Conscience and Allegiance

492 Pages·2016·3.27 MB·English

Conscience and Allegiance: An
Investigation into the Controversy
over Oaths of Allegiance and
Supremacy during the Reign of
William III and II, 1689-1702.

Ph.D. History, 2016.

Jeffrey Alexander John Chambers

University of Dublin, Trinity
College.

Declaration

I declare that this thesis has not been submitted as an exercise for a
degree at this or any other university and it is entirely my own work.
I agree to deposit this thesis in the University’s open access institutional
repository or allow the library to do so on my behalf, subject to Irish Copyright
Legislation and Trinity College Library conditions of use and
acknowledgement.

Jeffrey Alexander John Chambers

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Robert Armstrong, for his
great help, advice and support over the years. The Irish Research Council,
Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship funded my Ph.D. and I am
grateful for this blessing. I am thankful for the constant encouragement on this
journey from my mum, Liz, and brother, Richard. I would also like to thank all
those who have helped me on my journey over the years.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY AS A GUIDE IN THE INITIAL ALLEGIANCE
DEBATES FROM JANUARY 1689. 31
CHAPTER TWO: PASSIVE OBEDIENCE AND NON-RESISTANCE. 62
CHAPTER THREE: CONQUEST THEORIES, 1689-92. 99
CHAPTER FOUR: CONTRACTS, LIBERTIES AND ALLEGIANCE. 134
CHAPTER FIVE: TOLERATION, ESTABLISHED CHURCHES AND
ALLEGIANCE. 183
CHAPTER SIX: ALLEGIANCE AND PERCEPTIONS OF CATHOLIC
ALLEGIANCE. 228
CHAPTER SEVEN: RIGHTFUL AND LAWFUL: ALLEGIANCE TO DE JURE
MONARCHS. 260
CHAPTER EIGHT: PROVIDENTIAL THEORY IN THE LATE 1690S. 315
CHAPTER NINE: ABJURATION: DEFENDING THE ESTABLISHMENT. 348
CONCLUSION 389
APPENDICES 396
BIBLIOGRAPHY 413
Introduction

In the winter of 1688-9 King James II and VII fled Britain and was
replaced on the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland by his son-in-law
William of Orange and daughter Mary in events known as the Glorious
Revolution. Across the Three Kingdoms bitter public debates erupted over
whether subjects could take Oaths of Allegiance to the new monarchs despite
having sworn allegiance to James, who was alive and demanding allegiance as
the legitimate King. James Hamilton, Earl of Arran’s January 1689 speech to
Scottish nobles meeting in London highlighted this moral conundrum. Arran
hailed William’s rescuing the Kingdoms ‘from Popery’ but that did not allow
Arran to ‘Violate’ his ‘Duty’ to James; Arran said that he disliked James’s
‘Popery’ but had ‘sworn and do owe Allegiance’ to James’s ‘Person.’ James
was ‘the KING’ and it was his ‘Right’ to have subjects’ allegiance, making it
‘impossible for’ Arran to ‘sign away’ allegiance and offer it to William.1 In
Early Modern Europe Allegiance Oaths were the strongest bonds of loyalty to
monarchs. From local to national level these were prerequisites for obtaining
political, civil and frequently religious offices. Publicly swearing allegiance
bound subjects’ consciences to a ruler, allowing governments to claim popular
support and legitimacy. This was a big political and moral decision.2 Numerous
contemporary polemicists described allegiance as crucial to a government’s
viability and legitimacy; without allegiance there would be chaos. The trust
involved in swearing allegiance was ‘the Foundation of peace’ in a kingdom.3
Debates over paying William allegiance were crucial to the Revolution because
without allegiance William’s regime and the Revolution settlements would not
survive.

1 James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, A Short Speech Made by the Right Honourable the Earl of
2 John Spurr, ‘“The Strongest Bond of Conscience:” Oaths and the Limits of Tolerance in
Early Modern England,’ in Harold E. Braun & Edward Vallance (eds.) Contexts of Conscience
in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700 (London, 2004), pp.151-6; Alexandra Walsham, ‘Ordeals
of Conscience: Casuistry, Conformity and Confessional Identity in Post-Reformation
England,’ in Braun, Vallance (eds.) Contexts of Conscience, pp.34-48; Edward Vallance,
Revolutionary England and the National Covenant: State Oaths, Protestantism and the
Political Nation, 1533-1682 (Woodbridge, 2005), pp.17-22; Tim Harris, Revolution The Great
Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685-1720 (London, 2007), pp.16-20; Mark Goldie, ‘The
Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England,’ in Tim Harris (ed.) The
Politics of the Excluded, c.1500-1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp.153-85.
3 Pierre Allix, An Examination of the Scruples of those who Refuse to Take the Oath of
Allegiance (London, 1689), p.17; Gilbert Burnet, An Enquiry into the Present State of Affairs…
(London, 1689), pp.3-4; Sir Robert Howard, Historical Observations upon the Reigns of
Edward I, II, III, and Richard II… (London, 1689), p.43.
1
Allegiance Oaths symbolised political legitimacy and public approval
of a government. These Oaths as public declarations, and the various public
justifications of positions on allegiance, became, according to Steven Pincus
and Julian Hoppit, public interpretations of the Revolution.4 Given this
importance research on post-Revolution Allegiance debates in the Three
Kingdoms has been surprisingly limited. Mark Goldie’s ‘The Revolution of
1689 and the Structure of Political Argument’ is the most influential history of
England’s Allegiance Controversy and has been cited in numerous histories of
the Revolution or of oaths in general. Goldie examined English allegiance
pamphlets published between 1689 and 1694 and the frequency of the ideas
these polemics employed to either justify or reject allegiance to William as a de
facto King, a King in possession of the throne. This provided insights into
contemporary political thought, public expressions of opinions by the
politically involved, on the Revolution.5 Goldie and Howard Nenner have said
that the justifications of the Revolution and allegiance to William as de facto
King show the popular wariness of accepting the Revolution and its
implications.6 Gerald Straka and Charles Mullet also examined the Allegiance
Controversy and, like Goldie, considered this mainly in the terms of an English
Anglican phenomenon in the first years of William’s reign.7
Edward Vallance, David Martin Jones, J.P. Kenyon and Kevin Sharpe
also examined early-1690s English Allegiance debates as part of broad studies
into seventeenth-century loyalty oaths or to explain the changing post-
Revolution politics.8 However the distinctness of the post-Revolution

