viii

Preface

development but also help to condition patterns of economic modernization.3 Yet, paradoxically, there is a recognition that associational
vitality cannot be taken for granted. Recent studies of the role of
voluntary organizations in contemporary Britain and America have
suggested a decline in public participation, with a consequent threat to
civil society at the end of the twentieth century.4
These approaches raise many issues: when and why do voluntary
societies emerge? What forms do they take? Who joins them and for
what reasons? Where are they located? What do they do? How stable
and effective are they? And what is their impact? For Britain (and the
United States) the historical evolution of clubs and societies, the
predominant species of modern voluntary association, and their
advent as a major social institution remains obscure, with many of
the key questions concerning their development only starting to be
explored. The nineteenth century has often been seen as the great age
of British societies, when their numbers multiplied and they made a
central contribution to public policy and community life.5 In fact, the
origins of the movement are considerably earlier. As we will nd in
this study, clubs and societies were not some kind of Darwinian
outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution, but the product of that
expansive period of English social and economic development from
the time of the English Revolution to the late eighteenth century. This
was a period of accelerating urbanization which also brought forth a
host of other innovationsfrom spas and seaside resorts to hobbies
and spectator sports, illuminated streets, window-shopping, and eventually steam-powered factories. The origin of clubs and societies is not
simply a point of historical genealogy. It is arguable that the special
pressures and conditions of the early modern period moulded the
distinctive character of British clubs and societies, and so their role in
modern society. Equally signicant, the Georgian period saw the
institution exported to other parts of the English-speaking world,
not least to its second home in North America. To answer the original
question: there is a good case for saying that we cannot understand
modern society without understanding the world of the modern
3
R. D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ,
1993).
4
Id., `Who Killed Civic America?', Prospect (Mar. 1996), 6672; B. Knight and P. Stokes,
The Decit in Civil Society in the United Kingdom (Birmingham, 1996).
5
e.g. R. J. Morris, `Clubs, Societies and Associations', in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The
Cambridge Social History of Britain, 17501950, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1990), 40543; see also
below, ch. 13

Preface

ix

voluntary association, and we cannot understand that without understanding its pre-industrial origins.
I came to the subject of this book from two directions: rst, from
my research on British towns, in which clubs and societies emerge
during the Augustan era as one of the key elements of that urban
cultural renaissance so brilliantly described by Peter Borsay; secondly,
and more directly, from my earlier study of public drinking houses,
where I discovered that after the Restoration inns, taverns, coffeehouses, and alehouses lodged an ever-increasing number and variety
of clubs and societies. Impressed by their diversity, their strange
names, and their inltration of urban society, I began hunting down
associations in archives and libraries, rst in England and later in
Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and North America. I attempted a brief,
preliminary survey of the rise of this social institution in my H. J.
Dyos Lecture Sociability and Urbanity: Clubs and Societies in the Eighteenth
Century City (Leicester, 1986). The importance of the subject seemed
increasingly evident. If a British Enlightenment did exist, then one of
its principal engines was the Georgian voluntary society. Fanning out
across the English-speaking world, clubs and societies may have
served as a vector for new ideas, new values, new kinds of social
alignment, and forms of national, regional, and local identity. By the
late eighteenth century there are indications of the emergence of
modern-style voluntary societies with stronger administrative structures and a detailed public agenda.
Attempting to track down and clarify these developments, however,
has posed many problems. One is the nature of the documentation,
voluminous in quantity but often poor in quality; this issue is discussed in more detail in Chapter 1. Another problem is that for any
systematic discussion of the rise of associations in early modern
Britain one needs to address not only the domestic history of the
institution, but also its interaction with a host of wider developments:
the growth of towns and cities, the rise of public sociability and
conspicuous consumption, the evolution of private and public space,
growing gender differentiation, and much else. To try to contain this
increasingly gargantuan topic, I decided to conclude the main analysis
at 1800, by which time, arguably, the singular importance and principal
features of British associational life had been established. Even with
this somewhat arbitrary chronological closure, however, it is obvious
that the investigation is limited and incomplete. More needs to be
done on mapping and quantifying the growth of voluntary associations, on carrying out regional and community surveys, on unravelling

Preface

the networks of membership, on assessing their social, political, and

cultural effects. Time for eld-trips and access to sources has determined that the book's coverage is better for England than for the rest
of the British Isles or beyond. Certainly there is no attempt here at an
associational encyclopaedia (nor, for that matter, a compilation of club
anecdotes, plenty of which are in print). Rather, the study endeavours
to construct a broad social and institutional framework for understanding the proliferation of metropolitan, provincial, and colonial
societies in the early modern period. In the process it may provide
a historical perspective for the contemporary debates on voluntarism
and civil society.
The book falls into four main parts. After the Introduction, which
looks at clubs and societies in a comparative context, the next three
chapters (24) are devoted to a chronological survey of the emergence, owering, and consolidation of voluntary associations in Stuart
and Hanoverian society. The second part (Chapters 57) examines the
broad supply-and-demand factors behind the growth of the institution, as well as the way societies recruited members and organized
their activities. Three case-studies (Chapters 810) investigate the
development of regional and ethnic societies, freemasons, and benet
societies, in order to shed more light on the specic structure and
performance of different kinds of British association. The last part of
the book considers, rst, their export overseas, and their varying
impact from Boston to Bombay, Charleston to Cape Town. A further
chapter evaluates their general effect on British society during the late
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while the Conclusion sketches
their subsequent evolution into the twentieth century.
Research for this book has been carried out in Britain during a decade
when governmental pressure on university resources and the escalating demands of academic bureaucracy have created ceaseless distractions from scholarly work. No other academic community in the
western world has suffered such perverse treatment. In this time of
adversity, it is particularly agreeable to give thanks to those who have
generously encouraged and supported the completion of this book.
For carrying out the research, the British Academy made several
grants which enabled me to visit archives and libraries here and in
the United States, and also to employ as a research assistant Daniel
Somogyi, whose invaluable work has been incorporated into the
chapters on freemasonry and benet societies. Other research visits
have been funded by the Twenty-Seven Foundation and by the

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

Soon after the accession of George II, in 1730, a small club of local
men sat drinking in the snug parlour of a Westminster alehouse,
gathered together to learn mathematics, so that `by their mutual
assistance and indefatigable industry they are now become masters
. . . of logarithmetical arithmetic and some of them greatly advanced
in algebra'. The society's aim, along with drinking and socializing, was
collective improvementfor it was `a fundamental rule of this society
not to conceal any new improvement from another member . . .';
before tackling mathematics they had taught themselves French. In
Scotland, at the small town of Culross on the north bank of the Forth,
the brethren of a bee-keeping club, a group of town tradesmen, met
every fortnight from the 1750s to hear discourses about bees and to
discuss the movement of their hives, their business leavened by a
quarterly dinner of sh and bread and butter. 1 About the same time,
on the other side of the Atlantic, at the port town of Annapolis, with
its elegant wooden houses by the dock, an expatriate Scotsman,
Alexander Hamilton, offered in his `History of the Ancient and
Honourable Tuesday Club' a delicious mock-heroic, politically satirical,
account of club meetings there, replete with the speeches, sallies,
scufes, songs, and ceremonies, as well as the wit and wisdom of
members, mostly gentlemen, merchants, and professional men. 2
These three assorted societies were just a tiny fraction of that complex
constellation of associations which enlightened the British social
rmament during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Already
in the 1720s John Macky could speak of London having `an innity of
clubs or societies for the improvement of learning and keeping up
good humour and mirth', while a decade later another writer
exclaimed `what numbers of these sociable assemblies are subsisting
in this metropolis! In the country not a town or village is without its
1

Fog's Weekly Journal, 2 May 1730; NLS, Acc. 7694.

R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club by Dr. Alexander
Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990); see also E. Breslaw (ed.), Records of the Tuesday Club of
Annapolis 174556 (Urbana, Ill., 1988).
2

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

club.'3 As we shall see, clubs and societies became one of the most
distinctive social and cultural institutions of Georgian Britain.
Precise numbers are impossible to calculate, but during the
eighteenth century there may have been up to 25,000 different clubs
and societies meeting in the English-speaking world. More signicant
is the great range of societies, reecting the extraordinary effervescence of activity in our period. A preliminary count would suggest
over 130 different types of society operating in the British Isles during
the eighteenth century. As well as improvement and social clubs like
those at Westminster, Culross, and Annapolis, the principal types
embraced: alumni associations (for schools, colleges, and universities);
artistic bodies (such as the Royal Academy of Arts); book, benet,
debating, and gambling clubs; horticulture societies, including orists'
feasts; literary societies; a plethora of masonic and pseudo-masonic
orders; medical and musical societies; neighbourhood clubs; philanthropic, political, professional, and prosecution societies; regional and
ethnic societies; sporting clubs; and scientic and learned societies,
together with a bewildering array of other more or less obscure
organizations. Among these, we hear in 1748, were the Itinerants,
the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the Purple Society, Lumber Troop,
Hungarian Volunteers, Rewlands, Catch'embytes, Porcuses, Blacks,
Columbarians, Birthinarians, Knights of the Fan, and, not least, Brothers
of the Wacut. 4
Another notable feature of early modern societies was the way that
they sprang up not only in England but elsewhere in the British Isles
and also spread to British settlements overseas. London was always
the great honey-pot of societies, with several thousand founded or
ourishing in George III's reign, but Georgian Edinburgh became a
brilliant centre of associational life, adorned by famous literary and
learned societies such as the Select Society and the Philosophical
Society of Edinburgh. From the later Stuart period Dublin claimed
a growing concentration of associations on the London model, and it
was no accident that Handel's Messiah was rst performed at one of
the city's many musical societies in 1742. The advance in provincial or
country towns was slower and more patchy, but by the later eighteenth
century Scottish as well as English centres had goodly numbers of
societies. 5 North America also became an important home for voluntary
3

647.
5

J. Macky, A Journey Through England (London, 1724), i. 269; Gentleman's Magazine, 2 (1732),
4
N&Q, 5th Series, 10 (1878), 65.
See below, pp. 1318.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

associations. Already during the 1730s the South Carolina Gazette spoke
of the `innumerable and various clubs both in Europe and America'
and, as Chapter 11 will explain, the last decades of the eighteenth
century witnessed a tremendous expansion in American activity. Clubs
and societies, along with other forms of public socializing, sprang up
wherever British merchants, soldiers, and settlers came togetherin
the steamy heat of Calcutta, the grim shanty town of Halifax, Nova
Scotia, or the palmy planter world of Antigua. Within days of General
Wolfe seizing the Heights of Abraham from the French at Quebec in
1759, British troops had established the rst provincial grand lodge of
freemasons in Canada. 6 The British ag was not obligatory. English
traders in Portugal and the Azores had sociable entertainments including societies; English students at Geneva formed a `Common Room'
club in the 1740s, while English monks in Paris set up a society
dedicated to scientic and philosophical enquiry.7 By 1800 clubs and
other forms of association had become a vital component of the social
life of the educated English-speaking classes, whether at home or
abroad.
Not all communities participated in associational activity. As with
many of the new forms of public sociability which emerged in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuriesassemblies, plays, balls,
concerts, and scientic lecturesclubs and societies were primarily
urban phenomena, reaching down from the metropolis to small towns
like Stamford or Licheld, sustained by a variety of masonic, musical,
scientic, philanthropic, and other organizations. In the countryside,
by contrast, rural associations were much thinner on the ground,
mostly conned to benet clubs and a handful of other types.
As well as being almost exclusively urban-based, British societies
were nearly always restricted to men. Female societies, primarily
benet clubs, and also a number of mixed clubsincluding music,
debating, and philanthropic bodiescomprised only a small minority
in a male-dominated associational world. 8 Male societies recruited,
however, from a wide spread of age-groups and social backgrounds:
6

H. Cohen (ed.), The South Carolina Gazette, 17321775 (Columbia, SC, 1953), 215; see
below, pp. 40410; A. J. B. Milborne, `The Provincial Grand Lodge of Quebec, 17591792',
AQC, 68 (1955), 16.
7
A. M. Lysaght (ed.), Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766 (London, 1971), 176;
`The Autobiographical Manuscript of William Senhouse', Journal of the Barbados Museum and
Historical Soc., 2 (19345), 78; R. W. Ketton-Cremer, The Early Life and Diaries of William
Windham (London, 1930), 2932; G. Scott, `A Monk's View of the Durham Coal Industry in
8
See below, pp. 198204.
1750', Northern Catholic History, 15 (1982), 45.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

from young unmarried men as well as more established married

gures; from not only landowners, merchants, and professional
men, but also shopkeepers, master craftsmen, artisans, and some of
the lower classes.
By the eighteenth century the image and concept of the voluntary
society increasingly penetrated every nook and cranny of British social
and cultural life. Business ventures such as assurance and insurance
companies borrowed the name, and occasionally the structure, for
commercial purposes. In North America communities were named
after societies. Booksellers and printers published works under the
guise of a `society of gentlemen' to give fashionable authority to an
anonymous or ghosted work. 9 Clubs and societies gured in a host of
satirical prints and cartoons (see plates 15), and they were also
invented en masse in plays, poems, journals, and tracts for literary or
satirical effect. One of the most successful of such works was by the
humorist, publican, and Tory polemicist Ned Ward, whose A Compleat
and Humorous Acccount of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the Cities
of London and Westminster went through seven editions between 1709
and 1756 and lampooned existing bodies such as the Royal Society and
orists' feasts, whilst creating a comic tour de force of sociable ctions
like the no-nose, man-killing, surly, mollies, and farting clubs. Later,
and in less rumbustious vein, Oliver Goldsmith's Essays (1765)
conjured up and satirized such bodies as the Muzzy Club, the
Harmonical Society, and Choice Spirits, the latter notable for nothing
`but a pert simper [and] fat or profound stupidity'. 10 In the Spectator
(171114), Addison and Steele employed a club framework for satirical
conceit and, having the best of all worlds, argued for the social and
cultural role of associations in the dissemination of English civility. 11
From the time of Dean Swift's depiction of the Dublin House of
Commons as the Legion Club, the Irish and British Parliaments were
9
Cf. the numerous schemes for 171011 in BL, Call. No.: 1890 b.5; also G. Clark, `Life
Insurance in the Society and Culture of London, 170075', Urban History, 24 (1997), 1736;
M. Myers, Liberty Without Anarchy: A History of the Society of the Cincinnati (Charlottesville, Va.,
1983), 112. One of the best-known of these `ghost societies' was the Athenian Society
promoted by John Dunton: e.g., The Athenian Oracle . . . By a Member of the Athenian Society
(London, 1704); for Dunton see R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass.,
1933), 1535.
10
Allen, Clubs, 15887; for a typical play see The Ugly Club. A Dramatic Caricature in One
Act (London, 1798), performed that year at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Ward's work was
rst published as E. Ward, The Secret History of London Clubs (London, 1709) and then much
enlarged in A Compleat and Humorous Account. O. Goldsmith, Essays, 1765 (Menston, 1970),
11
Allen, Clubs, 1749.
2235.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

ridiculed as societies of loquacious, corrupt, and foolish nonentities;

colonial assemblies suffered similar parody. The British government
under the Younger Pitt became the Downing Street cricket club, the
national nances being gambled on a match `against all England'; just
as the state itself was represented as a club, only unique for its
power.12 Almost every group or institution, past and present, was
reincarnated in associational terms: King Arthur's knights were
described as the `original club of Round Table Troopers', while
Edinburgh town council was denounced as the `land-market club'.
Increasingly, voluntary associations were not so much perceived as
miniature exemplars of national society; rather, national society itself
was viewed as an untidy aggregation of voluntary societies. Even
heaven was visualized in terms of one large friendly society. 13
Eighteenth-century commentators regarded clubs and societies as a
distinctly British phenomenon. The Gentleman's Magazine reported in
1732, `the institution of clubs . . . is wholly English', a view echoed by
Daniel Fordyce a few years later when he declared, with chauvinistic
gusto, that `we are of all nations the most forward to run into clubs,
parties and societies'. More surprisingly, foreign observers agreed.
One German diplomat made a comparison of European countries
and concluded that the salient features of English society included
liberty of conscience, political liberty, newspapers, and clubs. That
extensive traveller and enlightenment writer Pierre-Jean Grosley
conceived such bodies as `owing to the English character'. They are
established, he argued, `on the principles of independency', in contrast
to continental academies, which `are with respect to men of learning
what coops are to birds and ponds to shes'. 14 Such views exaggerated the contrast between Britain and the continent, but in a number
of key respects there was, as we will nd, a distinctive pattern of
associational activity in the Anglophone world.
The concern of this book is not simply with trying to plot the scale,
12

