61 chairing of 263 expelled from Order of Bath 288–90 historians and 249–50 opposes thanks to Gambier 267–8 parliamentary career 248–9, 265–72 pillory and 274–6 re-elected for Westminster (1812) 273, (1814) 275 speech on naval pensions 269–70 trial for fraud 273–7 and Westminster Committee 251 Cochrane-Johnstone, Andrew 273–4 coffee-houses 19, 83, 127, 142, 143, 153, 204, 239 Coldstream Guards 139–40 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 162 Colley, Linda 8–10, 73, 193, 200, 209, 283 on Grand Jubilee in Hyde Park (1814) 277 on loyalism 184 on national identity 180, 293–4

Collingwood, Admiral Cuthbert 191, 272–3 Colpoys, Admiral 99 Combe, Harvey Christian 219, 220–1, 223 Congreve, Sir William 277 Cookson, J. E. 10 and national defence patriotism 180–1 Copenhagen, battle of 199, 222 illuminations and 222 Cornwallis, Admiral William 163 Cornwallis, marquis of 185 Craven, Lord 151 Critical Review 21 crimp riots (1794) 46–7 The Crimps; or The Death of Poor Howe (play) 46–7 crowds 246, 291 agency of 68 chairs Cochrane (1807) 263 at Nelson’s funeral 234 and Nile 140 patriotism and patriotic public sphere 23–4, 42, 46, 149 riot 46–7 at Serpentine naumachia 286 taking out the horses 121, 222, 223 at Westminster election (1796) 66 see also illuminations Cruikshank, Isaac 30 Cumberland, Richard 230 Davison, Alexander 169, 174 Deal 215, 226 The Death of Captain Faulknor; or British Heroism (play) 83–5 Dibdin, Charles 238 Dibdin, Thomas John 128, 177–8 Dighton, Thomas 157 Discourse on the Nature of Wounds 204 The Diversions of Purley 62 Dixon, James 220 Dixon, Samuel 124, 127, 128 Dover 170, 226 Duncan, Admiral Adam, (1st Viscount Duncan) 77, 117, 118, 121, 122, 133, 166, 169, 174, 195 anecdote of 207 proposed statue of 172 public image of 110–14 religiosity of 191

Index victory at Camperdown 109 vote of thanks to 109 Duncan, Capt. 139 Dundas, Henry (1st Viscount Melville) 31, 33, 49, 53, 81, 121, 179, 199, 234 impeachment of 234, 257, 271 Eaton, Daniel Isaac 17–19, 30 Eden, Sir Morton 127 Eglinton, earl of 134 Ellenborough, Lord 274–5 Elliot, John 253, 256, 259 Elsam, Richard 172 The Embarkation (play) 128, 203 England Preserved (play) 182 Epstein, James 292 Erskine, Thomas 150 European Magazine 152, 232, 239 Exeter 16 Fairburn, John 214, 228 Farington, Joseph 41 fashion, and patriotic display 137 Faulknor, Captain Robert 76–87, 109, 299 death of 79 monument for 81–2, 85 Finnerty, Peter 257 Fores, Samuel William 133, 228 Fox, Charles James 35, 69, 73, 82, 183 at anniversary dinners for the Westminster election 57, 149–50 candidate at Westminster (1796) 58–60 Franklin, Andrew 116–17, 128, 203 Frederick Augustus, Prince, duke of York 29, 248, 297 Freemantle, Capt. 210 Frend, William 242, 252 Fulcher, Jonathan 301 funerals Collingwood 273 Gardner 272 n. 100 Howe 272 n. 100 Nelson 227–36, 295 Pitt 237 Gambier, Admiral Lord 267 Gardner, Admiral Sir Alan 53, 73, 92, 113, 133, 261

