Increased human agency implied a diminished role for God in the world. This is not to say that Boyle, Hooke, Halley, and Newton were atheists; far from it. Newton, in particular, wrote commentaries on the Bible. But their embrace of rationality seemed to undermine the legitimacy of faith, while their portrayal of nature as unchanging and predictable suggested that the Supreme Being was not concerned at the fall of every sparrow. In the wake of the scientific revolution, many eighteenth-century Presbyterian clergymen rejected the mysteries of the Trinity and became Unitarians; some eighteenth-century Anglicans became Deists. Deists believed that the universe operated not as the moment-to-moment expression of God’s will exercised over every occurrence but, rather, according to the laws of nature, which He had established at the beginning of the world, set in motion, and allowed to run unvaryingly. God was a sort of celestial watchmaker; the world a vast mechanism. As humans figured out that mechanism, nature would be understood and, eventually, tamed.
Thus, we find reason even in eighteenth-century religion. Other Whig Anglicans became Latitudinarians. Not quite Deists, they nevertheless rejected the superstition of Roman Catholicism, the zealotry of Puritanism, and the rigid dogmatism of more conservative High Anglicans. For them Christianity was something that could be made rational, moderate, and accommodating to human and natural realities. It did not necessarily conflict with science. In fact, the new scientific discoveries were an argument for God’s existence in that they implied a rational Creator. Nor did Latitudinarian religion require great displays of emotion or encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture. Locke argued in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) that there was nothing in that belief system which contradicted reason. His self-proclaimed disciple John Toland (1670–1722) went further to assert, in Christianity not Mysterious (1696), that there was no need for suspension of reason in faith; that anything in the Bible which did not conform to human reason and scientific possibility was patently untrue. This infuriated High Church Anglicans, leading them to charge all Latitudinarians with heresy and infidelity. But the Latitudinarian philosophy fit beautifully with the eighteenth century’s optimism about human nature, its embrace of the Roman virtues of moderation and stoicism, and its rejection of the violent fanaticism of the seventeenth century. In particular, it complemented the aristocrat’s need to maintain dignity, self-composure, and aloofness from the emotions and enthusiasms to which ordinary mortals were prone.
The aristocratic desire for control went beyond the world of nature and the self to that of men and women as political and economic animals. Hence the rise of political economists who sought to discover the laws of the political and economic world as Boyle, Halley, and Newton had done for the natural world. Sir William Petty (1623–87), John Graunt (1620–74), and Gregory King compiled early population statistics, while Charles Davenant (1656–1714), Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), and the versatile Defoe sought to explain and exploit the wider economy. All believed that human behavior, especially political and economic behavior, could be explained naturally (therefore, scientifically), reduced to quantitative data, and predicted with mathematical certainty. These virtuosi seemed wildly ambitious to their critics: Swift, a defender of the ancients, satirized these “projectors” and their relentlessly mathematical understanding of human nature in Book 3 of Gulliver’s Travels and, even more bitingly, in A Modest Proposal (1729). But their confidence tells us a great deal about the mindset and social milieu of their times.
Finally, Augustan art embraced the rationality and confidence noted above. As we have seen, the period’s architecture was increasingly classical in inspiration, which meant mathematical symmetry, simplicity, and rationality. Its gardens, laid out by Wise and others, were also regular, proportioned, and geometrical, at least up to 1714. Its music evolved gradually from the heavily ornamented baroque of Purcell and Handel to a more streamlined classicism, although that transition would not take place until the mid-eighteenth century. The poetry of the age was also eminently classical and rational in its models, subject matter, and structure. Its great poets translated classical texts into Augustan English: Dryden translated Plutarch and Virgil; Pope, Homer. All wrote in traditional forms or modifications of traditional forms such as epic, mock epic, and, above all, verse satire. All wrote, for the most part, in the very strict form of rhymed heroic couplets in iambic pentameter. Take, for example, Pope’s Essay on Man (1732–4):
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused:
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
The effect of the poem, with its neatly trimmed lines, is not unlike that of a formal garden. But the author seems to be ambivalent about the human race’s advances, wary of reason’s limitations. He still agrees with the Great Chain in placing humankind between God and the beasts, but worries that, for all their powers of reason, they may incline more to the latter than the former. This uncertainty, combined with the new audiences that artists like Pope and Handel found to support themselves, implies that, despite their veneer of rationality and composure, all was not certain for the governing classes of Augustan England.
The Middling Sort and their Culture
Unlike the landed aristocracy, those whom Porter called “the swelling, prosperous middle ranks”17 were not yet conscious of themselves as a separate class, and so not unified in pursuit of common aims. Nevertheless, it could be argued that they were responsible for the most dynamic changes – and tensions – in English life between the Restoration and the first quarter of the eighteenth century. They were the government officials who ran the wars; the military and naval officers who executed them; the “monied men” who financed them; the merchants who created the wealth in trade which supported and grew by them; and the professional men who solved the disputes which arose out of the resulting new wealth. All benefited from the expansion in the English economy which they helped to engineer. Later in the eighteenth century, these groups would demand a greater say in how the country was run; but for now they were content to ape their betters and aspire to be their junior partners in that enterprise.