Nottingham Univ. Lib., Portland MS Pw. 2V 49; Freeman's Journal, 236 Feb., 57 March
1771; Allen, Clubs, 1712 n.; E. G. Breslaw, `Wit, Whimsy and Politics: The Uses of Satire by
the Tuesday Club of Annapolis', WMQ., 3rd series, 32 (1975), 3003; Gazetteer and New Daily
Advertiser, 1 Sept. 1790; P. Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 16891798 (Oxford,
1991), 211.
13
Mist's Weekly Journal, 17 July 1725; R. Houston, Social Change in the Age of Enlightenment:
Edinburgh, 16601760 (Oxford, 1994), 336; D. McElroy, `The Literary Clubs and Societies of
18th Century Scotland' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1952), 660.
14
Gentleman's Magazine, 2: 647; D. W. R. Bahlman, The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven,
1957), 105; The Middlesex Journal, 31 Aug.2 Sept. 1769; P. J. Grosley, A Tour to London
(Dublin, 1772), i. 160; ii. 187.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

location, organization, membership, and distinctive nature of British

associations from the seventeenth century to the start of the nineteenth century. Three fundamental questions demand our attention.
First, why was there such an upsurge of societies, starting mainly in
the years following the English Civil War, but continuing on a growing
scale after the Restoration, initially in the metropolis and then in the
regions, the rest of the British Isles, and beyond? What were the
dynamics of this movement, how far was it related to Britain's
precocious urbanization and the Consumer Revolution, with spreading afuence, new preoccupations with leisure, and an appetite for
sociable innovation fanned by newspapers and other media publicity?
The changing roles of the state and church likewise need to be
evaluated. We have to consider how far the decline of the role of
central government and spread of religious pluralism help to explain
the exceptional vitality of British associations. There is another element
in the equation. What was the relationship with other traditional and
new forms of public sociability, and why did associations steadily gain
the ascendant? How far in this context did associations organize their
own success?
The second fundamental issue relates to their impact. To what
extent were British associations promoters of new social processes,
new social alignments, and a redenition of urban identity away from
narrow local particularism towards a more outward-looking, modernizing vision of society? How far did they contribute, as David
Spadafora has suggested, to new concepts and realities of progress?
This raises the issue of the extent to which clubs and societies, like
coffee-houses and other elements of Augustan sociability, helped
create a new `public discourse' of the kind posited some years ago
by Jurgen Habermas and taken up more recently by proponents of
notions of a `civil society'. 15 Alternatively, should we view clubs and
societies as more like the Georgian classical facades of medieval town
houses: essentially refurbished urban buttresses of traditional communal values, of social and cultural consensus, of hierarchy, clientage,
and order? Thirdly, and no less important, did associations, along with
other forms of Hanoverian public sociability, help to engender a more
integrated British social space encompassing the British Isles and
nascent empire? In other words, were societies there to make the
15

D. Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1990), 13, 7683;
J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger (Cambridge,
Mass.,1989), esp. 27, 323, 36, 423, and passim; see above, pp. viiviii.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

British periphery secure, intelligible, and comfortable for gentlemen

capitalists and their ilk?16 Or should we think of associations as
exemplars and vectors of cultural and political pluralism, differentiating and articulating the many layers and communities of British and
imperial society?
These issues will be explored in detail in later chapters, but rst it is
necessary to see British societies in perspective. We have to consider
the existing literature and the problems of investigating and dening
clubs and societies; then examine the wider temporal and geographical
setting for voluntary associations in Western Europe; and nally, to
interrogate some of the antecedents of English and British societies.

i
British clubs and societies have attracted a considerable literature from
an early time, not just the satires of Ned Ward and his successors but a
host of promotional works. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
associations showed a remarkable appetite for publicity through commissioned or sympathetic histories, sermons, tracts, plays, notices, and
the like. One of the rst of the genre was Thomas Sprat's History of the
Royal Society which appeared in 1667, only a few years after that body's
incorporation. The freemasons were particularly adept at generating
and manipulating a tide of advertising material of all forms, literary,
visual, and artefactual. 17 During the Victorian era, the great age of
society institutionalization, histories often assumed a hagiographical
character, tricked out with lists and sepia portraits of ofcers, and this
tradition has survived into the twentieth century. In the last fty years
there has been a plethora of historical studies of many individual
societies or types of association. The Royal Society has spawned its
own craft industry of historians, and the medical and political societies
have also enjoyed extensive attention. In the United States there have
been signicant works on freemasonry, the Order of Cincinnati, and
other organizations. Many of these studies, however, lack a comparative perspective or broader analytical framework.
Until recently, research on the general subject of clubs and societies
has been scrappy, with only a modest number of works on the modern
period and fewer still on the preceding era. Many of the studies of
early organizations are elderly. John Timbs's Clubs and Club Life in
16
Cf. P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 16881914
17
See below, pp. 262, 3324.
(London, 1993), 426.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

London (rst edition 1866, with others in 1872 and 1908) is a largely
antiquarian composition. Robert Allen's The Clubs of Augustan London,
published in the 1930s, is a more substantial work, but written mainly
from a literary perspective. In the next decade Arthur Schlesinger,
senior, wrote an excellent brief survey of the rise of American associations, and a decade further on Carl and Jessica Bridenbaugh included
valuable sections on colonial clubs and societies in their volume on
Philadelphia in the age of Franklin. 18 In the subsequent period, however, the only attempt at a more comprehensive historical survey of
societies was David McElroy's Scotland's Age of Improvement (1969),
which presents a detailed account of the many Scottish associations,
their members and activities. One or two interesting studies by sociologists have also included material on or relevant to early British
societies.19
In recent years historians have begun to look directly at the role and
impact of voluntary associations in British society. In several important studies R. J. Morris has related the upswing of new societies after
the 1780s to the major changes affecting the economy and society as a
result of accelerating industrialization and urbanization. For Morris
there are critical links between the growth of associations and class
formation, and he portrays them as `part of the continuous recreation of urban elites' and as powerful elements in the establishment
of a middle-class identity in the Victorian city. However, Morris's
preoccupation with the period after 1780 underplays the importance
of clubs and societies in the earlier era. In 1983 John Brewer drew an
incisive sketch of Georgian clubs, emphasizing their number and
their commercial, benevolent, and political activities. A few years
later Peter Borsay's major book on the English urban renaissance
showed how the growth of clubs and societies should be seen as
part of the wider development of public sociability after the Restoration of Charles II. Heavily inuenced by the metropolis, this
promoted `a more modern, integrated and city-centred national
18
J. Timbs, Club Life of London (London, 1866; further editions in 1872, 1886, 1908);
R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass., 1933, repr. Hamden, Conn.,
1967); A. M. Schlesinger, sen., Paths to the Present (New York, 1949; 2nd edn., Cambridge,
Mass.,1964), ch. 2; C. Bridenbaugh and J. Bridenbaugh, Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the
Age of Franklin (New York, 1942; 2nd edn., 1962), esp. ch. 7.
19
D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman, Wash., 1969); see also his
doctoral thesis `Literary Clubs'; J. C. Ross, An Assembly of Good Fellows: Voluntary Associations
in History (London, 1976); D. H. Smith (ed.), Voluntary Action Research: 1973 (Lexington,
Mass., 1973).

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

society'.20 Paul Langford has taken a similar position, contending that

Georgian clubs and societies were `the expression of a dynamic,
increasingly urban society in which the traditional structures of corporate and communal life were either absent or inappropriate for the
full range of contemporary conditions and aspirations'. In contrast,
Jonathan Barry has argued for the importance of clubs and societies in
the advent of a distinctive bourgeois identity, much more closely tied
to the local urban community, internal social divisions within the
middling ranks of society, and traditional urban structures. 21 To
view voluntary societies in this period as an annex of the grand
amphitheatre of genteel public culture is clearly misleading.
It is not surprising that voluntary associations in early modern Britain
have been slow to receive serious attention. There are numerous
problems of analysis. In the rst place, many societies were informal
or short-lived, yielding few documentary traces. Internal records
minute books and correspondence, along with other ofcial papers
survive for no more than a tiny proportion (though extant sets of rules
are more common). The bodies for which records survive in
abundance tend to be rather exceptionallike the freemasons and
chartered societies, more institutionalized and longer-lived than the
norm. There is little documentation produced as a result of government regulation or licensing until the 1790s, when we have extensive
ofcial records on benet clubs. 22 For many types of club and society,
however, we have to rely on a pot-pourri of external sources: diaries
and correspondence, sermons, ephemera like poems and tickets for the
feast day, and the large volume of London, provincial, and colonial
newspapers. The uneven coverage is illustrated by an example from the
late seventeenth century: Anthony Wood's journal records the Oxford
feasts and sermons of the society of Oxford and Oxfordshiremen for
20
R. J. Morris, `Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 17801850', HJ, 26 (1983),
95118 (quotation, p. 96); id., `Clubs, Societies and Associations', in F. M. L. Thompson
(ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 17501950, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1990), 40517;
N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London, 1982),
21730 and passim; P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial
Town, 16601770 (Oxford, 1989), 1357 and passim.
21
P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 17271783 (Oxford, 1989), 100;
J. Barry, `Bourgeois Collectivism? Urban Association and the Middling Sort', in J. Barry and
C. Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort of People (London, 1994), 84112.
22
Preserving club records remains a problem: the early minute books of the True Blue
Club at Cambridge were stolen in 1988, and found in a builder's skip: The Times, (22 Oct.
1990); though deposited now at the Cambridge University Library, I was, regrettably, unable
to obtain access. For box club records see below, pp. 3734.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

10

Introduction

almost every year between 1669 and 1695; but none of the sermons or
any other material relating to the society apparently survives.23 The
situation is hardly better in the eighteenth century, with newspapers
frequently providing our only references for many clubs. In consequence, there are considerable difculties in dating societies, since
apparently `new' societies may have existed much earlier. As with other
areas of social documentation, there is also a strong bias towards
bodies linked to the elite and respectable classes.
To add to the complexity there are difculties of denition, for
contemporary terms remained uid during a good deal of the early
modern era. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries various
names were in use to describe voluntary associations: companies
(especially for bell-ringers), sodalities, academies, fraternities, and
societies. Initially, clubbing seems to have been an informal arrangement for sharing the cost of drinks or a feast, rather than a regular
group meeting, and this tradition continued into the Restoration
period. For example, the Quaker Thomas Ellwood, imprisoned in
the depths of Bridewell with several other young men, recorded how
they `cast themselves into a club and, laying down every one an equal
proportion of money, put it into the hand of our friend Anne Traverse,
desiring her to lay it out for them in provisions and send them in every
day a mess of hot meat'. From the 1650s, however, the `club' is also
starting to appear in its modern sense as a voluntary association, along
with `society', and during the later Stuart era these become the most
common terms in use. Neither word was deployed with any precision,
and contemporary denitions remained loose. About 1690 it was said
that a club is `a society of men agreeing to meet according to a scheme
of orders under a slight penalty to promote trade and friendship'. In the
next century Dr Johnson was untypically vague in dening the club as
`an assembly of good fellows meeting under certain conditions'. Quite
often the terms `club' and `society' were used interchangeably, though
there is a suggestion that societies were regarded as having a more
formal character. Thus, the Anglican religious societies established in
the 1670s took the name of clubs under James II and met informally in
public houses, to escape the attention of the authorities. 24
23
A. Clark (ed.), The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. II, Oxford Historical Soc., 21, (1892),
154, 193, 229, 255, and passim; Vol. III, Oxford Historical Soc., 26, (1894), 26, 109, and passim.
24
T. Ellwood, The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself (London, 1886), 149; N&Q,
7th series, 8 (1889), 4578; Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn., Oxford, 1989), iii, 367;
J. Wickham Legg, English Church Life From the Restoration To the Tractarian Movement (London,
1914), 293.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

11

While clubs and societies were increasingly the dominant terms for
voluntary associations in the early modern era, they did not have a
monopoly. Alternative names surface. In the late seventeenth century
one or two chartered societies were called corporations, Oxford
colleges had common rooms, while the term `academy', already in
use before the Civil War, came into vogue after 1700, reecting continental inuences, though in England largely conned to the musical
and artistic elds: hence, the Academy of Painting (1711) was followed
by the Academy of Vocal Music (1726) and the Royal Academy of Arts
(1768). In the new American Republic, desperately ghting for independence, the American Academy of Sciences at Boston (1780)
took the name out of deference to the country's French ally. 25 The
term `association' became more widespread. Originally coupled with
declarations of collective loyalty in times of national emergency (as in
1585), and taken up in the 1650s for county meetings of godly ministers,
the term was adopted by Irish patriots calling for reform in 1768 and
employed by American colonists opposed to George III: for instance,
at Charleston in 1774 an `association of Protestant schoolboys' was
formed to boycott East India Company tea. Protest and reform were
also important elements in James Burgh's abortive British scheme for a
Grand National Association in 17745 and in the county association
movement after 1779. Increasingly, however, the noun entered the
wider arena of activity and was assumed by prosecution, charitable,
exploratory, arbitration, professional, moral-reform, benet, and conservative political and military organizations. In the United States the
currency of the word may have been encouraged by the long-established
associations or clergy meetings in New England. The phrase `voluntary
association' seems to have come into use only during the nineteenth
century. 26
As clubs and societies multiplied in popularity and importance
during the late Georgian period, organizers struggled to give their
own bodies distinctive identities, though these essentially were only
variants on the same basic format. Merchants and traders in Britain
and the colonies set up chambers of commerceto represent their
interests to the authorities and to help supervise local business activity.
25
See below, pp. 53, 54, 57 J. E. McClellan, Science Reorganized; Scientic Societies in the 18th
Century (New York, 1985), 142.
26
E. C. Black, The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organisation, 17691793
(Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 1, 289, 31130; Cohen, South Carolina Gazette, 120; Langford,
Polite and Commercial People, 553; R. L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee (Cambridge, Mass.,
1967), 150 ff., 1856.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