327

candidate at Westminster 58–61, 64–9 declines to be chaired 71 funeral of 272 n. 100 Garter, King of Arms see Heard, Sir Isaac Garter, order of 51 gentleman leader 72–4, 255 Gentleman’s Magazine 20, 21, 185, 228, 237 George III 132, 213, 221 at naval review (1774) 48 at Naval Thanksgiving (1797) 119 visit to Portsmouth (1794) 47, 51 visit to the Nore (1797) 109 George, Prince of Wales 159 attends Grand Naval Review 282 illuminations for the wedding of 128 at Nelson’s funeral 227, 233, 235 as Prince Regent 277, 279, 280, 285 Gibraltar 203 Gillray, James 30, 133 Gilmartin, Kevin 28 Glasgow 134 ‘Glorious First of June’ (Howe’s victory) 22, 26, 48, 50, 58, 70, 77, 83, 99, 109, 117, 217, 291 described 27 domestic effect of 28 illuminations for 42–5 meaning of contested 59, 74–5 promotions for 50 The Glorious First of June (play) 17, 36–42, 43, 45, 49, 55 Gloucester 132 Gold, Joyce 159, 243 Grand Jubilee in Hyde Park (1814) 277–88, 295, 301 Green Park 281, 288 Greenwich Hospital 191, 205, 235 Grey, Lt. Gen Sir Charles 29, 82 grotesque, literary genre of 209–10 Guildhall 121, 132, 218, 220, 221, 239 Habermas, Jürgen 11 Halloran, Laurence Hynes 243–5 Hamilton, Captain Edward 220, 221 Hampstead 129, 131 Hampstead Heath 129 Hanoverian Succession 277 Hardy, Thomas 115 Harling, Philip 192

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‘Harmodius’ 152 Harrison, Mark 135 Harvey, Admiral Sir Eliab 266 Harvey, Capt. 207, 210 Hatfield 132 Heard, Sir Isaac 233, 235 ‘Hearts of Oak’ 70, 259 Helder expedition 127 illuminations for 128, 146–7, 170 naval docudrama of 128 Henry Addington 5 Hereford 130–1, 132 Hermione 220 heroic death 54, 79, 84–7, 99, 102–5, 176 Hieronauticon 175 Hildreth, W. 156–7 Honiton 248, 252, 262, 271 Hood, Captain Alexander 196 Hood, Admiral Sir Samuel (1st Viscount Hood) 58, 60, 65, 130, 159, 166, 182 action at Bastia 33 action at Toulon 33–4 vote of thanks to 31–5 Hood, Sir Samuel 259, 264, 266 Horace 163 Horse Guards, attack on officers of 140 Hotham, Admiral William 84, 166 victory of 77, 128, 190 votes of thanks to 78, 81 Howe Triumphant! or, the Glorious First of June (poem) 56–7 Howe, George 47–8 Howe, Admiral Richard, (1st Earl Howe) 26, 43, 51, 52, 74, 84, 110, 163, 165, 166, 169, 174 anecdote of 56 caricature of 17, 157 funeral of 272 n. 100 negotiates end to mutiny 97–8 proposed statue of 172 public image of 29–30, 54–8 vote of thanks to 31–3, 53 Hunt, Henry 252, 274 Hunt, Sir Vere 130 Hyde Park 280, 283, 286, 288 illuminations 144, 149, 176 for Basque Roads 267

for Bridport’s victory (1795) 128 for Camperdown 115 for defeat of Bonaparte 279 for ‘Glorious First of June’ 42–5 for Helder expedition 128, 146–8, 170 for Hotham’s victory 128 loyalist views on 143–5 for marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales 128 for the Nile 127–8, 134, 135, 139–40 for St Vincent 110 n. 106, 128 for Seringapatam 146, 147–8 suppressed for Copenhagen 222 for Trafalgar 225–6 violence at 134, 139–40, 146, 225–6 for visit of the allied sovereigns 279 for Westminster election (1796) 72 impressment 37–40 India 202 Irish rebellion (1798) 141 Irwin, Eyles 153–4 ‘Jack Tar’ 50, 68, 75, 89, 105, 175 anecdotes of 201, 203, 208, 215–16, 231–2 image of 91–6, 107–9, 296 Jacobins 41, 42, 57, 68, 91, 95, 96, 106, 118, 182, 205, 221 Jennings, Joseph Clayton 257 ‘John Bull’ 133 Johnson, Samuel 14 Jordan, Gerald 150 Jordan, Mrs. 137 Kent 131–2 Keppel, Admiral Augustus, (1st Viscount Keppel) 6, 166 King, Admiral Sir Richard 207 King, William 154–6 knight banneret 110 ‘Knights of the Nile’ 130 Knott, Sarah 86 Knowles, Admiral Sir Charles 165, 166 Knox, Revd Vicesimus 19 Kosciusko, General 218 Langham, Sir William 131 Lauderdale, earl of 32 Lieven, Michael 300

