Moderation, Toleration, and Revolution: William Penn’s Perswasive in Context

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore the relationship between moderation and toleration in early modern England by focusing on William Penn’s 1685 A Perswasive to Moderation. This work, published by Penn in support of James II’s campaign to implement toleration in England by royal decree, explicitly linked moderation and the campaign for liberty of conscience in which Penn had participated for nearly two decades, in both England and America. More broadly, I show how Penn’s Perswasive entered into an ongoing debate over the concept of moderation itself: during the 1680s, a number of authors explored the meanings and limits of moderation, tying it to contested debates in ecclesiastical affairs, civil and religious liberty, and ethical discourse. Yet the aspirations of James II to secure liberty of conscience for the realm’s dissenters failed spectacularly in the Revolution of 1688, and Penn suffered deep public embarrassment (along with significant legal jeopardy) due to his association with that effort. The article closes with some specific reflections on Penn’s Perswasive as well as more general comments on the importance of attending to the practical, historically contingent ways in which moderation discourses unfold.

KEYWORDS:

• Moderation
• toleration
• William Penn
• James II
• liberty of conscience
• George Villiers (Second Duke of Buckingham)

Acknowledgement

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2021 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, where I received helpful feedback from Alin Fumurescu. Thanks also go to the editors of this special issue as well as an external referee for The European Legacy, for additional comments and constructive criticism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Penn, Perswasive to Moderation, 234. All citations of this work are from the most recent and widely available scholarly version in William Penn: Political Writings, with parenthetical page numbers hereafter given in the text. The version reprinted there also includes pagination from the original edition. A brief note on terminology: I use “toleration” to refer to the political goals of the campaign against persecution of non-Anglicans in early modern England; and “liberty of conscience” to refer to the broader aspirations at the heart of that campaign. I recognize, too, that contemporary writers often used the terms more or less interchangeably, as can be seen in the full title of Penn’s first major publication on the topic: The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience Once more Briefly Debated & Defended…Which may serve the Place of a General Reply to such late Discourses, as have Opposed a Tolleration (1670) (Political Writings, 163).

^2. What follows is no substitute for a more detailed account of James’s reign, and Penn’s role in it. In addition to my William Penn, chap. 8, from which this section is adapted, and my Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration, chap. 6, see also Miller, James II; and Sowerby, Making Toleration.

^3. Penn to Thomas Lloyd, March 16, 1685, in Papers of William Penn, III: 32.

^4. For more details on these respective conversions, see Murphy, William Penn, chap. 3; Miller, James II, chap. 5.

^5. For a skeptical interpretation of James’s motives, see Pincus, 1688. The editors of Penn’s Papers claim that James “only really wanted toleration for Catholics” (III: 26). For a different perspective, see Murphy, Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration, chap. 6; and Sowerby, “William Penn and James II.”

^6. James, quoted in Miller, James II, 120. Left unspoken was the question of the king’s attitude toward the Church of England if its members ceased, in his opinion, to comport themselves as “good and loyal subjects.”

^7. The penal laws dated back to Elizabethan times, and were augmented by the Clarendon Code, passed early in the Restoration, as well as the Test Acts of 1673 and 1678.

^8. Penn to the President and Provincial Council, October 21, 1685, in Papers of William Penn, reel 5: 308.

^9. Tully, Forming American Politics, 33.

^10. Penn, “A History of My Life from 1684,” in Papers of William Penn, III: 342.

^11. Sowerby, “Of Different Complexions,” 41.

^12. Penn, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, in Political Writings.

^13. Whether or not James actually did intend to establish French-style absolutism, and whether it was even possible for him to accomplish that feat, remains intensely debated by scholars. For contrasting views, see Pincus, 1688; Sowerby, Making Toleration. On the broader backdrop of British anti-Catholicism, see Haefeli, ed., Against Popery.

^14. Penn to James Harrison, October 25, 1685, in Papers of William Penn, III: 65.

^15. George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, A Short Discourse.

^16. Ibid., 3, 4.

^17. Ibid., “To the Reader.”

^18. The Golden Meane, “To the Best Worthy Reader,” 23.

^19. Hunter, Loves Companion, 12.

^20. Tullie, Moderation Recommended, 4, 5. In Moderation Stated, John Evans also noted an Aristotelian sense of the term alongside its Scriptural senses (6).

^21. Tullie, Moderation Recommended, 12. Tullie began and ended with Pauline appeals (opening with Philippians 4:5, closing with Romans 14:3), and invoked the apostles’ example as paragons of moderation.

^22. Hunter, Loves Companion, Dedication, n.p.

^23. Tullie, Moderation Recommended, 4.

^24. Alsop, The Mischief of Impositions, 59.

^25. Evans, Moderation Stated, 5.

^26. Palmer, Popery and Hypocrisy Detected, 21, 22.

^27. The Way to Peace, 4.

^28. Bolde, A Plea for Moderation, 7; Evans, Moderation Stated, 52.

^29. Evans, Moderation Stated, 2.

^30. Ibid., 7.

^31. Ibid.

^32. Ibid., 12.

^33. Ibid., 16.

^34. Ibid., 18

^35. Ibid., 23–24, 31.

^36. Ibid., 38, 40, 41. According to such a definition of the term, Evans lamented, the notorious “Vicar of Bray” could be considered “the most moderate man that ever breathed” (41). The Vicar of Bray refers to a clergyman satirized in the eighteenth-century popular song of the same name, who changes his theological principles repeatedly in order to maintain his parish. More generally, the term denotes unprincipled individuals who prize preferment and advantage over fidelity to principle. The text and music are available widely online, and in The British Musical Miscellany, I: 30–31.