Of all these groups, the oldest were the merchants. According to Gregory King’s estimate for 1688, these numbered about 10,000 families of substantial merchants who only acted as middlemen; and about 110,000 families of manufacturers, artisans, and tradesmen who actually made their goods prior to selling them (see table 1).18 This group varied enormously in wealth. At the top were the great international merchants who invested in joint-stock companies or, increasingly, established family or partner-based firms sending out voyages on their own. They traded with North America and the West Indies for furs, tobacco, and sugar, in return for manufactured goods – and slaves. They traded with China and India for tea and cloth. They reexported these commodities, adding British wool (still over 70 percent of all exports), to Europe for grain; and to Russia for timber, furs, naval stores, and, of course, cash. Great merchants such as this could reap thousands of pounds a year. In Restoration London six aldermen were worth £100,000, while about 40 merchants had assets totalling around £30,000, rivaling the wealth of middling aristocrats and gentry, whom thei
r daughters might marry. Their sons might inherit the family business outright or be apprenticed to another great merchant house, possibly amassing enough wealth to purchase land and, perhaps, get out of trade. Middling domestic merchants, trading within the British Isles for grain from the south, coal or wool from the north, or cheese and butter from the west, earned less, perhaps £200–1,000 a year. These might be substantial men in their localities, well connected with urban oligarchies, but less so with the local gentry.
Turning to those who made the goods which merchants sold, at the top were manufacturers whose trade required large numbers of workers and so could not be done in a shop or at home. These included brewers, ironmasters, glassmakers, paper makers, sugar boilers, and some textile manufacturers. Such men were proto-industrialists, presiding over family firms whose operations required complicated equipment and substantial capital investment; employing platoons (if not yet small armies) of workers; and making hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pounds a year. As we have seen, their operations would grow larger, more complicated, and more lucrative during the eighteenth century, spurred in part by overseas trade, in part by war.
More numerous, but on the whole less wealthy, were artisans, craftsmen and service providers like inn- and tavern-keepers. They could make anywhere from £3 to £800 a year depending on their trade and location, but their income was most likely to fall into the £40–80 range. Artisans and craftsmen included, but were certainly not limited to, tailors, haberdashers, shoemakers, weavers and spinners in the cloth trade, blacksmiths, coopers (barrel makers), candle makers, wheelwrights, carpenters, turners and furniture makers, goldsmiths, silver workers, leather dyers and tanners, and booksellers. They worked or oversaw work in small shops which probably also doubled as their places of residence. Theirs would be a family business, but they might employ several apprentices or additional servants. Increasingly, their shops became showrooms, with finished goods in the front room, their fashioning taking place in back. For years, their trades had been regulated by guilds and, more recently, the Statute of Artificers of 1563. But by 1700 the power of the guilds and the effectiveness of the statute were both waning, especially in London. This meant more freedom for artisans and new manufacturers such as the French Huguenot silk weavers in Spitalfields, London. But it also meant less security, as there were fewer safeguards against cut-throat competition. Such businesses were, moreover, always subject to the hazards of fire, theft, debt, even laziness or incompetence on the part of their owners, though the new concept of insurance would soften the first of these. For all these reasons, it was more difficult for artisans and craftsmen to profit from the wealth flowing into eighteenth-century England.
A second longstanding contingent of the middling orders comprised the professions: salaried government officials, attorneys, military and naval officers, medical men, clergymen, and specialized private servants. According to King, the professional classes numbered about 55,000 families in 1688 (see table 1).19 None of these groups was really new during the Augustan period, but several, such as the government and military officers, expanded due to the demands of war. The number of civil attorneys, solicitors, notaries, and scriveners also increased because the new financial practices invented in this period lent themselves to new kinds of disputes, abuses, and frauds. All of these groups benefited to varying degrees from the economic health of later Stuart and early Hanoverian England.
Some professions were becoming more “professional” at the beginning of the eighteenth century, regulating their membership and maintaining standards by demanding a higher level of education and competence. One impetus for this was war. England’s future depended on the effectiveness of its financial administration and fighting forces. Thus, government Excise officers underwent a rigorous training. A Royal Naval College was established to train naval officers and strict examinations were set (from 1677) for candidates for the lieutenancy. Though most such officers still emerged from the younger sons of the nobility and gentry, promotion according to seniority and merit, as opposed to birth, became the norm in the 1690s. In contrast, the army, a traditional preserve of the aristocracy, remained much less of a meritocracy: throughout the eighteenth century commissions were purchased and commands determined by court patronage. Traditionally, both military and naval officers had inflated their £80–100 salaries by selling commissions; by contracting at advantageous rates for arms, uniforms, and food; and by seizing plunder. As standards tightened, these sources of income began to dry up, though shady opportunities still remained.