Index literary culture of the ‘field of Mars’ 14–22, 20, 50, 52, 118, 126, 142, 153–7, 159, 161–2, 165, 171, 189, 228, 239, 240–1, 243–4, 273, 290 Liverpool 240 Liverpool, earl of 261 Lloyd, Christopher 249 Lloyd’s coffee-house 127, 204 Lloyd’s Evening Post 153, 194 Locker, Capt. William 191 London 20, 25, 42, 43, 106, 135, 139–40, 142, 146, 170, 175, 222, 230 crimp riots in 46–7 volunteers of 142 London, bishop of see Pretyman, George A. London Gazette 44, 77, 148, 154, 164, 190 Howe’s for the Glorious First of June 52 and literary culture 14–21, 157 Nelson’s for the Nile 127, 148, 149, 157, 186–7, 188–9 Nelson’s for Tenerife 212 satirised 232, 239, 285 Trafalgar 226 London, City of 141, 147–8, 218, 219, 238–9, 248 Londonderry 130, 134 Lord Mayor’s Day (1797) 121 (1798) 132 (1800) 221–2 (1801) 223 Lorentz, Gerald 90 Love and Honour; or, Britannia in Full Glory at Spithead (play) 39–40 Lowe, Capt. 140 Loyal Hampstead Volunteers 129 loyalism 8, 11, 46, 49, 60, 75, 105, 107, 127, 167, 168, 224, 238, 239, 244, 245, 248, 266, 271, 273, 274, 275, 217, 218, 301 on aristocratic government 195 and candidacy of Admiral Gardner 67–9, 71–4 and Chiswick fête 136 and City of London 221–2, 223 J. E. Cookson on 181 and The Death of Captain Faulknor 83–5 and Duncan’s image 111–12

329 and the ‘Glorious First of June’ 48, 55, 56–8 and The Glorious First of June (play) 37, 38, 41 on Grand Jubilee 278, 287 historians on 28, 184 illuminations, views on 143–5 language of 270 and Lord Mayor’s Day (1800) 222 and mutinies (of 1797) 88, 99, 106 and naval patriotism 291–2 and Naval Pillar 179–80 and Naval Thanksgiving (1797) 119, 121–3 and Nelson’s funeral 233–6 and Nelsonic poetry 242–3 and battle of the Nile 125, 149–52 and Serpentine naumachia 284, 286 and spectacle 148 and Trafalgar 224 and victory culture 114, 118, 231, 278–9 Richard Warner on 183–4 and wounding 265

Main, Thomas 200–2, 208 Malta 272 Manchester 141 Mansfield, Lord 35 Mansion House 147, 221 Marine Society 235 Markham, Admiral 266 Marylebone 42 masculinity 73, 75, 76, 168, 206, 246, 253, 291, 299 Mavor, William 123 McArthur, John 159, 166, 198, 213 McCalman, Iain 255 McNeil, David 209 Medicina Nautica 107 Military and Naval Knighthood, order of 51 Milton, John 163 Minto, Lord 187 Mitchell, Admiral 146 Moira, earl of 29 Molloy, Capt. 83 Montagu, Edward 238–9 Monthly Mirror 21, 152, 194 Monthly Review 21

330

Index

monuments for Capt. Burgess 109 William Carey on 239–40 for Capt. Faulknor 81–2, 85 and national identity 168 Naval Pillar 168–80 for Pitt 179, 237 Pompey’s Pillar 169 Moore, Admiral Sir John 166 Moore, General Sir John 297 More, Hannah 49 Morning Chronicle 32, 44, 45, 51, 64, 103, 104, 110, 111, 112, 114, 119, 121, 142, 144, 146, 194, 199, 202, 279, 281, 282 Gazette satires in 285 Morning Herald 94–5, 170–1 Morning Post 17, 89, 92, 93–4, 96, 151, 194, 219 on Cochrane’s re-election (1814) 276 Mulgrave, Lord 273 mutiny of the Hermione 220 mutinies (of 1797) 76, 88–99 historians on 88 resolution of 97 Sheridan and 41, 259 Naples 219 Nash, John 277, 280 national defence patriotism 180–1, 224, 240, 243 national identity 1–2, 6–10, 35, 76, 108, 209, 279, 285 Colley on 180, 293–4 and ethnicity 298 and monuments 168 and Nelson’s upbringing 187–8 and wounded seamen and soldiers 204 naumachia, on the Serpentine 280, 283–8 Naval and Military Order of Merit 233, 234 Naval Chronicle 126, 159–68, 181, 232, 246, 250, 299 audience of 161–2 biographical sketch of Nelson 191, 196, 198 biographical sketches in 163–8 contents of 160