12

Introduction

One or two social clubs called themselves `courts'. At the close of

the century the term `institution' was introduced, possibly from
Germany.27
All this makes the problem of denition pressing. One useful startingpoint is recent anthropological and sociological denitions of modern
voluntary associations. Among the basic aspects which are stressed are
the importance of participation without nancial or coercive pressures; the intermittent (albeit regular) meetings; the restricted functions of individual associations, usually having only one or two formal
objectives; the informal or limited nature of the organization; the
voluntary leadership and its tendency towards oligarchy; and the
quasi-private character of such bodies, with a general absence of a
regulatory role. 28
Modern denitions can only take us so far, however, in clarifying the
maze of organizational activity in our period. John Toland, at the start
of the eighteenth century, noted the great range of voluntaristic organizations, embracing commercial and religious bodies (some of which,
rather confusingly, called themselves societies), 29 and in subsequent
decades there was a proliferation of hybrid bodies like turnpike and
hospital trusts, improvement boards, and other administrative
agencies, which bore some features of voluntarism. Given the range
of voluntary activity (and its dynamism) in Hanoverian Britain, watertight denitions are clearly difcult and some arbitrary decisions are
necessary. Here commercial and religious organizations and administrative trusts have been excluded, allowing us to focus more clearly and
meaningfully on that core associational group which contemporaries
generally recognized as clubs and societies: private associations, overwhelmingly male, meeting on a regular, organized basis, mostly in
public drinking-places, where they combined a common sociability
with a more specic purpose, whether recreational, locational, educational, political, philanthropic, or whatever.
Problems of denition are not made easier by the organizational
27
Providence Gazette, 14 Jan. 1769; Cohen, South Carolina Gazette, 24; Archives, I(3) (1950),
26; D. Dickson et al. (eds.), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin,
1993), 64; for the spread of chambers to inland towns see D. Read, The English Provinces,
c.17601960 (London, 1964), 256. For the well-known Court of Equity club at the Bell
Savage, London: Guildhall, MS. 551. M. Berman, Social Change and Scientic Organization: The
Royal Institution, 17991844 (London, 1978), 5, 92, 94. I owe the last point to Joanna Innes.
28
Cf. W. K. Warner, `Voluntary Associations and Individual Involvement in Public
Policy-making and Administration', in Smith (ed.), Voluntary Action Research, 2434.
29
J. Toland, Pantheisticon (London, 1751), 910.

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

13

range of early modern societiesfrom the very informal small drinking clubs to the more formalized national societies, with a hierarchy of
ofcers and their own premises and publications; from localized
societies operating on their own, to networks of societies exchanging
minutes and correspondence, to international federated organizations,
such as the freemasons. Even within a particular type of society the
organizational and other permutations might be extensive. This raises
the crucial question: are we discussing a common social institution or
simply an assortment of social phenomena? The justication for
taking the former view, which is central to the argument of this study,
is fourfold. First, all our societies shared most of the dening
attributes mentioned above. Secondly, as we shall see, their growth
and development was shaped by a number of common economic,
social, and other factors. Thirdly, in institutional terms they often
shared a common heritage, using similar rhetoric, copying each other's
recruitment strategies, supporting each other on occasion, or having
overlapping memberships. Last but not least, although contemporaries
sometimes pointed out the different strands of associational activity,
they almost invariably spoke of clubs and societies as belonging to a
single movement. Undeniably, from the seventeenth century Britain
saw the emergence of a major new form of institution which was to
have a powerful effect on many aspects of society.

ii
While clubs and societies were an increasingly common and pervasive
feature of British social life from the seventeenth century on, voluntary associations of some species were hardly unique to the period:
they can be found in many countries from the earliest times. Sodalities
and informal clubs played a signicant role in the political and cultural
life of classical Athens and, to a lesser extent, of ancient Rome; 30 and
merchant gilds emerge in European towns with the quickening pace
of commercial expansion during the high Middle Ages. Particularly
striking was the development of confraternities or fraternities
groups, mainly of laity, promoting common religious and other
activities. Though some may date from the ninth and tenth centuries
or earlier, during the late Middle Ages there was a great owering of
religious confraternities across many parts of western Christendom:
30
Cf. J. S. Kloppenborg and S. G. Wilson (eds.), Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman
World (London, 1996).

8.11.99 10:00 01 Chapter 0394

14

Introduction

over 150 in Renaissance Florence, 134 in the great port of Genoa, and
substantial clusters in the smaller but equally afuent towns of the
Low Countries.31 There were many different types, including the
related trade gilds. Though principally concerned with supporting
religious observances on behalf of the membership, particularly the
dead, such bodies were one of the principal forms of public sociability
in pre-modern Europe. Throughout the Mediterranean countries they
organized much of the festive life of communities, as well as being
important patrons of the arts, through the presentation of plays and
pageants, and the construction and decoration by leading architects
and artists of religious and associated buildings. In the cities of the
Low Countries literary fraternities ourished, and fraternities also
played major philanthropic and economic roles in late medieval
Europe. 32 If many were located in towns, others might be found in
villages, recruiting women as well as men. There were socially mixed
fraternities, as well as more exclusive noble ones, and others for
youths. There were national confraternities, providing centres for
immigrants in the large European centres. In some Italian cities up
to a third of the adult population had a family member enlisted.33 The
role of such bodies will be discussed in more detail shortly in the
English context, but one needs to remember that, whereas confraternities disappeared in much of Protestant Europe after the
Reformation, they continued to be a powerful force in the social,
religious, and cultural life of Catholic countries. After the 1560s they
were affected by the Counter-Reformation and became, in many
instances, agents for reform under clerical domination. Nevertheless,
they retained their wider social function into the eighteenth century,
and posed strong competition, as in France, for new secular forms of
association. 34
Secular academies appear for the rst time in Italy during the
31
F. Rorig, The Medieval Town (London, 1967), 20; J. Bossy, Christianity in the West, 14001700
(Oxford, 1985), 589; C. F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the 16th Century (Cambridge, 1989),
26, 55; R. Mackenney, Tradesmen and Trades: The World of the Guilds in Venice and Europe, c. 1250
c.1650 (London, 1987), 68; R. van Uytven, `Scenes de la vie sociale dans les villes des Pays-Bas
. . .', in La Sociabilite urbaine en Europe du nord-ouest du XIV e au XVIII e siecle (Douai, 1983), 16.
32
Mackenney, Tradesmen and Traders, 56, 47, and passim; Black, Italian Confraternities, chs. 8,
11; R. F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1982), p. ix ;
W. Prevenier, `Court and City Culture in the Low Countries from 1100 to 1530', in E. Kooper
(ed.), Medieval Dutch Literature in its European Context (Cambridge, 1994), 15; G. Rosser, `Crafts,
Guilds and the Negotiation of Work in the Medieval Town', P& P, 154 (1997), 331.
33
Black, Italian Confraternities, 43, 457, 57.
34
Ibid. 7, 21; M. Agulhon, Penitents et francs-macons de l'ancienne Provence (Paris, 1984).

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

15

Renaissance. The Council of Florence in 1439 was probably decisive in

encouraging the development of academies, with an inux of Greeks
to Italy spreading Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas. Important academies appeared in Florence, Rome, Venice, and Naples, all devoted to
the general revival of classical learning. By the middle of the sixteenth
century a growing number of small academies had appeared in Italian
cities, often governed by elaborate rules, the members having fantastic
names; these bodies had more specialist concerns, such as music, art,
science, or architecture, and a stronger regional character than the
early academies. Imaginary or literary associations multiplied along
with real academies. English visitors to seventeenth-century Italy
were dazzled by the wealth of activity. `In most of the cities and
towns', John Ray noted, `there are academies or societies of virtuosi,
who have at set times their meetings and exercises which are for the
most part profusions of wit and rhetoric or discourses about moral
subjects.' 35 From the Italian academies of the Renaissance `sprang the
whole vast development of modern international academism'. France
after the mid-sixteenth century saw the poetic circle of the `Pleiade'
around Ronsard and various Court academies, but further developments were disrupted by the Religious Wars. Renewed order and the
expansion of the state in the next century heralded a proliferation of
royal academies, rst in Paris with the Academie Francaise (1635), the
Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1648), the Academie
Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (1663), the Academie Royale
des Sciences (1666), and various others; and then later in the provinces
with academies at Arles (1669), Soissons (1674), Nimes (1682), Angers
(1685), and elsewhere. 36
On the eve of the Reformation the humanist Conrad Celtis
organized sodalities at Heidelberg and Vienna following the model
of the Italian academies, but these failed to survive his death in 1508.
After 1600 formal societies were discouraged by political fragmentation in Germany and the devastating turmoil of the Thirty Years War,
35
F. Yates, Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution, Vol. II (London, 1983), 818; see
also the projects of Francesco Pucci: M. Eliav-Feldon, `Secret Societies, Utopias and Peace
Plans: The Case of Francesco Pucci', Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984), 143
5, 153; J. Ray, Travels Through the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy and France (2nd edn., London,
1738), i. 3412; also R. Lassels, An Italian Voyage, or, A Compleat Journey Through Italy (London,
1698), 70, 878, 92.
36
Yates, Renaissance and Reform, 7; id., The French Academies of the 16th Century (London,
1947), 14, 16 ff.; McClellan, Science Reorganized, 4; D. Roche, Le Siecle des lumieres en province
(Paris, 1978), i., 1920.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

16

Introduction

but the Peace of Westphalia ushered in a new era for learned societies.
In 1652 an academy was established at Schweinfurt concerned with
medical science; in 1687 it became an imperial academy with extensive
privileges. About 1700 the Societas Regia Scientiarum was founded in
Berlin, backed by the Prussian government. A wave of state academies
then swept across Europe: Peter the Great's Academy of Sciences at
St Petersburg (1724), the Swedish Royal Society of Sciences at
Uppsala (1728) and the Stockholm Academy (1739), the Danish Royal
Academy at Copenhagen (1742), the Churbayerische Akademie der
Wissenschaften at Munich (1759), and others at Naples, Brussels,
Prague, and so on. 37
Many of the ofcial academies of the late seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were agencies of ancien regime states, outside the
conventional denition of voluntary associations. Often rigid, hierarchic, and monopolistic, they were heavily dependent on government
funding and the participation of public ofcials. They reected the
priorities of state policy, with its growing emphasis on economic
improvement. Their success was often patchy; in the French provinces
academies frequently staggered along with meagre local support. In
Spain (and its colonies) the ofcial economic improvement societies
collapsed for the same reason. 38
All this seems in marked contrast to the more dynamic, open, and
pluralistic world of voluntary societies in Britain, distinguished by
the absence, except in a few cases, of ofcial sanction and resources.
However, the differences between Britain and the continent must
not be exaggerated. Recent research has portrayed the ofcial
academies as part of a wider continuum of associational activity in
the eighteenth century, with considerable numbers of more informal
private societies as well. In the Netherlands institutionalized learned
societies, promoted by the ruling elite, the regents, were joined from
the 1740s by numerous dilettante societies (reading societies, literary
societies, and masonic lodges), which were more interested in social
dialogue and cultural emancipation. In the 1770s and 1780s, in the
37

R. van Dulmen, The Society of the Enlightenment: The Rise of the Middle Class and Enlightenment Culture in Germany (Oxford, 1992), 1122, 268; R. J. W. Evans, `Learned Societies in
Germany in the 17th Century', European Historical Quarterly, 7 (1977), 1308; McClellan, Science
Reorganized, 702, 749, 847, and passim.
38
McClellan, Science Reorganized, 13 ff.; R. Briggs, `The Academie Royale des Sciences and
the Pursuit of Utility', P&P, 131 (1991), 3887; J. Queniart, Culture et societe urbaines dans la
France de l'ouest au XVIII e siecle (Paris, 1978), 41531; R. J. Shafer, The Economic Societies in the
Spanish World (17631821) (Syracuse, NY, 1958).

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

17

wake of Dutch economic decline and military defeat, a new wave of

reformist improvement societies appeared, such as the Economic Branch
and the Society of Public Welfare, which enjoyed a wider level of social
support, alongside democratic student clubs and militia societies.39
Germany was affected during the second half of the eighteenth
century by the advent of a large number of middle-class societies
patriotic societies concerned with economic and social reform, reading societies (430 founded by 1800), music societies, and political
societies such as the League of the Illuminati. Many of them emphasized open debate and egalitarianism, had their own rules, and
operated outside the sphere of the state. 40 Similarly in Switzerland,
there was an upsurge of learned, literary, economic, and other
societies, especially from the 1760s.41 The continent also experienced
the widespread advance of freemasonry, initially inspired by the
English model. Germany at the end of the century had up to 300
lodges, with almost every provincial city represented. In France 830
lodges were established between 1732 and 1793, covering virtually all
of the country, though with marked regional variations in the density
of lodges. 42 Other voluntary bodies also sprang up in France. In the
provinces there were literary and agricultural societies, predominantly
drawn from the local ruling elites; Paris by the 1780s boasted informal
clubs such as the Club Militaire, where members played backgammon,
read the newspapers, and studied maps; mutual aid societies increasingly eclipsed the religious confraternities and traditional craft
organizations; and after the start of the Revolution the number of
political clubs exploded. 43
39
McClellan, Science Reorganized, 13 ff.; W. W. Mijnhardt, Tot Heil van't Menschdom: Culturele
genootschappen in Nederland, 17501815 (Amsterdam, 1987), 41114; Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, 7489, 98 ff.; I. L. Leeb, The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution (The Hague,
1973), 176, 184, 223, 229, 230.
40
van Dulmen, Society of the Enlightenment, chs. 36; E. Francois (ed.), Sociabilite et societe
bourgeoise en France, en Allemagne, et en Suisse 17501850 (Paris, 1986), 138, 260; E. Hellmuth (ed.),
The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford,
ffentk1990), 1523, 21217, 2218; H. Graf, `LesegellschaftenEine Form burgerlicher O
lichkeit im aufgeklarten Absolutismus' (I am grateful to Dr Graf for allowing me to cite this
41
Francois (ed.), Sociabilite, 557, 1249.
unpublished paper).
42
van Dulmen, Society of the Enlightenment, 545; R. Halevi, Les Loges maconniques dans la
France d'Ancien Regime (Paris, 1984), 51, 535; also Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, chs. 89. But
note the admission of women to French masonic lodges: J. M. Burke and M. C. Jacob, `French
Freemasonry, Women and Feminist Scholarship', Journal of Modern History, 68 (1995), 51349.
43
Queniart, Culture et societe urbaines; Agulhon, Penitents et francs-macons, ch. 7; R. M.
Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in 18th Century Paris (Oxford, 1986),
2367; M. D. Sibalis, `The Mutual Aid Societies of Paris, 17891848', French History, 3