Among professionals, the lawyers and physicians did best. A successful barrister (criminal lawyer) might make £3,000–4,000 a year, an attorney £1,500. A prosperous country physician might bring in £500 a year. The average for both groups, however, was closer to £200 a year. In theory, legal professionals continued to be trained at the universities, followed, in the case of barristers, by instruction at the Inns of Court. Doctors were supposed to be trained at universities both at home and abroad and regulated by the Royal College of Physicians. In fact, by the end of the period, legal education at the Inns of Court and medical education at Oxford and Cambridge were fairly moribund. Increasingly, barristers learned their trade through informal apprenticeships with experienced members of the profession. The best medical training, embracing the scientific method, could be found in European universities, especially Leyden, and, from the 1720s, the medical school of the University of Edinburgh. This did not necessarily mean that eighteenth-century physicians became much more skillful at cure, but they better understood symptoms and hygiene. In any case, most people could not afford the services of physicians, who represented the medical elite. Apothecaries who dispensed drugs and surgeons who set bones and cut for stone were both more numerous and more reasonable in their fees. The former gained business from the availability of new pain-killing drugs from the East. Surgeons also made great strides in the century after 1660: having broken away from their association with barbers, they increasingly benefited from formal training and better instruments, which led to a rise in wealth and prestige.
The clergy also became more professionalized. Successive seventeenth-century purges, of Puritans under Laud, of Arminians under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, of Presbyterians and Independents under Charles II, and finally of nonjurors under William III had fractured and demoralized this group. But under the able leadership of Archbishops Sheldon (served 1663–77), Sancroft (1677–90), Tillotson (1691–4), and Tenison (1695–1715), the quality and esprit de corps of the clergy improved steadily: by 1680 nearly four-fifths of the 12,000 or so parish priests were university graduates. Nevertheless, this group experienced the widest variations in income and status of any profession in Augustan England. Most clergymen were poor: while some benefices yielded £100–150, nearly 42 percent paid less than £50 and 13 percent paid less than £20 according to a survey done in 1704. In the words of one commentator, “[t]here are a vast many poor wretches, whose benefices do not bring them in enough to buy them clothes.”20 High Church Tory parsons struggling to make ends meet came to resent Latitudinarian Whig bishops who were increasingly drawn from the younger sons of the peerage and who reaped anywhere from £300 to £7,000 a year from their episcopal estates. The fact that the Anglican clergy could marry offered some consolation, but it also put more pressure on their finances. As a result, despite reform efforts by Tenison and others, pluralism and absenteeism continued, not least because contemporaries still asked clergymen to do so much. The clergy were often the linchpins of their communities, not only ministering to souls, but also caring for the sick, educating the young, and looking after the poor. In 1704 Queen Anne made some attempt to rectify their own general poverty by donating back to them First Fruits and Tenths, an ancient tax that had been confiscated by Henry VIII. Despite Queen Anne’s Bounty, clerical incomes and workload would remain serious issues well into the nineteenth century and beyond.
Government officials also saw wide variations in income. Ign
oring the great offices suitable for peers, there were thousands of middling positions in the Household, Treasury, Customs, and Excise paying anywhere from £100 to £1,000 a year, plus perquisites like free meals and lodging, used or surplus provisions, etc. The existence of such perks tells us that professionalism came piecemeal and late to government service: the Excise apart, most appointment was through patronage; sale of office was only outlawed in 1702 (and probably continued under the table); tenure was virtually for life. Nevertheless, if Augustan government was hardly a model of modern bureaucratic probity, it was well ahead of its continental counterparts, as it proved in successive wars. Finally, one should include in the middling ranks of society the many private servants of the aristocracy who had some particular expertise: estate stewards, clerks, valets, and ladies’ maids. These, too, were professionals and might make a few hundred pounds a year for their services.
While the professions were expanding and rising in wealth, this does not mean that a professional career was open to just anyone. All, except service in a noble household, required a “stake,” that is, the money for university tuition or to purchase an office or an army commission. Moreover, one traditional path to a career, university education, was becoming less available to talented poor boys during this period, as scholarships heretofore reserved for them began to be monopolized by the sons of the elite and middling orders. In short, despite the new wealth flooding into the country, the middling sort, like the aristocracy, were in some ways less open to new blood than they had been a century earlier. As with their betters, this period saw the consolidation of merchant and professional dynasties. Successive generations of one family would join the family firm or pursue the same profession, often intermarrying into other mercantile or professional families in their circle. Still, this group remained open to movement within its ranks and, sometimes, to those above. The most common way for a middle-ranking family to rise was by the marriage of a wealthy merchant’s daughter to a member of the aristocracy. More unusually, the great East India merchant and financial adventurer Thomas “Diamond” Pitt (1653–1726) single-handedly founded a family fortune that bankrolled the political careers of two prime ministers.21
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