founded 159 letter on naval officer MPs in 271–2 and naval celebrity 165–7 naval docudrama 22, 74, 85, 120, 128 of the ‘Glorious First of June’ 35–54 see also theatricals naval patriotism 2–3, 5, 6, 33, 40, 42, 58, 59–60, 51, 69–70, 77, 176, 185, 243, 246, 258–60, 273, 278, 287, 291–2 Naval Pillar 126, 168–80, 181, 295 The Naval Pillar (play) 177–8 Naval Thanksgiving (1797) 77, 118–23, 191, 217 Naval Victory; or, the Triumph of Lord Nelson (play) 231 navy promotions and merit in 51–3, 81–2, 109, 196 symbol or image 76, 196, 296–7 see also mutinies (of 1797); naval patriotism Nelson, Admiral Lord (1st Viscount) 13, 21, 124, 133, 149, 166, 174, 218, 264, 300 biographical sketch of in Naval Chronicle 196 body and wounds of 197–200, 211–18, 246; see also wounding at Calvi 190 City and domestic politics 218–24 Cobbett on 14 created baron 193–4 death of 224 Dighton’s portrait of 157 false news of a victory by 16 funeral car of 228, 233 funeral of 227–36, 295 his Gazette of the Nile 157–8 impersonated 136 and Lord Mayor’s Day 221–2, 223 loss of arm at Tenerife 212–13 lying in state of 229, 232 merit and public image 192–7 Naples 219 popularity after the Nile 218 presented to George III 213 proposed statue of 172 public image of 185–218 religiosity and public image 186–92 self-advertisement of 190–1

Index speech on Amiens 224 at theatre with his father 197 visit to Salisbury 216–17 vote of thanks for Nile 150 and Westminster election handbill (1807) 258 Nelson, Revd Edmund 185–6, 188, 197 Nelson’s Ghost (poem) 238–9 newspaper press 77 on mutinies (of 1797) 88–97 on Richard Parker 99–104 Nile, battle of 16, 127, 129, 132, 133, 181, 218 anniversary of 277 effect on patriotism 125 illuminations for 127–8, 134, 135, 139–40 news of reaches London 124, 126–7 and support for war 150 Whig and loyalist views of 149–52 The Niliad; an Epic Poem (poem) 156–7 Nilus; an Elegy on the Victory gained by Admiral Nelson over the French Fleet (poem) 153 Nore mutiny at 88, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99 visit of George III to 109 Norfolk 195, 236 Norfolk, duke of 132, 179 Northamptonshire 131 Northesk, Admiral, the earl of 248 Norwich 137 Nye, Robert 206 An Ode to Lord Nelson on his Conquest in Egypt 152 O’Gorman, Frank 67 O’Keefe, John 120–1 old corruption 192, 195, 236, 291 Onslow, Admiral 121 Oracle 15, 16, 30, 56, 61, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 72, 95–6, 108, 112, 179, 199 account of Nelson’s Guildhall speech 222 account of Nelson’s visit to theatre 197 on battle of the Nile 151 poem The Naval Pillar in 174 orders of knighthood Bath 267, 288–90 Garter 51 Military and Naval Knighthood 51

331

Naval and Military Order of Merit 233, 234 Orme, Edward 87, 197, 278 Paine, Tom 62, 57 Palmerston, Viscount 198 Parker, Admiral Sir Peter 188, 234 Parker, Capt. 210 Parker, Richard 77, 99–104, 106, 299 Pasley, Admiral Sir Thomas 211 patriotic culture 75, 77, 88, 168, 270 see also victory culture Patriotic Fund 116, 181, 204, 217 patriotic public sphere 14, 35, 42, 53, 139, 168, 169, 171, 178, 180, 181, 188, 210, 224, 238, 245–6, 243, 273–6, 278, 280, 281, 287, 288, 290, 298, 296 boundaries of 125–6, 184, 242 class and partisan tensions in 295–6 contingent nature of 294 crowd and 42, 46 defined 11 and the ‘middle class’ 301 reform of 240–2 vulgarization of 142–6, 148 patriotism see national defence patriotism, naval patriotism, radical patriotism Paull, James 253–6 passim Pearce, William 36, 50, 53–4, 86, 85 Pellew, Sir Edward 15–16 Philp, Mark 28 pillory 274–6 Pitt, William (the Younger) 49, 58, 60, 111, 121, 122, 132, 183, 185, 199, 234 funeral of 237 and the ‘Glorious First of June’ 28 ministry of 74, 77, 193–4, 222, 236, 239 offers Garter to Howe 51 proposed monument to 179, 237 Place, Francis 251, 261, 262, 263 Plymouth 53, 226, 252 mutiny at 88, 98 Pocock, Sir George 196 poems and poetry 21, 174 on Camperdown 117–18 on Howe 56–7 on Nelson and the Nile 152–7 on Nelson and Trafalgar 198, 238–9, 240–5