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

18

Introduction

Yet the signs are that continental voluntary associations failed to

attain the diversity, vitality and importance of their British counterparts. In the case of Germany, `the spectrum of societies was much
narrower . . . we do not nd the multitude of clubs and societies for
debating, mutual representation of interests, and conviviality that was
common in England'. An important constraint was government fear
of public dissent and disorder. In the Netherlands the authorities took
action against freemasonry and, later on, patriotic associations. Organizations of journeymen were forbidden throughout the country, and
the small number of benet clubstwo or three per citywas tightly
controlled by the authorities. Artisan bodies also suffered repression
in the German princely states. 44 In France masonic lodges experienced ofcial harrassment in the early eighteenth century, and
attempts to set up agricultural societies faced competition from
ofcially sponsored academies. State controls were coupled with the
persistence of censorship and the absence of an independent newspaper press, though the growth of middle-class bodies in Germany,
like the patriotic societies and reading circles, was helped by the
circulation of journals, magazines, and books (including English
books). 45
Also inuencing the pattern of continental associations was the
absence of a broadly based urban afuence able to sustain voluntary
activity, which was often a fairly costly exercise. French provincial
academies stagnated after 1760. In the Netherlands artisanal organizations declined from the late eighteenth century as the economy
deteriorated; and even in the case of elite reformist societies the rationale
was very different from that of English associations: the concern was not
with the `social problems of prosperity but the consequences of unremitting decline'.46 Another inhibiting factor was the power and inuence of traditional forms of public sociability and organization. France's
masonic movement met competition from old-style confraternities,
(1989), 27; C. Mazauric, `Political Clubs and Sociability in Revolutionary France: 17904', in
Dickson et al. (eds.), United Irishmen, 209.
44
Hellmuth (ed.), Transformation of Political Culture, 23; see also H. E. Bodecker and
E. Francois (eds.), Aufklarung/Lumieres und Politik (Leipzig, 1996); Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, 74; Leeb, Ideological Origins, 184, 230; R. Dekker, `Labour Conicts and Working-Class
Culture in Early Modern Holland', International Review of Social History, 35 (1990), 403, 417.
45
Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, 36; Queniart, Culture et societe urbaines, 436; Hellmuth (ed.),
Transformation of Political Culture, 31 n., 430 ff.; B. Fabian, `English Books and their 18th-century
German Readers', in P. J. Korshin (ed.), The Widening Circle (Philadelphia, 1976), 1613.
46
Roche, Le Siecle des lumieres, i., 46 ff., 60; Dekker, `Labour Conicts', 414, 419; Mijnardt,
Tot Heil, 411.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

19

while journeymen compagnonnages put a brake on the advent of newstyle mutual aid or benet clubs. Throughout Catholic Europe the
Church remained the principal focus for public sociability at the local
level until near the end of the period. On tour in the 1770s, Richard
Whalley bemoaned the lack of `public diversions' in Italy, apart from
`the religious raree-shows'; there is `nothing . . . of that sociality which
reigns in an English circle'. 47
How far did continental academies and societies inuence the
growth of British clubs and societies? Not much, it would seem.
During the 1620s new aristocratic clubs in London copied some of
the trappings of Italian academies, including the use of exotic titles. In
1660 the Royal Society recognized the need to learn from the arrangements in `other countries where there were voluntary associations of
men into academies for the advancement of various parts of learning'.
English virtuosi on their return from Italy and its academies patronized and encouraged coffee-house clubs in London and Oxford to
maintain their new scientic and learned interests. 48 But precise
evidence of borrowing from continental models is sparse. For all their
fame, Italian academies tended to be personalized, revolving around a
particular aristocratic patrona far cry from the English pattern of
collective sociability. French-style state academies, apart perhaps from
the Royal Academy, are absent from the British scene. In the early
eighteenth century Scottish learned societies may have emulated
foreign academies. However, for much of our period the cultural
ows were in the opposite direction, as British freemasonry, improvement societies, and literary clubs affected associational life across the
Channel. Only in the last years of the century are there signs of a
limited continental impact, as in the introduction to the British world
of the idea of the Humane Society founded at Amsterdam in 1767;
and the establishment by Count Rumford in London of various
philanthropic and scientic bodies, which were modelled on organizations he had set up in Munich. But Rumford himself was hardly a
typical German: born in America, he had spent some time in England
before going off to make his fame and fortune in Bavaria. 49
47

Agulhon, Penitents et francs-macons, chs. 46; Sibalis, `Mutual Aid Societies', 23; H.
Wickham (ed.), Journals and Correspondence of Thomas Sedgewick Whalley (London, 1863), i., 266, 275.
48
See below, p. 45; K. T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the 17th Century (London, 1970),
8 ; R. L.-W. Caudill, `Some Literary Evidence of the Development of English Virtuoso
Interests in the 17th Century . . .' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1975),
365, 369, and passim.
49
R. L. Emerson, `The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, 17371747', British Journal for
the History of Science, 12 (1979), 158; H. Hasquin (ed)., Visages de la franc-maconnerie belge du

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

20

Introduction

iii
Given that continental associations of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries had only a limited effect in stimulating and shaping the
development of British clubs and societies, then we must look elsewhere, to native antecedents, for their pedigree. Likely candidates here
are the religious confraternities (or fraternities) and trade gilds which
proliferated in late medieval England, as elsewhere in Europe, and
which some historians have seen as analogous with clubs. All the signs
are that parish fraternities were at the heart of English social and
cultural life both in town and countryside during the fourteenth and
fteenth centuries. The extensive scale, membership, and activity of
these bodies is evident. There may have been as many as 30,000
fraternities in late medieval England. London had 150200, if not
more; even a small port like Boston in Lincolnshire supported about
eight; in Cambridgeshire many villages had one or two fraternities
apiece. 50 Membership was open but selective, limited by entrance
nes and other dues. In consequence, participants were predominantly
from the middling ranks of society, buoyed up by rising living
standards in the period; though, in some instances, nobles and higher
clergy became, effectively, honorary members. Urban fraternities
might be linked to the civic patriciate. Though men predominated,
female participation was signicantsometimes up to half the
membership. There was also some attempt to incorporate brethren
from outside the community, from neighbouring settlements, helping
to underpin the links between market towns and their hinterlands. 51
To reiterate, the primary concern of fraternities was religious, supporting priests to say prayers for the souls of former and present
members, to redeem them from Purgatory. This reected `the intensity
of people's belief . . . that an excruciating posthumous purgation was
in store for them'. Fraternities both reinforced the spiritual and social
obligations of the parish congregation, and served to complement the
XVIII e au XX e siecle (Brussels, 1983); A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge 17171967 (Oxford, 1967),
2268, 2323; Isherwood, Farce and Fantasy, 2367; U. Im Hof, The Enlightenment (Oxford,
1994), 132; for the Humane Society see p. 107; Berman, Social Change, 815.
50
G. Rosser, `Solidarites et changement social. Fraternites urbaines anglaises a la n du
Moyen Age', Annales ESC, 48 (1993), 1128; C. Barron, `The Parish Fraternities of Medieval
London', in C. Barron and C. Harper-Bill (eds.), The Church in Pre-Reformation Society
(Woodbridge, 1985), 13; J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (Oxford, 1984), 28.
51
Barron, `Parish Fraternities', 2931; Scarisbrick, Reformation, 22; B. A. Hanawalt,
`Keepers of the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds', Journal of Medieval and Renaissance
Studies, 14 (1984), 25; Rosser, `Fraternites urbaines', 11389.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

21

religious life of the parish communion. They supported a wide range

of communal activities. They offered the ideal, and in some measure
the social reality, of fellowship: harmony and solidarity through anniversary feasts, processions, and services, along with, in some cases,
more regular gatherings, and funeral rites when members died. They
acted to arbitrate disputes between members, and, in towns in particular, provided mutual aid through loans and charity, including food
and shelter to poor or unemployed members. Among the public
functions of fraternities was the provision of relief to beggars, the
construction of religious buildings, almshouses, bridges, and seadykes, and the supply of preachers and schoolmasters. 52 They brought
together different political groups, and in some communities,
particularly smaller towns, single fraternities took over the work of
local government. At the major regional city of Norwich the gild of St
George, established about 1385, became formally integrated into civic
governance from the mid-fteenth century, taking a key part in the
political life of the corporation, promoting harmony among the elite.
Its gild day in April was celebrated with great pageantry, involving a
mass in the cathedral, a great feast, and a procession in which the
central gure was the patron saint on horseback wearing a coat of
armour beaten with silver. 53
In addition to parish and civic bodies, we nd specialist archery,
youth, and other gilds. Trade and craft gilds often shared many of the
characteristics of fraternities, supporting religious services, maintaining solidarity through feasts, processions, mutual aid, and funeral rites
for former members. But in other respects they had a quasigovernmental function. Recruiting members from particular occupations, they were instrumental in economic regulation, controlling
52
A. Kreider, The English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 91;
R. Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 1989), 1058; G. Rosser, `Communities of Parish and Guild in the Late Middle
Ages', in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People (London, 1988), 3943; B. McRee, `Unity
or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities', in B. Hanawalt
and K. L. Reyerson (eds.), City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis, 1994), 192203;
S. Brigden, `Religion and Social Obligation in Early 16th-century London', P&P, 103 ( 1984),
979; G. Rosser, `Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in late
Medieval England', JBS, 33 (1994), 4324; M. Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval
Cambridge (Cambridge, 1987), 2548 ; Hanawalt, `Keepers', 314.
53
Hanawalt, `Keepers', 256; B. R. McRee, `Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of
Norwich in the late Middle Ages', Speculum, 67 (1992), 6997; D. Galloway (ed.), Norwich,
15401642, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, 1984), pp. xxvixxvii; also A. D.
Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 12501550 (Oxford,
1995), ch. 7.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

22

Introduction

access to trades, apprenticeship, and working practices; frequently

they worked hand in glove with the civic authorities. Unlike the
fraternities, they tended to be concentrated in the larger, corporate
towns.54
Parallels between late medieval fraternities and early modern clubs
and societies are evident: the voluntary nature of membership, the
limited range of activities, the generally informal organization, and, in
many instances, the private function of fraternities, without major
ofcial responsibilities. Like later clubs, the precise pattern of activity
varied signicantly from one community to another. On the other
hand, they were hardly Georgian clubs before their time. First, most
of their funds were devoted to religious purposes, with other
activities, such as mutual aid, of secondary importance. Certainly,
English fraternities show none of the great range of specialist philanthropic, artistic, learned, and other activities of the mainly secular
societies of the later period. Secondly, the membership was largely
drawn from the middling ranks of society, without the inuential
upper-class representationgentlemen, professional classes, and the
likeprominent in eighteenth century societies. Even more striking
were the numerous women members, quite unlike the case for later
associations, where masculinity was normally one of the dening
features. Finally, late medieval fraternities were geographically
dispersed, having substantial numbers in the countryside, compared
to the town-biased societies of late Stuart and Georgian Britain. 55
The precise signicance of late medieval fraternities for the later
rise of clubs and societies is made even more problematic by their
suppression under legislation in 1547. Only the trade gilds survived,
after erce protests from leading provincial towns. Despite the large
number of fraternities and the extent of their membership, opposition
to the Chantries Act was surprisingly low key. Partly, this may reect
the effectiveness of the Protestant campaign against intercessionary
prayers and Purgatory after the 1530s. Another reason may have been
the declining living standards of many small masters and farmers in
the Tudor period, buffeted now by rising prices, increased unemployment, and recurrent crises in trade and agriculture: in consequence,
54
Hanawalt, `Keepers', 28; Barron, `Parish Fraternities', 1417; for the stress on civic
control, see H. Swanson, `The Illusion of Economic Structure: Craft Guilds in Late Medieval
English Towns', P&P, 121 (1988), 2948.
55
Barron, `Parish Fraternities', 30, 36; also Brigden, `Religion and Social Obligation',
978.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

23

fraternity costs may have become too burdensome for lesser

members. Already by the 1530s the number of fraternities in some
places was in decline. Linked with this, urban ruling elites were
concerned to consolidate and extend their formal authority over all
kinds of social activity. In non-chartered towns fraternities were sometimes taken over and used as the basis for civic incorporation. For
example, at Maidstone, the rising shire town in mid-Kent, a caucus of
Protestant burghers bought the property of the Corpus Christi fraternity to underpin the new borough chartered by Edward VI in 1549.
The cities' successful defence of the craft gilds was the prelude to
their increased control and regulation by civic governments. Where
fraternities could not be exploited in this way, local elites may have
been content to see such alternative centres of social and communal
solidarity disappear. 56
Not all the tradition of medieval religious fraternities was extinguished. In Catholic areas of the country they may have survived
underground. At Georgian Preston an old-style fraternity maintaining
services for the souls of departed brethren possibly had earlier origins.
In Norfolk, in about 1630, an attempt was made to establish or revive
a gild cum-fraternity at the small market town of Attleborough. In
other places fraternity-type arrangements may have survived in a
more informal way, in private meetings of Puritan godly or in the
emerging sectarian congregations. 57 Even so, for many founders of
seventeenth-century clubs and societies the earlier fraternity model,
however relevant, was only a faint memory etched on the collective
consciousness.
In contrast, trade gilds survived the crisis of 1547, deprived of most
of their religious trappings, and increased in number in corporate
towns in the following decades. Under Queen Elizabeth, Nottingham,
Northampton, and Leicester each had over sixty gilds, and Bristol,
York, and Norwich more than 100. Here, arguably, is the organization
which provided the most immediate and direct inuence on the formation of seventeenth and eighteenth-century societies. Certainly,
unlike the old fraternities but like the new associations, they were an
urban phenomenon, largely conned to the bigger towns. Organizationally too, there are signicant parallels between Stuart gilds and the
56
Kreider, English Chantries. 85, 124, 1513, 199200; Whiting, Blind Devotion, 10811;
Scarisbrick, Reformation, 345; P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of Maidstone: The Making of a
Modern County Town (Stroud, 1995), 38.
57
Lancashire RO, DDX 1130/7; F. Blomeeld, An Essay Towards a Topographical History of
the County of Norfolk (London, 180510), i., 534.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

24

Introduction

new bodies: in the names of ofcers (wardens, stewards, clerks); the

arrangements for election of ofcers; the relief of poorer members;
and the ritualized forms of socializing, particularly on feast days. At
Gloucester, for instance, despite the decay of the city's textile trades,
the weavers' gild met every St Anne's day (in July) to elect its
ofcers and then, preceded by `a great cake . . . decked with owers,
garlands, silk ribbons, and other ornaments', and with music playing,
the brethren marched through the crowded streets of the city from
their craft hall to their new master's house. Other parallels are
evident too: in the signicance of arbitration between members to
prevent disputes; and, most striking perhaps, in the heavily male bias
of their membership, at least by the early seventeenth century. 58 Yet,
despite possible areas of institutional borrowing, the lineage from
conventional trade gilds to the new forms of voluntary association is
weak. Many trade gilds, at least by 1600, had an important regulatory
function and were subject to close civic control. Membership in many
cases was compelled by the authorities. In these respects seventeenth
century gilds could hardly be described as voluntary associations
according to the usual denition. Moreover, although examples of
continuity between trade or craft gilds and societies appear, these
must be set against other areas of discontinuity. While the total
number of gilds probably increased in the bigger towns, many smaller
centres did not have functioning gilds by the mid-seventeenth century,
but even so, within a generation or more had acquired an array of
clubs and societies. In terms of membership, trade gilds before the
English Revolution recruited mainly townsmen; only in the eighteenth
century did small numbers of gentlemen and other outsiders gure as
honorary members, in marked contrast to their substantial genteel
presence in Augustan clubs and societies.59
We are left, then, with a puzzle. In spite of the eforescence from
the seventeenth century of new clubs and societies in England and,
eventually, the British world, the exact parentage remains uncertain.
Overseas academies, the older tradition of fraternities, as well as the
58

D. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth: England Under the Later Tudors, 15471603 (London,
1983), 242; id., `The Trade Gilds of Tudor York', in P. Clark and P. Slack (eds.), Crisis and
Order in English Towns, 15001700 (London, 1972), 86112; I. Archer, The History of the
Haberdashers' Company (Chichester, 1991), chs. 34; PRO, E 134/11 Charles I/M 45;
S. Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in 16th-Century London (Cambridge, 1989),
412, 20113.
59
M. J. Walker, `The Extent of the Guild Control of Trades in England, c.16601820'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985), 146, 26870.

