From English to British liberty, 1550–1800

Abstract

This essay was written for a symposium on Dutch conceptual history in a comparative European perspective. The concept in question here is liberty, and the context first English and then (following the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707) British. What follows primarily addresses two themes, both challenging. First, what role did the concept of liberty play over an exceptionally long and turbulent period of English history punctuated by two revolutions? Second, what relationship existed during this period between English and Dutch understandings and experience of this concept?

Keywords::

• liberty
• English
• Dutch
• British
• republic
• empire

Notes

^1. For a more conceptually rigorous discussion than is possible here see Scott, Commonwealth Principles. This also engages with the abundant and sophisticated associated historiography, including the work of John Pocock and Quentin Skinner.

^2.Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America” (March 1775), 115.

^3. Constitutional Society of Birmingham, October 1774, quoted in H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 206.

^4. Ibid., 140.

^5.Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 156.

^6.Hume, Political Essays, 1, 85–6.

^7.Boucher, A Letter From a Virginian to the Members of the Congress to be held at Philadelphia, 43.

^8. William Lee quoted by Marshall, “A Nation Defined by Empire, 1755–1776,” reprinted in Marshall, “A Free though Conquering People,” 222.

^9. Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) in Hampsher-Monk, Political Philosophy of Burke, 159.

^10.Grey, Debates in the House of Commons 1667–94, vol. 7, p. 400.

^11. The Petition of Right (1628) and “Pym's Speech at Manwaring's Impeachment, 4 June 1628,” in Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution 1603–1688, 15, 68–9.

^12.Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism, 291; Scott, Commonwealth Principles.

^13.Britain, Or A Chorographicall Description of the Most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the Ilands adjoining, out of the depth of Antiquitie … Written first in Latine by William Camden …Translated newly into English by Philemon Holland, 4. This passage (in a different translation) is discussed by Mayhew, Enlightenment Geography, 50 and n. 3.

^14. Camden, Britain, “The Author To The Reader,” 1.

^15. Ibid., 1.

^16. Ibid., 28.

^17. Ibid., 5, 6.

^18. Ibid., 11.

^19. Ibid., 11–12.

^20. Ibid., 16.

^21. Ibid., 88.

^22. Ibid., 87.

^23. Ibid., 107.

^24. Ibid., 20.

^25.Scott, The Belgicke Pismire, 91, 95.

^26.Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 78.

^27.Heylyn, A Briefe and Moderate Answer, to the Seditious and Scandalous Challenges of Henry Burton, ch. 2, pp. 14–15.

^28.Filmer, Patriarcha, 2.

^29.Hobbes, Leviathan, 150.

^30. Quoted in Wedgewood, The Trial of CharlesI, 191.

^31.Temple, Observations Upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, 78.

^32. Ibid., 227.

^33. Ibid., 182.

^34.Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 254–6.

^35.Oppenheim, History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Merchant Shipping in Relation to the Navy, 303.

^36.Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs … in the archives … of Venice, vol. 28, pp. 187–8.

^37. [Nedham], The Case Stated, 4.

^38. Ibid., 23.

^39. Ibid., 29.

^40. Ibid., 53.

^41.State Papers … of Venice, vol. 2, p. 239.

^42. , “Aristotelians, Monarchomachs and Republicans.”

^43. The two preceding paragraphs draw upon Scott, Commonwealth Principles, chs 6 and 14.

^44.Hume, “Essay Twenty-Seven: Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”

^45.Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 82–4, 135–8.

^46.Hammersley, “Camille Desmoulins's le Vieux Cordelier: a Link between English and French Republicanism.”

^47. Quoted in Dickinson, Liberty and Property, 199.

^48.Velema, “The Dutch Concept of Liberty from the Early Eighteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century”, Part 4, “Revolutionary Liberty: The Sovereignty of the People.”

^49.The Charters of London: The Second Part of London's Liberties in Chaines Discovered (18 December 1646), discussed in Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 157. The pamphlet is usually attributed to John Lilburne or John Wildman.

^50.Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 22. On English republican political economy see Scott, Commonwealth Principles, 90–8.

^51.Mercurius Politicus no. 52, 29 May–5 June 1651, 831.

^52.Sidney, Discources Concerning Government, 357–8.

^53. Spirit of the Laws Book 12, ch. 2 (“On the Liberty of the Citizen”), 188.

^54. Temple, Observations, 189–90.

^55.Hume, “Of Civil Liberty,” in Political Essays, 54.

^56.Haley, The British and the Dutch: Political and Cultural Relations through the Ages, 9.

^57.Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 141.

^58.Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 288.

^59.Falconer, Remarks on the Influence of Climate, Situation, Nature of Country …, 170–1.

^60. Ibid., 172.

^61.Scott, When the Waves ruled Britannia, chs 2, 8.

^62. Falconer, Remarks, 172–3.

^63.Dunbar, Essays on the History of Mankind, 271.

^64. Ibid., 261–2.

^65. Ibid., 287.

^66. Quoted by Trevor-Roper, “Introduction,” Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, p. Ixxxix.

^67. This was an analysis for which there was a rich classical source base, and which had also come to colour English republican thinking in the aftermath of Cromwell's Protectorate. Armitage, “John Milton: Poet against Empire”; Scott, Commonwealth Principles, ch. 10.

^68.Dunbar, Essays on the History of Mankind, 280.

^69. Ibid., 281.

^70. Ibid., 284.

^71. Ibid., 284.

^72. Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution,” 162.

^73.Milton, The History of Britain Book 3, vol. 6, p. 131.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Scott

Jonathan Scott is Professor of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His most recent book is When the Waves Ruled Britannia: Geography and Political Identities, 1500-1800, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011.