Papists’ Horses and the Privy Council 1689–1720

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Anthony R. J. S. Adolph
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Dryden ◽  
Alexander Pope ◽  
Privy Council

Horses by Papists are not to be ridden,But sure the Muses horse was ne’er forbidden.For in no rate-book was it ever found,That Pegasus was valued at five pound.John DrydenThese lines, written at the end of the seventeenth century, were a wry comment on the ban on the ownership of horses valued at over five pounds which was imposed upon Catholics from 1689 by the Whig ministry of William and Mary and which remained in force, in theory, until the abolition of the penal laws in 1844. Like most of the penal laws its application had all but ceased by the middle of the eighteenth century but in the period under consideration the Privy Council made considerable efforts to ensure the enforcement of the ban. It did so sometimes through a genuine fear of Jacobite uprising and subversion, on other occasions to stir up a renewed paranoia about popery (and thus encourage loyalty from all Protestants) and always to try to weaken the resolve of Catholics to retain their faith. Alexander Pope tells the story of Thomas Gage of Shirburn who had his team of Flemish coach horses seized by the authorities in 1715. Visiting London, he became so jealous of the sight of other people’s coach horses passing by that he apostatised then and there and took the Oath of Abjuration.

Claiming the New World: Empire, Law, and Indigenous Rights in the Mohegan Case, 1704–1743

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Bryan Yirush
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
Privy Council

In 1773, with the empire on the brink of revolt, the Privy Council gave the final ruling in the case of the Mohegan Indians versus the colony of Connecticut. Thus ended what one eighteenth-century lawyer called “the greatest cause that ever was heard at the Council Board.” After a decades-long battle for their rights, involving several appeals to the Crown, three royal commissions, and the highest court in the empire, the Mohegans' case against Connecticut was dismissed. The dispute centered on a large tract of land (~20,000 acres) in southeastern Connecticut, which, the Mohegans claimed, the colony had reserved for them in the late seventeenth century. Concerned that the colony had violated its agreements, the Mohegans, aided by powerful colonists with a pecuniary interest in this tract of land, appealed to the Crown for redress. As a result of this appeal, what had been a narrow dispute over land became part of a larger conflict between the Crown, the colony, and the tribe over property and autonomy in the empire.

The Active Irish Peers in the Early Eighteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 52-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. G. James
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
High Court ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Irish Government ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Prestige

At the close of the seventeenth century the English House of Lords played an important role in government. It was the highest court in the kingdom as well as the upper house of the legislature; and, as A. S. Turberville observed, the Lords still considered themselves the “hereditary counsellors” of the crown. The prestige of the peerage was such that well into George I's reign most leading ministers were, or sought to become, peers. Although over twice as large as a century earlier, the English House of Lords retained its exclusive character with a total membership of only 165-169 lay peers plus twenty-six bishops. Furthermore, thanks to William III's bipartisan creations, the upper house remained more or less evenly balanced between Whig and Tory sympathizers so that it acted as a counterweight to party fluctuations in the Commons. In addition, a number of peers exerted extensive control over elections to the Commons.The Irish House of Lords between 1692 and 1727 did not constitute so influential a part of the Irish government, yet in most respects it resembled its English counterpart. It too served as a high court, with all members (as in England) joining the law lords in considering and rendering judicial decisions. As counsellors to the lord lieutenant (viceroy) Irish peers and bishops were, in fact, more active since they provided about half the membership of the Irish privy council. Unlike the English privy council, that in Ireland was a relatively small functioning body, meeting regularly with the lord lieutenant to review all proposed legislation.

Common Law Constitutionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Law System

This chapter shows how common law pleading, the use of common law vocabulary, and substantive common law rules lay at the foundation of every colony’s law by the middle of the eighteenth century. There is some explanation of how this common law system functioned in practice. The chapter then discusses why colonials looked upon the common law as a repository of liberty. It also discusses in detail the development of the legal profession individually in each of the thirteen colonies. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the role of legislation. It shows that, although legislation had played an important role in the development of law and legal institutions in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century Americans were suspicious of legislation, with the result that the output of pre-Revolutionary legislatures was minimal.

The Musical Topic of the Mass in B Minor

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Entire Spectrum ◽  
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

If there is a fundamental musical subject of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, a compositional problem the work explores, it is the tension between two styles cultivated in church music of Bach’s time. One style was modern and drew on up-to-date music such as the instrumental concerto and the opera aria. The other was old-fashioned and fundamentally vocal, borrowing and adapting the style of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, his sixteenth-century contemporaries, and his seventeenth-century imitators. The movements that make up Bach’s Mass can be read as exploring the entire spectrum of possibilities offered by these two styles (the modern and the antique), ranging from movements purely in one or the other to a dazzling variety of ways of combining the two. The work illustrates a fundamental opposition in early-eighteenth-century sacred music that Bach confronts and explores in the Mass.

Inventing the English Massacre

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
British Culture

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

The Nonconformist Inheritance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
The Many ◽  
John Owen

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.

Dissent and Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Burden
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Educational Activity ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Higher Educational Institutions ◽  
Legal Restrictions ◽  
Higher Educational ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Dissenting Academies

Much eighteenth-century Dissenting educational activity was built on an older tradition of Puritan endeavour. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the godly had seen education as an important tool in spreading their ideas but, in the aftermath of the Restoration, had found themselves increasingly excluded from universities and schools. Consequently, Dissenters began to develop their own higher educational institutions (in the shape of Dissenting academies) and also began to set up their own schools. While the enforcement of some of the legal restrictions that made it difficult for Dissenting institutions diminished across the eighteenth century, the restrictions did not disappear entirely. While there has been considerable focus on Dissenting academies and their contribution to debates about doctrinal orthodoxy, the impact of Dissenting schools was also considerable.

Bringing Rain and Protection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barend J. ter Haar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Supreme Deity ◽  
Do So

Deities were thought to help and protect people, heal them from illnesses, and sometimes also to punish them. And yet, a worshipper was not free to decide what to ask for, but had to work within a collectively created and transmitted paradigm of expectations of the deity. In Northern China, Lord Guan was often requested to provide rain, and everywhere he was asked to assist in the fight against demons and other types of outsiders (barbarians, rebels, or otherwise), or even appeared of his own accord to do so. From the early seventeenth century onwards, Guan Yu was seen as the incarnation of a dragon executed at the command of the Jade Emperor for bringing rain out of compassion to a local community sentenced to extinction by the supreme deity. Finally, his loyal image inspired his rise as a God of Wealth in the course of the eighteenth century.

Succession

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Hone
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Alexander Pope ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Anne Finch ◽  
William Iii ◽  
Samuel Pepys

This chapter introduces and explores the full spectrum of positions on the succession across a range of texts responding to the deaths of William III and James II. It demonstrates the collapse of earlier norms of royal mourning by unearthing how royal elegy—a sacrosanct genre in the seventeenth century—became a vehicle for opposition satire. Anne Finch, Alexander Pope, Samuel Pepys, and William Pittis were all involved in writing or circulating Jacobite libels in manuscript. Examining the scribal circulation of satires sheds new light on their political allegiances and networks. The chapter ends with a sustained contextual examination of Daniel Defoe’s poem The Mock Mourners.

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