8.11.99 10:01 01 Chapter 0394

Introduction

25

regulated trade gilds may have provided some pieces of the design,
but not all. To understand the development of this major social
institution, we need to investigate its origins in the wider context of
public sociability during the Tudor and Stuart period.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence: To 1688

If there was a seminal event in the history of British associations, it

occurred in 1586, when the Antiquaries Society began to meet at the
Heralds Ofce in Westminster. The rst English association, its dozen
or so memberslawyers, courtiers, and gentlemen like William
Camden, Robert Cotton, James Ley, and Henry Spelmanheld
regular sessions to debate historical and other subjects in the period
up to 1608. Within a generation we come across various other clubs
and societies in England and Scotland, though the total before the
Civil War remained very small, probably no more than a score or so
associations, which included learned societies, aristocratic clubs, bellringing societies, and benet and other bodies. The English Revolution saw a breakthrough in the number and types of association, and
their growing public recognition. Writing in 1661, Anthony Wood
declared, `clubs at alehouses and coffee-houses have not been up
above 14 years before this time, and they did not begin in Oxford
till about the year 1654'. 1 Encouraged by the end of censorship and
the growth of political pluralism, the years following the Civil War were
marked by an upsurge of scientic and county societies, philanthropic
bodies, and political, literary, musical, and social clubs. London was
the principal theatre of activity but, as Wood observed, at least some
provincial towns were also involved. By the time of the Glorious
Revolution clubs and societies were increasingly numerous and
accepted as a fashionable form of public sociability.
Yet there was nothing automatic or inevitable about the progress of
voluntary associations in this period. They had to struggle to establish
and enlarge their footing in social and cultural life. Absence of a clear
organizational model which new societies could copy, was one constraint. Another stemmed from state opposition, particularly before
the calling of the Long Parliament, though ofcial hostility also
obtruded after the Restoration. Finally, nascent clubs and societies
1
J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 813; A. Clark (ed.), The Life
and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. I Oxford Historical Soc., 19, (1891), 423.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

27

faced stiff competition from other kinds of private and public

sociability, some traditional, others more urbane and genteel, though,
as we shall now see, these also provided some of the key inuences
that helped to mould the new-style voluntary associations of the
Stuart period. 2

i
In the early modern period a kaleidoscope of occasions and opportunities existed for people to meet together, conversing, drinking, and
feasting, participating in games and other entertainments, sharing and
conrming the bonds of kinship, neighbourhood, and community. 3
There is time to sketch only an outline picture, perforce concentrating
on England, though with reference to the wider context. Everything
indicates that socializing had a strong spatial dimension, though this
was always uid. Private meetings of people in the household or home
spilled outside into shared entry-ways or the yard, often barely
distinguished from the street. In terms of public space, the main
customary venues were the church and churchyard, the market-place
and street, whilst elds were other common meeting-places. By the
sixteenth century a growing amount of sociable activity also occurred
in `mixed' space, such as inns and alehouses, the latter usually domestic
or private premises, which had rooms set aside for public gatherings.
Sociability could embrace the immediate family or the wider household, kinsfolk, friends, neighbours, members of the same trade,
people from the same community, and outsidersin many permutations. Activity might focus on traditional rites de passage, liturgical,
communal, or neighbourly occasions, old-style games and celebrations, and a growing wave of more commercial entertainments, including, from the seventeenth century on, new forms of public sociability
such as concerts, assemblies, organized sports, and the theatre. Socializing was affected by changing economic status and by life-cycle, with
young people most active and older people tending to withdraw from
public activity. 4 The pattern of socializing was also increasingly
2

For government opposition see below, pp. 45, 52.

For a pioneering discussion see C. Phythian-Adams, Local History and Folklore: A New
Framework (London, 1975), 1230.
4
P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 16601770
(Oxford, 1989); K. E. Westhauser, `Friendship and Family in Early Modern England: The
Sociability of Adam Eyre and Samuel Pepys', Journal of Social History, 27 (19934), 51736;
A. J. Vickery, `Women of the Local Elite in Lancashire 1750c.1825' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of London, 1991), 1578.
3

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

28

Emergence

affected by gender distinctions, one of a number of major transformations during the early modern period. On the other hand,
despite the rise of new-style public sociability, many older forms of
socializing persisted strongly after 1700, particularly in the countryside
and among lower social groups.
Of the unfathomed questions about social life in the early modern
period, one of the most interesting is how individuals spent their time.
By the seventeenth century diaries and other sources start to shed
light on this issue, but for earlier periods the daily routine of wealthy
as well as poorer peoplethe way in which they structured their day,
the amount of time spent outside the home, the volume of socializing
is still unclear. Given, however, that up to the eighteenth century most
business activity was carried on at home and single people were often
discouraged from living on their own, there can be no doubt that the
household was a key centre of social interaction. As well as the
ordinary occasions for eating together, made more complex after
1700 with the arrival of a suite of meals (breakfast, luncheon, tea,
dinner, and supper), the rhythm of family events incorporated birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and Christmastide and New Year
festivities. 5 Special occasions enabled parents and children to celebrate
their lineal unity. `Upon mid Lent Sunday', it was said in 1632, `every
good child is said to dine with his father and mother'; and by the next
century this had turned into Mothering Sunday, Samuel Curwen noting in Georgian Bristol the custom for `a cake or cakes to be brought
to mothers and [children] dine with her' that day. 6 Many household
social activities brought together not only immediate family but livingin servants, wider kin, and outsiders. This was particularly the case in
aristocratic or gentry households where the arena of hospitality, so
important for manifesting nobility, territory, and the reciprocal nature
of social relations, might embrace household servants, estate ofcials,
tenants, and farmworkers, together with cousins, lawyers, local gentlemen, and aristocratic guests and their hangers-on. In 1612 the Earl of
Salisbury entertained well over a hundred people at a time at Hateld,
as did the Earl and Countess of Rutland on their Midlands estate. In
Tudor Wales, in spite of the relative poverty of the gentry, every caller
5
A. Palmer, Movable Feasts (London, 1952), 8 ff.; R. Latham and W. Matthews (eds.), The
Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 197083), ii. 194; iv. 55; v. 62, 294, 356; C. Hazard (ed.), Nailer
Tom's Diary (Boston, Mass., 1930), 129 ; Vickery, `Women of the Local Elite', 250; A. Oliver
(ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen Loyalist (Cambridge., Mass., 1972), i. 406; ii. 849.
6
F. S. Boas (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Croseld (London, 1935), 59; Oliver (ed.), Curwen
Journal, ii. 598.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

29

had to be given a meal and often a night's lodging. At Christmastide

huge crowds of local people came to be entertained at gentle houses.7
By the late seventeenth century, however, landed families had begun
to retreat from some of the practice, if not the rhetoric, of old-style
hospitality; the number of servants was reduced, and the head of the
household took up residence in London or another town for part of
the year. Genteel entertainment of outsiders was increasingly selective,
inferior people being excluded from important meals such as dinner.
Even traditional celebrations came under pressure, with a reluctance,
for example, to welcome ordinary villagers to New Year dinners or
other festivities. 8
Two developments accentuated the importance of socializing by the
immediate family. First, improvements in housing, particularly among
the landed classes, merchants, and larger farmers, and affecting many
parts of the country by the early Stuart period, turned the house into a
home, more spacious and comfortable, having greater private space
devoted to the principal members of the family. The domestication of
family life meant greater opportunities for private discourse, reading,
and entertainments like card-playing or instrumental music. A second
factor may have been the growth of committed Protestantism in the
sixteenth century with its stress on private prayer and reading of the
Bible: preachers repeatedly called for masters to lead their families in
reading and discussing the Scriptures. For gentlewomen in particular, a
great deal of time in the country was spent in the house, dining with
family members, walking in the garden (as gardening became fashionable), and reading books and sermons. But the family was only one of
the arenas of godliness and sociability, as it was complemented by the
neighbourhood and other centres of great activity. 9
The constant social interplay between household and neighbourhood has been highlighted in recent studies. Rites of passage were as
much neighbourly as family celebrations. Childbirth was usually
attended by the local midwife and other gossips, while christenings
7
F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), ch. 2; L. Stone, The Crisis of
the Aristocracy, 15581641 (Oxford, 1965), 5567; A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth
(London, 1950), 256; E. Roberts, `Everyday Life in the Homes of the Gentry', in J. Gwynfor
Jones (ed.), Class, Community and Culture in Tudor Wales (Cardiff, 1989), 41.
8
Heal, Hospitality, ch. 3; Vickery, `Women of the Local Elite', 319; M. M. Verney (ed.),
Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1930), i. 290, 291; ii. 41.
9
Heal, Hospitality, 157 ff.; C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England
(London, 1964), ch. 13; P. Clark, `Thomas Scott and the Growth of Urban Opposition to
the Early Stuart Regime', HJ, 21 (1978), 5; E. A. Parry (ed.), Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir
William Temple (Edinburgh, 1888), 1034.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

30

Emergence

brought together extended kin, neighbours, and local worthies. In the

1640s the daughter of Sir Thomas Mainwaring, a Cheshire gentleman,
was baptized in the presence of several landowners, `most of our
friends in Nantwich and of the tenants in the neighbourhood'.
Marriages often marked the extended climax of family and neighbourhood interaction. At a wedding at Birstall Smithies in the West Riding
in the 1670s the young couple invited many guests from the vicinity
and kept two days of feasting and music, played by ddlers and pipers
from Wakeeld. Across the Atlantic in Puritan Massachusetts the
drinking, eating, and dancing could also stagger on for several
days. 10 Marriage feasts in Elizabethan Cornwall were coupled with
hurling matches, at which the `guests undertake to encounter all
comers'. The ceremonies of death were another major communal
occasion, which united relations, friends, neighbours, and outsiders.
When Elizabeth Freke's husband died in Norfolk in 1706 she noted: `I
had all the gentry and neighbours of my 25 years acquaintance to
attend [the funeral] by me invited and several hundreds more I did not
know.' 11
Public neighbourly socializing was not conned to life-cycle events.
Newcomers to a community might be greeted with a neighbourly
`welcoming', just as those departing were often given a `farewell' or
`foy' by friends and neighbourssaid to be `one of the most drunken
feasts in this country'.12 At the heart of the traditional sense of
community was mutual aid, and this was invariably accompanied by
boozing and socializing. Of the many types of neighbourly ale, the
most important were church ales and help-ales. Church ales sold drink
and food to support the fabric of the most important public building
in most communities. At Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire half-adozen ales were held in 149799 to fund major work on the parish
church, installing new bells, and such events were often regaled with
games, sports, and other entertainments. Attacked by the godly during
10

For an exhaustive account of the local socializing associated with life-cycle events see
D. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart
England (Oxford, 1997); Cheshire RO, DDX 384/1, p. 9; also R. B. Outhwaite, Clandestine
Marriage in England, 15501850 (London, 1995), pp. xviiixx; J. H. Turner, The Rev. Oliver
Heywood, B.A. His Autobiography . . . (Brighouse, 1881), ii. 2523; G. Sheldon, History of
Deereld (Deereld, Mass., 18956 ), ii. 6901.
11
F. E. Halliday (ed.), Richard Carew of Antony: The Survey of Cornwall (London, 1953), 148;
M. Carbery (ed.), Mrs Elizabeth Freke Her Diary, 1671 to 1714 (Cork, 1913), 62, 69.
12
Parry (ed.), Osborne Letters, 139; H. J. Morehouse (ed.), Extracts from the Diary of the Rev.
Robert Meeke (London, 1874), 12, 52; W. L. Sachse (ed.), The Diary of Roger Lowe of Ashton-inMakereld, Lancashire 166374 (London, 1938), 267; Star, 30 April 1791.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

31

the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, they survived into
the later period, notably in the North of England. At the anniversary
feast called Ellandtide, held in the West Riding, `they make, it was said,
great provisions of esh and ale and have their friends come from all
parts and eat and drink and rant in a barbarous, heathenish manner'. 13
At help-ales beer was brewed and the prots used to succour poorer
neighbours. In 1607 a Somerset man said he had just been `to an ale
which was made at a poor weaver's house at Corscomb to help him'.
In the 1660s nearly thirty neighbours attended `a drinking' at Mungo
Dalton's in Holme Cultram, Cumberland, and raised a substantial sum.
Though help-ales declined with the growing provision of parish poor
relief, neighbourly co-operation remained a vital theme in traditional
socializing, especially in rural areas. In the 1680s, when Mr Armitage's
mill was moved to the River Calder in Yorkshire, all those involved in
the work `drunk quafng cups' and `grew merry'. In the American
colonies barn- and house-raisings were a regular feature of communal
life, with people going to several a year. 14
Neighbours came together at the different stages of the agricultural
and liturgical year: at ploughing time and sheep-shearing, at Rogationtide, Candlemas, Shrovetide, mid-Lent, Easter, Maytime, Whitsuntide,
midsummer, and St Peter's Eve. Neighbourly and communal rituals
and celebrations varied greatly across the country: rush-bearing ceremonies ourished in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and Robin Hood plays
in Devon (probably linked to church ales), while the West Midlands
had its Abbot of Marham games at Maytide. 15 Localism also moulded
the pattern of civic celebrations in corporate towns. Before the
Reformation some northern and Midland cities had highly complex
ceremonial years dominated by celebrations and processions at Lent,
Hocktide, Palm Sunday, Easter, St George's Day, May Day, Ascension,
Whitsun, and the great climactic festival of Corpus Christi, though in
13
Cambs. RO, P 11/5/2, fos. 14, 16; R. Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England
(Oxford, 1994), 99100, 13842, 1903; D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (Oxford,
1987), 458, 923, 95, and passim; Turner (ed.), Heywood Autobiography, ii. 264.
14
J. M. Bennett, `Conviviality and Charity in Medieval and Early Modern England', P&P,
134 (1992), 1941; C. J. Sisson, Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age (Cambridge, 1936), 163;
F. Grainger, `James Jackson's Diary, 1650 to 1683', Trans. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc., ns, 21 (1921), 11112; Turner (ed.), Heywood Autobiography, ii. 283;
AAS, MS, S. Peabody Diary, octavo vol. for 1784.
15
Phythian-Adams, Local History, 215; Hutton, Merry England, ch. 1; W. Hone, The Year
Book of Daily Recreation and Information (London, 1878), 5524; J. M. Wasson (ed.), Devon,
Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, 1986), pp. xxivxxv; J. A. B. Somerset (ed.),
Shropshire, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, 1994), ii. 404.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