332

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Pole, William Wellesley 270 Polish patriots 218 political admiral 72–4, 75, 171, 266, 299 Cochrane as 252, 270–1 Gardner as 64–6, 72 Westminster 72, 250, 260–1 Pompey’s Pillar 169 Pope, Alexander 14, 163 popular constitutionalism 70, 175–6, 265 popular radicalism 30, 59, 60, 99, 109, 223, 248–54, 256–7, 269, 270, 272, 279, 287, 301 and Cartwright’s Trident 175–6 and Grand Jubilee 284–5 and naval patriotism 291–2 Porter, Robert Kew 20 Portland, duke of 35 ministry of 253, 257 Portland, isle of 170 Portsdown Hill 170 Portsmouth 43, 48, 51, 52, 83, 97, 170, 171, 188, 282 The Progress of Glory, in the Life of Horatio Lord Nelson, of the Nile (poem) 198, 242–3 Pretyman, George A. 122–3 Pye, Henry James 41, 47 radical patriotism 59, 275 radicalism, see popular radicalism; restorative radicalism radicals see popular radicalism restorative radicalism 241, 252, 268 Revolution, French (1789) 5, 7, 51, 114 Revolution, (of 1688) 70 Riga 199 Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem) 162 Roberts, James 36, 43–6 Robinson, Morris 35 Rogers, Nicholas 6 Romney, Lord 131–2, 178 Rosebery, Lord 115 Rule Britannia (play) 36, 55 Russell, Gillian 37, 230, 233, 278, 287 Sadler’s Wells 55 St Bartholomew’s Fair 144 St George’s Volunteers 140 St James’s Chronicle 28, 89, 91, 92, 96, 101, 142, 144, 199

St James’s Park 127, 170, 280, 288 St Margaret’s Westminster 141 St Mary-le-Bone Military Association 130 St Paul’s 109, 120, 141, 169, 228, 235, 272, 279 monuments and 85 Naval Thanksgiving at (1797) 121, 122 vergers of 236, 238 St Vincent, Admiral Sir John Jervis (1st Earl of St Vincent) 80, 96, 110, 166, 169, 174, 212, 223, 257, 260, 266, 273 anecdote of 207 Cochrane on 256 popularity of his victory 110 n. 106 proposed statue of 172 St Vincent, battle of 109, 190, 201 illuminations for 110 n. 106, 128 Salamanca, battle of 297 Salisbury, marquis of 132 Saumarez, Admiral Sir James 172 Saunders, Henry Martin 47–8 Seddon, Major 141 Seringapatam illuminations for 146, 147–8 sermons 160 see also thanksgiving sermons Serpentine 283 Sheerness 98, 102, 106 Shepton Mallet 134 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 35, 36–42, 74, 256, 263 candidate at Westminster (1807) 253–4, 259–60 and crimp riots 47 on impressment 38 on mutinies (of 1797) 41, 259 on naval patriotism 259–60 on vote of thanks to Hood 34 The Siege of Acre (painting) 20 Smith, Charlotte 163 Smith, General 81–2 Smith, Olivia 62 Smith, Sir Sidney 172 Somerset 134 Sotheby, William 156 Spencer, earl of 130, 132, 166, 167, 194, 242 Spithead mutiny at 88, 89, 90, 91, 97, 98

