Abstract
‘What has religion to do with politics?’ The question was asked in a handbill posted in Nottingham in the run-up to the election of the first reformed House of Commons in December 1832. Signed only ‘a Protestant Dissenter,’ the handbill supplied the answer with yet another rhetorical question: ‘How can there be any sound politics without religion?’1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
E. Halévy, The Birth of Methodism in England [1906], (Bernard Semmel, trans.), (reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); idem, England in 1815 [1913] (E.I. Watkin and D.A. Barker, trans), (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), pp. 389–485, esp. p. 425.
J.C.D. Clark brought religion back to a central role in interpreting English history in the long eighteenth century which, due to the influence of the Church of England, lasted for Clark almost to the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, English Society 1688–1832: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Practice During the Ancien Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
B. Hilton identified evangelicalism as the driving force informing social and especially economic thought in England into the second half of the nineteenth century, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford: Clareon Press, 1988).
R. Brent also recognized the importance of religion in shaping ministerial policy during the whigs’ years in office in the 1830s, Liberal Anglican Politics: Whiggery, Religion, and Reform, 1830–1841 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
A number of local studies have examined the signifance of dissent at the local level, and may be found in the Bibliography; particularly relevant works are mentioned note 26, below. 4. M.R. Watts’s magisterial two-volume TheDissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979 [Vol. 1], 1995 [Vol. 2]) has done much to synthesize disparate existing monographic and local scholarship, and its over 200 pages of maps, figures and appendices indicate the regional prevalence of various denominations of dissent.
K.D.M. Snell and P. Ell, in their Rival Jerusalems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), have also assessed the comparative strengths and activities of dissent and the establishment, through the lens of their study of the 1851 census of religion. These studies should lay the groundwork to suggest other avenues for investigating the different denomitions in England and Wales. See notes 22 and 23, below, for an assessmt of two other recent works.
Older works include J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England from the Opening of the Long Parliament to 1850, vol. 8 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1901), which examines dissent as well as the Church of England
A. Lincoln, Some Political & Social Ideas of English Dissent, 1763–1800 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1938)
and R.G. Cowherd, The Politics of English Dissent (New York: New York University Press, 1956).
The expression is generally attributed to William E. Gladstone, although C.E. Freyer credits the historian Sir Richard Lodge (1855–1936) with virtually the same phrase: that is, dissent had proved the ‘backbone of the Whig party’ since 1688; Freyer, ‘The Numerical Decline of Dissent in England previous to the Industrial Revolution’ in The American Journal of Theology, 17 (1913): 233.
J. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 7.
H. McLeod has reviewed the relevant historiography in Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Britain: How Secular was the Working Class? (Bangor: Headstart History, 1993), esp. pp. 1–12.
Some of the works he considers are E.R. Wickham, Church and People in an Industrial City (London: Lutterworth Press, 1957)
K.S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1963)
J. Obelkovich, Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825–1875 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976)
A.D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England: Church, Chapel and Social Change, 1740–1914 (London: Longmans, 1976)
and S. Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis (London: Croom Helm, 1976).
E.J. Evans, The Great Reform Act of 1832 (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 3.
R. Antsey, ‘Religion and British slave Emancipation,’ in D. Eltis and J. Walvin (eds), The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), pp. 51–53.
Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, part I, 1829–1859 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 3–4, emphasis added.
T. Larsen, Friends of Religious Equality: Nonconformist Politics in Mid-Victorian England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), p. 3.
K.D. Wald, Crosses on the Ballot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 150, 157, 163–167, and passim.
For the whig or even radical inclination of dissent during much of the eighteenth century, see J.A. Phillips, mentioned in note 22, and idem, Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), esp. pp. 159–168 and 286–305.
J.E. Bradley questioned the strength of such a relationship, especially one involving ‘rank and file,’ rather than ‘elite,’ nonconformity, but nevertheless provided a through overview of previous scholarship linking dissent and whiggery, ‘Whigs and Nonconformists: “Slumbering Radicalism” in English Politics, 1739–89,’ in Eighteenth-Century Studies, 9, 1 (1975): 1–27. A dozen years later, Bradley had come to recognize that ‘Nonconformity was perhaps the most potent and predictable forces in the electorate,’ even in the early decades of the eighteenth century, and that ‘Dissenters were always a potential threat’ to Tory electoral interests, ‘Nonconformity and the Electorate in Eighteenth-entury England,’ in Parliamentary History, 6 (1987): 246, 250. See also idem, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown, and Public Opinion (Macon, Georgia: Mercer, 1986); idem, Religion, Revolu-ion, and English Radicalism: Nonconformity in Eighteenth-Century Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
R.W. Davis, Political Change and Continuity, 1760–1885: A Buckinghamshire Study (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972)
W.B. Maynard, ‘The Response of the Church of England to Economic and Demographic Change: The Arch-eaconry of Durham, 1800–1851,’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical Histoty, 42, 3 (1991): 437–462
R.J. Olney, Lincolnshire Politics, 1832–1885 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973)
and D.C. Moore, The Politics ofDeference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century English Political System (Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1994) all looked at poll books with an eye to denominational affiliation and political preferences.
T.J. Nossiter questioned outright the usefulness of poll books as historical evidence, especially when combined with evidence of electors’ denominational preference; Influence, Opinion, and Political Idioms in Reformed England: Case Studies from the North-east, 1832–74 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1975); see also idem, ‘Elections and Political Behavior in County Durham and Newcastle, 1832–74’ (PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1968. A. Everett, ‘Country, County and Town: Patterns of Regional Evolution in England,’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 29 (1979): 79–108
A.M. Urdank, Religion and Society in a Cotswold Vale: Nailsworth, Gloucesterire, 1780–1865 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), and others examined the connection between politics and religion, although without recourse to poll books. M.R. Watts, The Dissenters, vol. II is, of course, an exhaustive synthesis in virtually every respect, but politics, at least as meased by voting behavior, is not one of the author’s key points of focus. Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems provide some light on this point, too, but their specific studies are on Sunday schools, denominational influence on landownership, urbanization and secularization, and other matters.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2008 Richard D. Floyd
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Floyd, R.D. (2008). Introduction: The Politics of Dissent at the Time of the Great Reform Bill. In: Church, Chapel and Party. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590588_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230590588_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35761-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59058-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)