32

Emergence

other urban centres, especially in southern England, ceremonial activity

was much less elaborate and public. Under government and Puritan
pressure, old civic and communal rituals had increasingly disappeared
by the late sixteenth century; but in some places civic traditions proved
more resilient, albeit often metamorphosed into activities directly
linked to the town oligarchy. At Chester, for instance, the Christmas
watch, anciently against the Welsh, became an occasion for displaying
civic power against internal disorder, and for elite processing. One of
Chester's antiquaries, David Rogers, spoke in the early seventeenth
century of `civil societies united together by these ancient and laudable
customs, who meeting in such a state of solemnity, do join in friendly
concord'. Yet there was growing stress by this time on communal
activities being protable to the city, not least through the attraction
of fashionable visitors. When the Midsummer show was revived in
1661, after lapsing during the Civil War, it was said `to tend much to the
promotion of trading and other advantages to the said city'. 16
Sports provided another focus for local socializing. Hunting
remained an essential activity of country magnates, dening their
patriarchal status and image, and played an important part in bringing
together kinsfolk and neighbouring landowners. Nicholas Assheton, a
Lancashire gentleman under James I, spent almost every day at certain
times of the year hunting otters, foxes, and stags, from time to time
chasing with `our old company of hunters'. Gentry deer-parks multiplied (Sussex alone had up to 100 before the Civil War), and concerted
efforts were made to pursue and prosecute lower-class interlopers. In
fact, hunting and other sports attracted all social groups. In the 1690s
the Chester lawyer Roger Comberbach went hare-coursing with a bevy
of neighbours, prefaced by heavy drinking: `we beat [for] several hours
but no sport', and so they took refuge once more at an alehouse. 17
Fishing and bowls also became fashionable as social activities. In
Charles I's reign Thomas Croseld, a fellow of Queen's College,
Oxford, went shing with the scholars; another time, after dining
16
C. Phythian-Adams, `Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry,
14501550', in P. Clark and P. Slack (eds.), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 15001700 (London,
1972), 5780; see the more oligarchic ceremonial pattern at Bristol in D. Sacks, The Widening
Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy 14501700 (Oxford, 1991), 172 ff. L. M. Clopper (ed.),
Chester, Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, 1979), 1423, 415; A. D. Mills, `Chester
Ceremonial: Re-creation and Recreation in an English ``Medieval'' Town', Urban History
Yearbook 1991 (Leicester, 1991), 4, 13.
17
F. R. Raines (ed.), The Journal of Nicholas Assheton of Downham, Chetham Society
Remains, os, 14 (1848), 1, 8, 13 and passim, 61; A. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace
and War: Sussex, 16001660 (London, 1975), 28; Chester City RO, CR 99/1, fos. 70v71.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

33

with friends, he `did resort to bowl in the garden and to have some
sport'. Other traditional games included running races, broadsword
matches, cricket (mainly in the South-East), stool-ball and football, the
latter, typically, ending with the players assaulting one another.18
The street formed the stage for a great deal of neighbourly activity,
such as games, festivities, bonres, and other informal socializing.
One has a strong impression of a `community' of the street,19 though
other important centres of public socializing existed. Traditionally, the
most important covered public space in a community was the parish
church, with its associated churchyard and, in some parts of the
country, church-houses. Here people came together not only for
liturgical services but for a host of neighbourly and communal functions: rites of passage, plays and pageants, music-making, charitable
events, church ales and wakes, and games, with activities spilling over
into the churchyard and neighbouring space. Suppression of parish
fraternities in the 1540s was accompanied by threats to the wider role
of the church in the community from: religious conict in certain
towns after the Reformation; the destruction of redundant churches
and the absence of new ecclesiastical building before 1640 (despite
rising local populations); and growing attacks by Puritan preachers and
others on the enactment of traditional rituals and entertainments
within the ambit of the church. 20 Even so, high levels of attendance
are recorded at Easter communion servicesnear to 90 per cent in
parts of London, and over 80 per cent at Chester. Such gures may
well overstate weekly attendances, and major variations probably
occurred between parishes depending on their social composition
and territorial size. However, for the majority of the population,
especially the respectable classes, the parish church continued as the
main hub of communal life into the seventeenth century, as the worship
of the devout was complemented by the more mundane concerns of
the rest, lapsing into business talk, irting, and neighbourly gossip
during and after services. Indeed, in some ways the social role of the
18
Boas (ed.), Croseld Diary, 6, 23, 63; Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion, 757 and
passim; Oxfordshire RO, MS, Oxon. dioc. c. 23, fo. 140.
19
P. Clark and J. Clark, `The Social Economy of the Canterbury Suburbs: The Evidence
of the Census of 1563', in A. Detsicas and N. Yates (eds.), Studies in Modern Kentish History
(Maidstone, 1983), 80; J. Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the 17th Century
(Cambridge, 1987), 21820.
20
Hill, Society and Puritanism, ch. 5, pp. 4215; V. Harding, `Churchyards in Early Modern
London and Paris', in The Street and Square: Public and Private Space, Papers at the Second
European Urban History Conference (Strasbourg,1994).

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

34

Emergence

church was enhanced in this period. Sunday services were prolonged

through extended preaching, while attendance during the week beneted from special sermons on market- and fast-days. Prophesying
meetings, which aimed at improving spiritual standards, were held
in numerous market towns under Elizabeth and likewise provided
important opportunities for clerical and lay interaction and socializing.
When these ran into opposition from the queen, their place was often
taken by combination lectureships, which involved a series of sermons
by different preachers, clerical meetings, and dinners, and which
attracted to town a `concourse of people' from the neighbouring
countryside. 21
For the respectable godly the services of the local parish church,
supplemented by prophesyings or lectureship sermons, were only one
focus of religious and social activity. They might ride or walk to
neighbouring parishes to hear sermons by learned preachers. Numbers
of laity gathered together before 1640 at private prayer meetings held
in households or inns. Most were conformist Puritans, though there
was an undercurrent of unorthodoxy. Together with illicit Catholic
meetings, we nd small gatherings of Protestant sectaries, not least the
Family of Love, which maintained a network of conferences, parlour
meetings, and mutual support. As royal and episcopal policy shifted
towards religious conservatism, the early seventeenth century saw a
growing number of separatist congregations, such as the Baptists and
Independents. Recruiting mostly from the middling and lesser ranks
of society, men and women, they offered not only radical religion but
opportunities for social mixing, links between communities, and, on a
limited scale, philanthropic activity. These congregations and the more
informal, but conformist, conventicles and combination lectureships
can be seen as continuing some of the older voluntaristic principles of
the medieval fraternities. They may also be another tenuous bridge to
the new secular voluntary associations of the seventeenth century. 22
21

Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, 2824; N. Alldridge, `Loyalty and Identity in Chester
Parishes, 15401640', in S. J. Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People (London, 1988), 98;
K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), p. 161; also D. D. Hall, Worlds of
Wonder, Days of Judgement: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989),
1517; P. Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983),
47398.
22
Hill, Society and Puritanism, 667, 88 ff.; P. Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: The Church
in English Society, 15591625 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 6; C. W. Marsh, The Family of Love, 15501630
(Cambridge, 1994), ch. 6; M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities (Cambridge, 1974), 2769;
W. Stevenson, `The Economic and Social Status of Protestant Sectaries in Huntingdonshire,
Cambridgeshire, and Bedfordshire, 16501725' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

35

While the English Revolution led to considerable disruption of established religion and the proliferation of dissenting congregations, this
did not mean the demise of the local Anglican church as a social
centre. There is much to suggest that it exercised a vital role in towns
into the early eighteenth century. 23
Street and church were but two of the local arenas for public
sociability. As already noted, trade gilds survived the Reformation
and retained signicant social functions, with feasts, sermons, processions, and the like. However, they were increasingly regulated by the
town authorities, and their social ambit narrowed with the growing
dominance of leading masters, marginalizing ordinary members from
the social and cultural life of gilds. After 1700 they were in decline in
many English towns. 24
Unlike the trade gilds, civic corporations expanded their authority
during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, affecting not
only economic but also social and cultural activities. Numerous towns
were newly incorporated and many boroughs received a raft of additional privileges. In larger towns power was usually focused in the
hands of a narrow elite, sustained by wealth, kinship, and royal favour.
In line with the increasingly elitist nature of civic ceremonies, a shift
took place away from larger-scale civic meetings and social events
towards smaller private gatherings behind closed doors; traditional
ofcial hospitality towards ordinary citizens declined. The contraction
of civic sociability was paralleled by the efforts of Puritan magistrates
to curb traditional neighbourly socializing, whether in the church,
street, or drinking house. In early Stuart cities like Gloucester,
Salisbury, and Coventry, there was an attempt to construct a godly
commonwealtha city on the hillwith its own distinctive pattern of
public and private socializing, dominated by sermons and prayer
meetings. Such efforts were largely discredited by the upheavals and
failures of the English Revolution. Crown and gentry interference in
Cambridge, 1990), 97, 110 (I owe this reference to the kindness of Margaret Spufford); E. B.
Underhill (ed.), Records of the Churches of Christ Gathered at Fenstanton, Warboys and Hexham,
Hanserd Knollys Soc., 9 (1854), 14, 1619, 1089, 114.
23
J. M. Triftt, `Believing and Belonging: Church Behaviour in Plymouth and
Dartmouth, 17101730', in Wright (ed.), Parish, Church and People, 17996; also W. M. Jacob,
Lay People and Religion in the Early 18th Century (Cambridge, 1996).
24
See above, pp. 234. For a more positive view see J. P. Ward, Metropolitan Communities:
Trade Guilds, Identity and Change in Early Modern London (Stanford, Calif.,1997). M. J. Walker,
`The Extent of the Guild Control of Trades in England, c.16601820' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Cambridge, 1985), chs. 45.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

36

Emergence

boroughs after the Restoration challenged civic authority; and town

corporations experienced a loss of momentum by the early Georgian
era, and played a limited part in the revival of urban sociability at that
time.25
More important was gentry patronage. Unfortunately, relatively
little is known about gentry involvement in towns before the Civil
War. Puritan gentry sometimes supported prophesying meetings and
lectureships, and growing landed representation on the commission of
the peace led to increased attendance at quarter sessions. Out-of-court
gatherings of gentry dining together at `ordinaries' at inns and taverns
might discuss not only political but religious and social matters. The
twice-yearly assize courts in the main county towns and the increasingly numerous militia meetings may have provided other foci for
informal socializing among landowners, overshadowing the traditional
role of the county courts, which were now in decline. Greater gentry
activity in local government reected, in part, the new power and
patronage of the Tudor state, but also changing attitudes to personal
honour among the landed classes, as Renaissance codes of civility,
placing greater emphasis on service to the prince, eclipsed or overlay
older notions of local patriarchalism and landownership. 26 Generally,
however, there is little evidence before the Civil War of the extended
programme of new-style socializing which developed around court
sessions (particularly assizes) during the Georgian era. One reason for
this limited sociability may have been that attendance at quarter
sessions, though rising, normally involved only a small proportion
of county justices. Extensive gentle socializing at sessions was also
discouraged by the oft-strained relations between many boroughs and
local gentry. Few landowners kept (or stayed for any time in) town
houses before the 1620s, although from that decade the growing
volume of county business at sessions and assizes, together with
meetings of the new commissions created by Charles I, probably
led to a greater landed inux. This accelerated during the 1640s,
25
P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transition, 15001700 (London, 1976), 12832; Heal,
Hospitality, ch. 8; J. Barry (ed.), The Tudor and Stuart Town, 15301688 (London, 1990), ch. 9;
I. Archer, `The Civic Community, 15401700', in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of
Britain, Vol. II, 15401840 (Cambridge, forthcoming); see below, Ch. 5.
26
P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London, 1967), 1756; A. Hassell Smith,
County and Court: Government and Politics in Norfolk, 15581603 (Oxford, 1974), 86, 8990;
A. Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England (London, 1986), 49 ff., 98
100; for the earlier social role of the county court see M. Bennett, Community, Class and
Careerism (Cambridge, 1983), 24. L. Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia, 15581628 (London,
1967), 1819 and passim; M. Jones, Society, Politics and Culture (Cambridge, 1986), 308415.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

37

when the powerful county committees brought troops of middling

and lesser gentry to town.27
As well as attracting the gentry, sessions and assizes likewise functioned as a county meeting-place for lesser folk, who came there as
litigants, jurors and witnesses, and stayed to meet friends, do business,
and socialize. Even so, for many country people the main social
venues outside their villages remained the myriad fairs and markets
held in small towns, as well as bigger cities, across the kingdom. Their
importance almost certainly grew during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as inland trade expanded. Markets and fairs offered
regular, xed times to rendezvous with kin and friends from other
places, to hear news, discuss religion, drink, listen to a sermon, and be
entertained by minstrels, itinerant players, and ballad singers. Here
prosperous merchants rubbed shoulders with farmers and craftsmen,
labourers, poor widows, and children, and business and socializing
spilled over into nearby drinking houses. Thus one fair day in the
1590s Hugh Draiton's alehouse at Atherstone, a small town in
Warwickshire, was `greatly frequented with guests going in and out
continually', poking their heads into the different rooms to look for
`any of their acquaintance'. Social trafc at markets and fairs was
seasonal, with lower attendance in the long winter months. 28
Before the Civil War the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and
the inns of court in London, attracted rising numbers of young gentry,
along with the offspring of professional and lesser social groups. For
many gentlemen, frequently staying for only a few months and rarely
bothering to graduate, university was rather like a fashionable holiday
camp, most of their time being spent on hunting, drinking, gaming, and
feasting, often in the company of men from the same shire. County and
regional solidarities were also underpinned by scholarships to particular
colleges (and their associated clusters of tutors and students from one
shire), and possibly by informal student groups with their initiation
rituals, though these probably declined after the 1640s. 29 Already
27
J. Morrill, Cheshire, 16301660 (Oxford, 1974), 9; Clark and Slack, English Towns, 1345;
P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County Town (Stroud,
1995), 512, 601; A. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion, 164060 (Leicester,
1966), 12685.
28
A. Everitt, `The Marketing of Agricultural Produce', in J. Thirsk (ed.), Agrarian History
of England and Wales, Vol. IV (Cambridge, 1967), 46777, 4889; Spufford, Contrasting
Communities, 231; Leics. RO, 1 D 41/4/673a.
29
N. Tyacke (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1997), 52 ff.,
70 ff.; V. Morgan, `Cambridge University and ``The Country'', 15601640', in L. Stone (ed.),
The University in Society, Vol. I (Princeton, NJ, 1975), ch. 4; Clark (ed.), Wood Life, i. 13340.