Index Staines, Sir William 221, 223 Star 91, 104, 205, 286 The Statesman 268 Stevens, George Alexander 48 Stock Exchange Fraud see Cochrane, Admiral Thomas Lord; trial for fraud. Strachan, Admiral Sir Richard 248, 226 Styles, John 236 Sun 225, 276 Gazette satires in 285 Subscription Committee for the Relief of Wounded Seamen (later, the Patriotic Fund) 115, 130, 211 see also Patriotic Fund Sydney, Lord 32 Taylor, George Watson 182 Tenerife 198, 199, 212 thanksgiving sermons 236, 279 at Naval Thanksgiving (1797) 118, 122–3, 191 for Nile 133, 141–2, 187, 205 for Trafalgar 183–5 theatricals of Camperdown 116–17 The Death of Captain Faulknor 83–5 of the ‘Glorious First of June’ 35–55 of the Helder expedition 128 of Naval Thanksgiving (1797) 120–1 of the Nile 128 and patriotic culture 22–44 of Trafalgar 230–2, 238 see also naval docudrama Thelwall, John 61, 240–2, 243, 252 Thomas, Donald 249 Thompson, Capt. Edward 163 Thompson, E.P. 261–2, 249 Thorn, Romaine Joseph 56 Tierney, George 283–4 The Times 42, 51, 100, 167, 225, 226, 229, 278, 280 Tipu Sultan 127 Tooke, John Horne 66, 73, 104, 134, 241, 259, 299 candidate at Westminster (1796) 58–64 ideas on language 62–4 on naval patriotism 69–70 Totnes Volunteer Corps 141

333

Toulon 29, 33–4 Towcester 205 Tower Hamlets Militia 122 Tower Wharf 124 Trafalgar day, proposed 233 Trafalgar, battle of 201, 224, 248, 291 anecdote of seaman at 215–16 illuminations for 225–6 seamen celebrate 226–7 The Trident 175–7 The Trident of Albion (poem) 240–2, 243 Trinity Company 130 The Trip to Portsmouth (play) 48 A Trip to the Nore (play) 116–17 Trollope, Capt. Henry 110 Trotter, Thomas 107 True Briton 90, 91, 92, 98, 95, 96, 100, 101, 188, 220 Berry’s account of the Nile in 189–90 fictitious account of a Whig dinner in 149–50 Turton, Sir Thomas 60 Vernon, Admiral 6 victory celebrations 42, 45, 129–37, 140–1, 146–8, 295 and Cartwright’s Trident 176–7 at the Grand Jubilee (1814) 277–88 for the Nile 127 for Trafalgar 225–7 see also illuminations victory culture 14, 23, 42, 54, 109, 110, 114, 118, 122, 125, 144, 145, 165, 184, 190, 231, 237, 239, 268, 288, 291, 294–5, 296, 297 intensification of 128–9 reform of 176–7, 278–9 satirised 178 see also patriotic culture Victory in Tears; or, the Shade of Nelson (poem) 242 Victory, crew of 227, 232–3, 235, 236 Vittoria, battle of 297 voluntary contribution 181–2 volunteer movement 144, 226 Colley on 9 victory celebrations and 129, 139–42 votes of thanks (parliamentary) 31, 270 to Duncan 109 to Gambier 267–8

334

Index

votes of thanks (parliamentary) (cont.) to Hood 31–5 to Hotham 78, 81 to Howe 31–3, 53 to Nelson for the Nile 150 Wahrman, Dror 301 Waithman, Robert 223 Walcheren expedition 269 Walker, W. B. 229 Walpole family 195 war poetry see poems and poetry Wardle, Col. 248 Wardour Castle 154 Warner, Revd Richard 183–5, 245 Warren, Admiral 130, 133, 137 Weeks, John 135 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley (1st Duke of Wellington) 147, 297 West India Docks 5 Westminster, borough of 25, 248, 250 volunteer corps of 142 Westminster Abbey 54, 85, 169, 237, 288 Westminster Committee 251, 256, 262 Westminster election (1796) 58–75, 92, 113 results 71 n. 54 (1807) 252–65 results 260 (1812) 261 (1814) 261, 275 and Grand Jubilee 286 Whig Club 218

Whigs 44, 69, 99, 109, 111, 254, 269, 279, 287 and Grand Jubilee (1814) 283–5 and monument to Faulknor 82–3 and naval patriotism 291–2 and Naval Pillar 179 and battle of the Nile 149–50 oppose thanks to Hood 34–5 oppose thanks to Hotham 78 oppose thanks to Howe 32–3 and patriotism 78 and Princess Charlotte 281–2 and thanks to Duncan 109 White, Joshua 236–7 Wight, Isle of 170 Wilkes, John 61 William Henry, Prince, duke of Clarence 137, 169, 233 Wilson, Kathleen 6, 299 Wimbledon 134 Windham, William 82 Worcester 130 wounding 246 and Cochrane’s speech on naval pensions 269–70 and national identity 204 of Nelson 197–200 of officers 203, 210–12 public concern about 205–6 of seamen 200–3, 208, 215–16 and Westminster elections 264–5 York, duke of see Frederick Augustus, Prince Yorkshire 132