^37. Moderation a Vertue, Preface. This work is often attributed to John Owen, the great Nonconformist divine; but I find the attribution doubtful. I have also seen it attributed to John Tillotson, which is perhaps more plausible. Another candidate is James Owen, a Welsh nonconformist who penned a treatise with the same title, differing only in the spelling of “virtue” (Owen, Moderation a Virtue) in 1703; and yet another, Moderation Still a Virtue, a year later.

^38. L’Estrange, Remarks on the Growth and Progress of Non-conformity, 14, 37.

^39. Moderation a Vertue, 3, 27.

^40. Ibid., 2, 15.

^41. Moderate churchmen also encountered abuse and criticism from Dissenters, the author pointed out, who accused them of conforming to the Church of England purely for worldly advantage and who in doing so made those unable to conform appear factious (ibid., 45). On the Anglican approach as a via media, see Shagan, Rule of Moderation, chap. 2.

^42. The Church of England…Vindicated from the Calumnies of several Late Pamphlets (London, 1680), To the Reader, 30. That said, as Shagan has shown, “the via media was constituted through violence” (Rule of Moderation, 75).

^43. Moderation a Vertue, 33, 54.

^44. Ibid., 57, 52, 63.

^45. On these issues, see Southcombe, “Presbyterians in the Restoration.” None of these schemes were ultimately successful.

^46. A Plea for Moderation, or, A stricture, 7.

^47. I explore the role of adiaphora in these debates at greater length in my Conscience and Community, 49–50, 153–55, 220–22.

^48. Bolde, Plea for Moderation, 2, 9. Penn’s 1675 Englands Present Interest, Discover’d also appealed for magistrates to promote “general and practical religion” (reprinted in William Penn: Political Writings).

^49. Bolde, Plea for Moderation, 9, 7, 11.

^50. Ibid., 7, 18–19, 37–38, 28.

^51. Friendly Advice to Protestants, 26, also 46.

^52. Whitby, Protestant Reconciler, 10.

^53. Several Arguments for Concessions, 11, also 13.

^54. Stillingfleet, quoted in Alsop, The Mischief of Impositions, title page. Original citation in Stillingfleet, A Rational Account, 102.

^55. Ayres, Vox Clamantis, 2, 5–6. Penn’s 1679 Address to Protestants made similar arguments.

^56. The Church of England, 12.

^57. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation, 326.

^58. Montaño, Courting the Moderates, 13.

^59. Sirota, “The Occasional Conformity Controversy.”

^60. The version reprinted in the Cambridge volume of Penn’s Political Writings reprints the corrected third edition from 1686; the volume also includes the Preface to the first edition, which differs from subsequent Prefaces.

^61. This emphasis on inner conviction at the heart of religious exercise was nothing new: in his first major work on toleration, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, Penn had defined liberty of conscience as “the free and uninterrupted exercise of our consciences, in that way of worship, we are most clearly persuaded, God requires us to serve him in” (Political Writings, 166). It also bears a close resemblance to John Locke’s later phrase defining true religion as “the inward and full persuasion of the mind” (Letter Concerning Toleration, 26).

^62. Matthew 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26.

^63. This invocation of interest, and moderation as the balancing of interests, appeared in a number of important tolerationist works during the Restoration. See Wolseley, Liberty of Conscience; Bethel, in The Present Interest of England, called religious imposition “a mischief unto trade, transcending all others whatsoever” (13). See also Corbet, A Discourse of Toleration; and Owen, Indulgence and Toleration Considered, 17–19. More recently, Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests elaborated the ways in which early modern theorists expected increased trade and prosperity to bring about an improved political climate and a pacific social order. He focuses primarily on eighteenth-century thinkers (Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and John Millar), but the basics of such a doctrine were well on their way to elaboration during the Restoration.

^64. Penn’s use of balance here recurs throughout the Perswasive, and reflects broader trends in political discourse of the time, including specifically political tracts like Harrington’s Oceana and Sprigg’s Modest Plea. (I thank an anonymous referee for bringing Sprigg’s treatise to my attention.) Analyses of European politics emphasizing the notion of balance (often dealing with the fear of French tyranny over the continent) were numerous as well; see, for example, Discourses Upon the Modern Affairs of Europe. With regard to religious interests more specifically, the balancing metaphor is also longstanding, including Penn’s earlier England’s present interest discover’d (London, 1675, reprinted in Political Writings), and dating well back into the early seventeenth century: see Richard Smith’s The Prudential Balance of Religion (1609).

^65. The three church interests were Church of England, Protestant Dissenters, and Roman Catholics.

^66. I make this argument at greater length in Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration, esp. chap. 1.

^67. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation, 299, 302, 306, 308.

^68. Murphy, Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration, chap. 6.

^69. Sirota, “The Occasional Conformity Controversy.”

^70. Clor, On Moderation, 9.

^71. Craiutu, Faces of Moderation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew R. Murphy

Andrew R. Murphy is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. His scholarly interests focus on the intersection of religion and politics, the history of religious liberty, and the life and career of William Penn (1644–1718). He is the author, most recently, of William Penn: A Life (2019) and Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Political Thought of William Penn (2016); and co-editor of The Worlds of William Penn (2019). He is currently engaged in a project exploring the phenomenon of political martyrdom.