4 Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (London, 2009), pp.441-2; Julian Hoppit, A
Land of Liberty? England 1689-1727 (Oxford, 2000), pp.34-6.
5 Mark Goldie, ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument,’ Bulletin of
Research in the Humanities, 83 (1980), pp.473-520; Harris, Revolution, pp.358-9 Footnotes
114, 115; Pincus, 1688, pp.440-1 Footnote 11; Vallance, Revolutionary England, p.201
Footnote 2.
6 Mark Goldie, ‘The English System of Liberty,’ in Mark Goldie & Robert Walker (eds.) The
Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), pp.40-5; idem
‘The Revolution of 1689,’ pp.473-5; Howard Nenner, ‘The Later Stuart Age,’ in J.G.A. Pocock
(ed) with the assistance of Gordon J. Schochet & Lois G. Schowerer The Varieties of British
Political Thought, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 1993), pp.196-208.
7 Mark Goldie, ‘Edmund Bohun and Jus Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 1689-1693,’
Historical Journal, 20, No. 3 (Sep., 1977), pp.569-86; idem, ‘The English System of Liberty,’
pp.40-7; Gerald Straka, Anglican Reaction to the Revolution of 1688 (Madison, 1962); Charles
F. Mullet, ‘A Case of Allegiance: William Sherlock and the Revolution of 1688,’ Huntington
Library Quarterly, 10, No. 1 (Nov., 1946), pp.83-103; idem, ‘Religion, Politics, and Oaths in
the Glorious Revolution of 1688,’ The Review of Politics, 10, No. 4, (Oct., 1948), pp.462-74.
8 Vallance, Revolutionary England, pp.193-209; J.P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles The
Politics of Party 1689-1720 (Cambridge, 1990), passim; Kevin Sharpe, Rebranding Rule The
Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660-1714 (London, 2013), pp.322-9, 358-70; David
2
allegiance debates and the importance of the later-1690s allegiance debates to
the success of the Revolution are neglected. Only a few historians have
examined mid-1690s debates over allegiance to William as de jure, rightful
and lawful, King while Abjuration oaths are barely mentioned.9 This thesis
seeks to give the fullest account of allegiance debates in England, Scotland and
Ireland. It examines debates over allegiance to William as de facto and de jure
King along with the overlooked late-1690s rhetoric on allegiance, at Abjuration
oaths and at public views on allegiance by those outside the Anglican
Communion.
Tim Harris convincingly argues that late-Stuart period ideas on
allegiance should be considered and examined as part of a British, as opposed
to purely English, History of Political Thought. A History of British Political
Thought examines the political ideas and public discourse surrounding events,
like the Revolution, in the Three Kingdoms. Polemicists across the Kingdoms
used common ideas, albeit in circumstances unique to each Kingdom, to justify
allegiance.10 Existing research on post-Revolution allegiance debates in
Scotland and Ireland is even more limited than the historiography on the
English debates. The few histories of Irish political thought on the Revolution
focus mainly on Irish Anglican representations of the Revolution in the
subsequent years and decades. Most references to Irish Anglican allegiance
polemics refer to their citation of popular Providential or Conquest theories to
justify allegiance to William as de facto King. J.I. McGuire argues that because
Ireland was largely under Jacobite control until 1690-1 Irish Anglicans merely
adapted ‘well argued’ English allegiance polemics to Irish circumstances.11 S.J.
Connolly and others also argue that English arguments were adapted to Irish
circumstances but that Irish Anglicans were less restrained than English

Martin Jones, Conscience and Allegiance in Seventeenth-Century England: The Political
Significance of Oaths and Engagements (Rochester, 1999); H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and
Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977).
9 Pincus, 1688, pp.440-3, 446-7, 450-6, 463-70; Edward Vallance, ‘Loyal or Rebellious?
Protestant Associations in England 1584-1696,’ Seventeenth Century, 17, Issue 1 (2002),
pp.15-8; Sharpe, Rebranding Rule, pp.329-33, 347, 404-6, 457-8, 482-94; Geoffrey Holmes,
British Politics in the Age of Anne (London, 1967), pp.63-5, 87-90.
10 Tim Harris, ‘In Search of a British History of Political Thought,’ in David Armitage (ed.)
British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500-1800 (Cambridge, 2006),
pp.98-108; J.G.A. Pocock, Gordon Schochet & Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘The History of British
Political Thought: A Field and its Futures,’ in Armitage (ed.), British Political Thought in
History, Literature and Theory, pp.10-9.
11 J.I. McGuire, ‘The Church of Ireland and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688,’ in Art
Cosgrove & Donal McCartney (eds.) Studies in Irish History Presented to R. Dudley Edwards
(Dublin, 1979), pp.137-8.
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