5.11.99 14:59 02 Chapter 0394

38

Emergence

before the 1640s we hear reports of informal student meetings in

private rooms at the colleges and inns of court. As well as student
and academic socializing, the universities had a wider function in social
networking. By the early seventeenth century the Oxford Act and the
Cambridge Commencement, at the close of the academic year, were
pulling in crowds of old members, especially clergy, as well as
Londoners and courtiers. As Thomas Croseld rhymed: `the Act at
Oxon shortly does approach, where much resort there is of man and
coach.' The ancillary entertainments included stage-plays, horse-races,
and shows of wild animals, including a lion, camels, and a wolf, as well
as the witches of Lancashire. The Commencements at Harvard and
Yale remained among the most important events in New England's
social calendar for much of the eighteenth century. 30
Presiding over the national hierarchy of public sociability in Tudor
and Stuart England were Parliament and the Court. Gentry representation in the House of Commons rose from perhaps half in the 1470s
to over three-quarters in the 1590s. Parliamentary sessions likewise
increased in number and duration: under Elizabeth the thirteen
sessions lasted less than two and a half years in total; in the period
from 1603 to 1629 the sessional total was four and a half years. As
now, the Commons was often poorly attended, and extra-curricular
activities were the main priority of MPs. Sessions served as a focus for
county meetings of leading gentry; as a time to do business and to
visit the playhouses and other metropolitan entertainments; as an
occasion to nd a marriage partner for a son or daughter. But the
sociable importance of Parliament must not be overstated before the
Civil War. Meetings before the Long Parliament were irregular (with
no sessions between 1629 and 1640); MPs were often absent in the
shires; and in many instance they left their wives at home on their
estates. By contrast, the regularity and greater length of sessions after
1640 made Parliament more and more the anchor of metropolitan
sociability, as the opening of the fashionable season became determined by the start of parliamentary sessions. 31
30

Clark (ed.), Wood Life, i. 423; R. Spalding (ed.), The Diary of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 16051675
(Oxford, 1990), 58; Tyacke (ed.), University of Oxford, iv. 31, 3023; Boas (ed.), Croseld Diary,
25, 79; see below, p. 398.
31
J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1963), 1401, 367; G. E. Aylmer,
The King's Servants (new edn., London, 1974), 57; J. Loach, Parliament Under the Tudors (Oxford,
1991), 402; F. Bamford (ed.), A Royalist's Notebook: The Commonplace Book of Sir John Oglander,
Kt. (London, 1936), 234, 239; A. Searle, `Sir Thomas Barrington in London, 164044', Essex
Journal, 2 (1967), 3540, 63.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

39

Paradoxically, the Court grew in scale and sociable importance as its

political power waned. From the sixteenth century it steadily
expanded, with a mushrooming complex of buildings at Whitehall
and an elaborate set of ceremonies and entertainments, but it
remained small by continental standards. While the number of
upper-class families with access to the Court rose under James I,
from the 1620s the Crown made sporadic attempts to reverse the
process. After the Restoration the Court resumed its growth, with the
royal palaces remodelled and enlarged to accommodate the throng of
visitors. Vying for public support with the Prince of Wales between
1717 and 1720, George I became a paragon of relentless socializing,
holding evening assemblies three times a week at St James's Palace,
crowded with the great and the good, which became important meeting places for metropolitan smart society. Under George III access to
the Court was further widened, with public promenades by the royal
family at Windsor attended by ordinary subjects. 32
These mostly institutional arrangements for traditional public
socializing in Tudor and Stuart England, occupying what is conventionally regarded as public space, were complemented and then
challenged by essentially commercial establishments, inns, taverns,
alehouses, and later, coffee-houses, which inhabited a separate sphere
of mixed space, between public and private. The number, size, and
social functions of the different types of victualling house advanced
sharply from the sixteenth century. In 1577 ofcial returns for thirty
English counties listed about 2,161 inns, 339 taverns, and over 15,000
alehouses. By the 1690s the number of inns had grown by over 80 per
cent, and the number of alehouses had nearly quadrupled. Already
Tudor inns had quite extensive premises, on the main streets of towns,
with a set of drinking and lodging rooms and stables, catering for the
needs of merchants, landowners, and substantial farmers. Expansion
seems to have been modest before 1600, but accelerated thereafter, so
that by the later Stuart era many of the London and provincial inns
became vast, lavishly equipped establishments. Taverns were less
extensive, but were increasingly well furnished, and served a similar
32
D. Starkey (ed.), The English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London,
1987); F. Heal, `The Crown, the Gentry and London: The Enforcement of Proclamations,
15961640', in C. Cross et al. (eds.), Law and Government Under the Tudors (Cambridge, 1988),
21821; J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London, 1997), 913; J. Beattie, The
English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge, 1967); J. Brooke, King George III (London,
1972), 2856.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

40

Emergence

clientele drawn from the better-off classes.33 Alehouses, by contrast,

were much smaller, in the century before the Civil War often kept
in the back room of a tenement by a poor widow or other indigent
person, and frequented mainly by small craftsmen, husbandmen,
labourers, and the travelling poor. However, after the Restoration
the world of the alehouse was steadily improved, and by the eighteenth century many premises had graduated to the ranks of respectable public houses. As with the elite establishments, the clientele
was predominantly male, since women were conventionally welcome
only with their husbands or boyfriends, or in groups on ritual
occasions. 34
By 1600 victualling houses not only sold alcoholic drinks, the lifeforce of conviviality, and some food, but also provided a venue for a
widening range of sociable activities encroaching on the territory of
traditional institutions. Early Stuart inns hosted gild and civic feasts,
cock-matches, and plays (increasingly excluded from town-halls). Alehouses became the crowded precinct for popular sociability, with
traditional music, dancing, and sportsdriven out from the church
and churchyard by the authoritiesjoined now by a medley of indoor
entertainments, particularly card-playing and board games. The great
surge of public sociability at inns and alehouses began in the late
seventeenth century, when innkeepers and publicans became leading
sponsors of new kinds of fashionable entertainment, from concerts to
cricket and clubs. 35
Clubs were also umbilically linked to the arrival of coffee-houses, as
Anthony Wood noticed. The rst coffee-house opened in Oxford in
the 1650s, and others quickly followed, often converted from older
taverns, and attracting gentlemen and merchants inuenced by a
fashionable fascination with the Levantine world. In London during
the 1670s it was said that `all the neighbourhood swarm' to them `like
bees and buzz there like them too'. Coffee-houses were places to
discuss politics, plays, or the latest foreign news, and to join a club like
33
P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 12001830 (London, 1983), 613, 424;
J. A. Chartres, `The Capital's Provincial Eyes: London's Inns in the Early 18th Century',
London Journal, 3 (1977), 2438; id., `Les Hotelleries en Angleterre a la n du Moyen Age . . .',
L'Homme et la route en Europe occidentale (Auch, 1980), 20728; A. C. Simon, The History of the
Wine Trade in England, Vol. III (London, 1964), 176209.
34
Clark, English Alehouse, chs. 4, 910; Westhauser, `Friendship and Sociability', 5201.
35
A. Everitt, `The English Urban Inn, 15601760', in id. (ed.), Perspectives in English Urban
History (London, 1973), 11320; Clark, English Alehouse, 79, 1536, 2325; Borsay, English
Urban Renaissance, 1445.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

41

the Temple Coffee-house Botanical Society,36 but in other respects

they were less important for new-style sociability, and this may help to
explain their declining social importance during the Georgian era.
Overall, however, the rise of public drinking houses was an vital
ingredient in the take-off of clubs and societies in early modern
Britain. More complex, more hierarchic, and better organized than
in other parts of Europe, drinking establishments not only provided
congenial shelter and support, but also supplied several of the key
features of the social architecture of the voluntary association: heavy
drinking, controlled social mixing, a combination of privacy and public
openness, and a predominantly masculine environment.
The growth of clubs and societies also has to be seen in the context
of wider changes in public sociability. Peter Borsay has highlighted the
arrival of new fashionable kinds of social and leisure activity as part of
the English urban renaissance after the Restoration, and has detailed
the rise of horse-racing and other fashionable sports, urban
promenades, balls and assemblies, music-making, and similar genteel
activities. First signs of such developments are already visible before
1640, frequently linked with the enhanced role of county towns. Racemeetings started to be held in a few towns like York and Chester from
Henry VIII's reign, and in the early seventeenth century new meetings
were arranged (quite often with royal patronage) at Newmarket,
Carlisle, Durham, Leicester, Newcastle, and Lincoln, and also over
the border in Scotland. 37 During the 1650s race-meetings served as
cover for royalist gatherings, and after 1660 Charles II's love of the
turf, as well as important advances in English breeding, turned horses
and races into a national addiction, which quickly spread elsewhere in
the British Isles and the colonies. Cock-ghting was a traditional sport
that became more regulated and fashionable in the early Stuart era,
following the introduction of cock-pits in major urban inns, though
the spread of high-status, high-wager contests between county teams
was a later phenomenon. Bowling was popular in London and the
provinces from the later sixteenth century, with the laying of bowling
greens at country houses. Bulstrode Whitelocke records visiting the
Earl of Rutland at Belvoir Castle in the 1630s and playing bowls
36
Clark (ed.), Wood Life, i. 423; A. Ellis, The Penny Universities (London, 1956), pp. xiv,
1824, 223 ff.; The Ale-Wives Complaint, Against the Coffee-Houses (London, 1675), 2; see also
S. Pincus, ` ``Coffee Politicians Does Create'': Coffeehouses and Restoration Political
Culture', Journal of Modern History, 68 (1995), 80734.
37
Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 1812, 35667; D. Palliser, Tudor York ( Oxford, 1979),
15; Clopper, Chester, 41; SRO (GRH), PC 1/22.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

42

Emergence

ad innitum. A small number of towns had public greens by the

outbreak of the Civil War, but once again the main fashionable
impetus in urban centres probably came later: by the 1680s Thomas
Baskerville recorded bowling greens at Bedford, Bury St Edmunds,
Gloucester, Pontefract, Warwick, and other towns up and down the
kingdom. 38
In regard to music, church works and private vocal and instrumental performances clearly ourished earlier, but public concerts outside
the Court had to wait until the 1670s, when they started to be held at
London drinking houses. Already in the Tudor period traditional local
plays and pageants were progressively displaced by the arrival of
commercial acting companies, often associated with leading noblemen. Early playhouses were conned to the capital, performances in
provincial towns usually taking place in churches, guildhalls, inns, and
similar premises, though Shrewsbury appears to have had a large
open-air theatre in the dry quarry outside the town walls. In towns
players came under strong Puritan attack, climaxing in the closure of
the London playhouses during the early 1640s. Fashionable urban
theatre ourished after the Restoration, evinced by the proliferation
of provincial playhouses from George I's reign. By 1700 the better-off
classes were able to pick and choose from these and other smart
entertainments in town, including the new clubs and societies. 39
Private and public socializing clearly experienced powerful changes
in Tudor and Stuart England. Yet diaries and journals remind us of the
continuing strength of traditional forms of social interaction well into
the seventeenth century. In Lancashire the landed Nicholas Assheton
notes hunting and shing expeditions, visits with family and friends to
Clitheroe fair (where he met other relations), family rites of passage,
wakes, dancing, `masking, gaming and other friendly sports', heavy
boozing with other gentry at Preston (`as merry as Robin Hood and all
his men'), and, most important, church-attendance (sometimes preceded by fox-hunting). New-style cock-matches, races, and bowling
are mentioned, but as informal events. Further south, on the Isle of
Wight, Sir John Oglander's commonplace book celebrates lavish
household hospitality by local gentry, muster meetings (often ending
38
P. Clark (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-Industrial England (Leicester, 1981), 99, 1612, 170,
17981; P. Edwards, The Horse Trade of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1988), ch. 1;
Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 1735; Spalding (ed.), Whitelocke's Diary, 102,105; HMC,
Portland MSS, II, 263 and passim.
39
J. Harley, Music in Purcell's London (London, 1968), 136 ff.; Somerset (ed.), Shropshire, ii.
3848; Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 11719, 148.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

43

in reckless drunkenness), hunting and hawking, and elaborate sociability at christenings and funerals. After the Restoration, however, the
new trends in public sociability have a visible effect. The Cheshire
landowner Sir Willoughby Aston was a devotee of traditional activities
like hunting, going to fairs with other gentry, and feasting with his
tenantry; but he also patronized horse-racesattending monthly
meetings in 1681and participated in genteel sociability at bowling
greens. 40
Less information is available about the pattern of social activity
among the middling and lesser orders, but the diary of Roger Lowe,
a young apprentice shopkeeper at Ashton in Makereld, Lancashire,
offers exceptionally detailed evidence. During the months from
January 1663 to April 1664 we learn that Lowe's favourite kind of
sociable behaviour was visiting other households, sometimes to
drink or eat but often simply to chat with people (43 per cent of
all entries); though many of these visits were to the home of Mary
Naylor, whom he was courting. Social visits to his own home were
substantially fewer (8 per cent), usually involving kinsfolk or shop
customers, probably because he was living on his own. Attendance
at church or prayer meetings (he was a Presbyterian) was important
(7 per cent), but particularly striking was the high proportion of
convivial visits to alehouses to drink and eat, socialize, and do
business with friends and customers (20 per cent). Against the
warnings of his Puritan conscience, the social attractions of this
communal institution proved inescapable. Lowe participated in a
minor way in newer forms of social interaction such as bowls
and races, but he spent considerable time in traditional activities,
such as walking and chatting with friends in the elds and on the
heath (8 per cent), as well as going to farewells and life-cycle
events. 41
All this reminds us of the highly complex and multi-layered nature
of sociable activity in Tudor and Stuart England, with the resilience
and vitality of much traditional interaction into the post-Restoration
period and after. In Scotland and Ireland, traditional centres of sociability such as households, the churchand in Scottish burghs the
40
Raines (ed.), Assheton's Journal, 1, 19, 21 and passim; Bamford (ed.), Royalist's Notebook,
90, 98, 124, 125, 172, 175, 1845; R. Stewart-Brown, `The Diary of Sir Willoughby Aston
. . .', Cheshire Sheaf, 3rd series, 24 (1927), 647, 77, 81, 86; 25 (1928), 256; see also Cheshire
RO, DDX 384/1 (diary of Sir Thomas Mainwaring).
41
Sachse (ed.), Lowe Diary, 1360.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

44

Emergence

gildsmay have maintained still greater inuence than in England.42

Even within the overall framework of older-style social interaction,
however, there were signicant shifts as the seventeenth century
progressed: the move towards greater indoor activity; the growth of
voluntary sectarian activity; the greater emphasis on mixed space;
signs of enhanced social and even gender differentiation; a move
towards more urban-centred activities; and the transformation of
some traditional pursuits into genteel entertainments.
The changing face of public sociability must be regarded as providing further key elements in the origin of clubs and societies, alongside
the organizational inuence of foreign academies, fraternities, and
trade gilds. The growth of religious voluntarism and the advance of
public drinking houses contributed signicantly to the evolving world
of voluntary associations, as did the rise of a powerful repertoire of
new-style fashionable entertainments in post-Restoration towns On
the other hand, the large array and vitality of older and new forms of
social interaction and discourse generated powerful competition for
the edgling voluntary associations, competition that was only overcome towards the end of our period.

ii
Competition was not the sole obstacle to the early growth of clubs and
societies. From Henry VIII's reign both the Crown and local magistrates suffered repeated spasms of anxiety over popular gatherings in
public space: hence the campaign against religious and civic ceremonies and pageants which reached its climax in the late sixteenth
century: Elizabeth's suppression of prophesying meetings during the
1570s; the attacks on parish wakes and other communal sports and
entertainments; and the efforts to suppress or regulate activities at
alehouses. Policy was shaped by the fear that such gatherings would
serve as a screen for religious and political dissidence or social disorder, and by the growing trend towards government interference in
national society at large. 43 Ofcial attitudes towards public meetings
were not consistently negative. The Society of Antiquaries had regular
42
I. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1995), esp. chs. 11, 13;
B. Boydell, `The Earl of Cork's musicians . . .', Records of Early English Drama Newsletter, 18
(1993), 10; J. S. Donnelly and K. A Miller (eds.), Irish Popular Culture, 16501850 (Dublin, 1998),
chs. 1, 2, 7; also R. Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland
(Manchester, 1997).
43
D. M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth (London, 1983), chs. 10, 11.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

45

meetings for twenty or so years after 1586except for the time of

military and economic crisis between 1595 and 1597. Discussions
under Elizabeth covered generally innocuous topics such as the
privileges of cities and the antiquity of arms, tombs, and monuments,
and a number of members had close links with the government. Even
so, an attempt to revive the society in 1614 (it had lapsed six years
earlier) provoked the `mislike' of James I, due to the society's perceived links with the parliamentary opposition. 44 Intervention was
even tougher in the 1620s over attempts to set up aristocratic and
gentry clubs in the capital. In November 1623 the Privy Council
denounced recent assemblies in London taverns and elsewhere by
divers gentlemen with `certain new forms of admittance and reception
into these societies with professions and protestations to observe and
keep certain articles'. According to Walter Yonge, one set of young
noblemen and gentry ocking to London `swore themselves in a
brotherhood and named themselves Tytere tues' (from the rst words
of Virgil's Eclogues); another society was called the Bugle, drawn
initially from gentlemen in the navy. The societies had their own oaths
and ofcers, as well as coloured ribbons and burlesque titles for
members, probably modelled on the Italian academies. Up to a
hundred people were arrested and the clubs collapsed. 45
Direct ofcial action was not the only problem. Government
censorship kept a tight rein on the publishing industry and deterred
the development of newspapers, so crucial later for broadcasting
information about voluntary associations and other forms of public
socializing. Before the calling of the Long Parliament communication
among the upper classes continued to be largely via word of mouth
and correspondence, the latter increasingly taking the form of specialist newsletters. Contact was facilitated by ocks of gentry coming
to Londonto the inns of court, the Westminster courts, Parliament,
and the Court. But government was generally hostile, cranking out
seventeen proclamations (15961640) against gentry residence in the
capital, plus a stream of council letters and other measures. Particularly drastic action was taken in 16223 and 16326, with expulsions
and nes, which provoked strong gentry resentment and a clause in
44
BL, Stowe MS. 1045, fos. 4 ff.; Evans, Antiquaries, 1013; L. Peck, Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I (London, 1982), 1023; K. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586
1631 (Oxford, 1979), ch. 1.
45
Acts of the Privy Council, 16235, 1323; T. S. Graves, `Some Pre-Mohock Clansmen',
Studies in Philology, 20 (1923), 399403; G. Roberts (ed.), Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., Camden
Soc., 1st series, 41 (1848), 701.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

46

Emergence

the Grand Remonstrance of 1641 challenging the Crown's right to

restrain the subject's liberty `in their habitation'. Already during the
1630s there are indications of the emergence of a genteel winter
season in the capital, for, as one Midland man remarked, `London is
a walled town . . . and the country cold'. 46 Nevertheless, only a small
minority of landowners, many of them probably from the Home
Counties, spent any extended time in the capital before 1640. Here
the meeting of the Long Parliament seems to have been crucial. The
Essex landowner Sir Thomas Barrington, though a regular visitor to
Westminster under Charles I, only moved out of lodgings and leased a
house near Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1641, as a result of his heavy
parliamentary work. His Sussex counterpart Sir Thomas Pelham initially spent a few weeks each year in London during the law term; in
16356 his stays became longer, and in 1637 he bought a house in
Clerkenwell. It was after 1640, however, that he became committed to
long and regular spells in the capital. 47 Outside the metropolis gentry
residence in towns remained low, at least before the 1630s, and this
was replicated in both Scotland and Ireland. The absence of signicant
clusters of resident gentry almost certainly retarded the development
of new types of public sociability, particularly voluntary associations,
which needed sustained participation by the better-off to attain
viability and momentum. Gentry participation was important because
the economic instability of many provincial towns before the Civil War
checked the growth of a prosperous urban mercantile and professional
elite, which was capable of offering its own patronage to these new
associations.

iii
Considering the negative attitude of government, the limited nature of
upper-class support, and the profusion of established forms of public
sociability, it is hardly surprising that most early associational meetings
46
C. Hill, `Political Discourse in Early 17th-century England', in C. Jones et al. (eds.),
Politics and People in Revolutionary England (Oxford, 1986), 4151; R. Cust, `News and Politics in
Early 17th-century England', P&P, 112 (1986), 6190; Heal, `Crown, Gentry and London',
21126; also M. Smuts, `The Court and its Neighbourhood: Royal Policy and Urban Growth
in the Early Stuart West End', JBS, 30 (1991), 1214; Leics. RO, DE 3214, 367/27 (I owe this
reference to Jenny Clark).
47
L. Stone, `The Residential Development of the West End of London in the 17th
Century', in B. Malament (ed.), After the Reformation (Manchester, 1980), 175; Searle, `Sir
Thomas Barrington', 3540, 63; Fletcher, County Community, 434.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

47

before 1640were small and informal, often held in private rooms.

We have already noted voluntary prayer meetings in parlours and
meetings of gentry and others at tavern `ordinaries', and by the late
1620s evidence exists of other, society-type gatherings. Thus the
future keeper of the great seal, Bulstrode Whitelocke, `had excellent
conversation in a kind of private commons' with several other young
lawyers and gentlemen; there `they exercised their wits and studies by
practising an imitation of the Star Chamber among them', censuring
members for swearing and breaking `their laws'. They were concerned
`to put cases, to inquire of public affairs, and to intermix discourse of
some kind of learning, whereby they improved their knowledge and
were more tted for future public services'. About this time, too,
private meetings in London may have brought together merchants
and gentry from the same shireforerunners of those formal county
feast societies that appeared in the 1650s.
Other groups were equally shadowy or informal. Among literary
circles was the Areopagus, involving Philip Sidney and Edmund
Spenser about 1579; another at Great Tew on Lord Falkland's estate
in the 1630s; and the group around Ben Jonson under James I (the
report about Jonson's so-called club at the Mermaid is not contemporary but probably dates from the 1650s, when literary clubs were
coming into vogue). 48 So far as mutual aid is concerned, there was a
brotherly meeting of masters and workmen printers in the capital
from the 1620s, while a Scottish box, probably an informal club to
help natives, originated there a little earlier, perhaps inuenced by
northern models. By the early seventeenth century benet clubs had
been established in Scotland at the important east coast port of
Bo'ness (with a Sea Box Society to relieve needy mariners), and several
other places. Among other bodies meeting in early Stuart England, we
nd an early patronymic body (everyone with the same surname), and
Sir Edward Dering's antiquarian circle Antiquitas Rediviva, which, like
some continental societies, was a corresponding network whose
members probably never met together as a group. 49
After the Glorious Revolution well-known societies invented an
early Stuart pedigree. The artistic Virtuosi of St Luke claimed (without
48
BL, Additional MS. 53,726, fo. 46 (I am grateful for this reference to Professor
W. Prest); see below, pp. 2745; J. B. Fletcher, `Areopagus and Pleiade', Journal of Germanic
Philology, 2 (1898), 42939; H. R. Steeves, Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship in
Great Britain and the United States (New York, 1913), 3, 545; J. Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in
London (London, 1886), 78.
49
See below, p. 352; N&Q, 8th series, 9 (1896), 513; Evans, Antiquaries, 213.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

48

Emergence

any proof ) that its founder was Sir Anthony Van Dyke under Charles
I. The History of The Robin Hood Society not only fabricated its origin as a
debating society in 1613, but went the whole hog and made up the
names of its Jacobean members and topics of debate.50 In reality, only
a small contingent of associations functioned in a public way before
the Civil War, and most of them were linked to traditional institutions.
The Society of Antiquaries had important ties to the Heralds Ofce;
the London Artillery Company (chartered in 1537) with the corporation of London; and the Christ's alumni society (about 1629) with
Christ's Hospital. Early masonic lodges were established in Scotland
after about 1600, some having outsiders as members, but they retained
links to the masonic gilds. 51 In England, the most numerous of the
new associations were the bell-ringing societies, which were often
associated with local churches. Informal ringing bands were fairly
common earlier, but from the late sixteenth century interest increased.
Arriving in London in 1602, a German nobleman, Philip Julius, was
deafened by `a great ringing of bells in almost all the churches', young
people doing it for exercise, amusement, and wagers. Formal societies
soon appeared: London's Scholars of Cheapside met from 1604 with
ofcers, rules, and feasts; the cathedral church at Lincoln had its
Society of the Ringers of St Hugh after 1612, while the Society of
Ringers of St Stephen's, Bristol, probably dates from the 1620s. 52 The
best-known of the ringing societies, the Society of College Youths,
was formed in London in 1637, and counted among its gentle
members Lord Brereton and Sir Clifford Clifton, representative of
the growing landed inux into the capital. However, the main impetus
behind these ringing associations was probably ecclesiastical, with
attempts to revive the Church and improve its fabric in the early
Stuart period; the trend towards enlarged peals of bells in churches
was vital in encouraging the spread of ringing societies. The Norwich
orists' feast which appeared in the 1630s may also have enjoyed
50

434.

BL, Additional MS 39,167, fo. 74; The History of The Robinhood Society (London, 1764),

51
Evans, Antiquaries, 89; A. Highmore, The History of the Honourable Artillery Company of
the City of London (London, 1804) (this was a hybrid body with ofcial and social functions);
H. A. Roberts (ed.), The Records of the Amicable Society of Blues and its Predecessors (Cambridge,
1924), 34; D. Stevenson, The First Freemasons: Scotland's Early Lodges and Their Members
(Aberdeen, 1989), 38, 13.
52
E. Morris, The History and Art of Change Ringing (London,1931), 6870, 21213; G. von
Bulow, `Diary of the Journey of Philip Julius . . . 1602', TRHS., 2nd series, 6 (1892), 7; BL,
Sloane MS 3463, fos. 341v; H. E. Roslyn, The History of the Antient Society of St. Stephen's Ringers,
Bristol (Bristol, 1928), 15.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

49

Church patronage; the preacher at one feast was William Shute, a keen
supporter of the Laudian bishop, Richard Corbet.53
To sum up, the number of societies before the 1640s was small and
their activity often informal and episodic. Yet some of the organizational features of later associations were beginning to surface, including sets of rules, the election of ofcers (mostly with gild names,
except for the Italianate aristocratic clubs of the 1620s), annual feasts,
and, last but not least, the exclusion of women.

iv
The Civil War had a serious disruptive effect on voluntary associations. `In regard of the troubles of the time', the Cheapside Scholars
were unable to elect a new ringing master or `general' to replace
William Keene, who stayed in post from 1642 to 1645. Likewise, no
new members were admitted to the College Youths from 1642 to
1645, and the Norwich orists' feast probably ceased to hold meetings. 54 Following the end of hostilities, however, activity revived, aided
by the collapse of the prerogative courts and the end of censorship.
Of crucial importance was the revolutionary expansion of the printing
press and the outpouring of pamphlets, broadsheets, and early newspapers (over 700 in 1645), promoting new ideas and new forms of
social and cultural contact; and within a short time printed sermons
and newspapers were to furnish important publicity for new associations. From about 1645 to 1648 a group of physicians and mathematicians, initiated probably by Theodore Haak, held fairly regular
meetings in London in taverns and private houses to discuss scientic
topics, which embraced anatomy, geometry, mechanics, and chemistry.
Robert Boyle's Invisible College in 16467 was a rather elusive
scientic body, perhaps a corresponding circle rather than a real
society. More formal was the Society of Astrologers, which had annual
dinners during most years between 1649 and 1658, and appointed
stewards, organized annual sermons, and forbade the discussion of
politics. In the late 1640s the Levellers, whose leaders included several
sectaries with experience of congregational voluntarism, may have
organized some of their activities around clubs at inns and taverns,
53
BL, Additional MSS 19,368, fos. 188 ff.; 19,370, fos. 2v4; J. A. Trollope, The College
Youths (Woking, 1937), 6,8; Morris, Change Ringing, 323; NNRO, MS 434, fos. 824; Norwich
Central Library, C 821.STR.
54
BL: Sloane MS 3463, fos. 15 ff.; Additional MS 19,368, fos. 188 ff.; M. Stevenson,
Poems (London, 1665), 57.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

50

Emergence

though their organization remains frustratingly obscure. In the

provinces, the antiquary Elias Ashmole and several Northern landowners joined an early, but probably short-lived, speculative (that is
non-operative) lodge of freemasons at Warrington.55
The new tempo of public socializing speeded up during the 1650s.
`In Cromwell's time,' Samuel Pepys recalled, `we young men used to
keep our weekly clubs' in Pall Mall. Some gatherings still took place in
private rooms or other old-style venues, but a growing majority
assembled in inns, taverns, coffee-houses, and alehouses. The greatest
number and variety were in London. There are reports of music and
poetry clubs as well as more informal dining and drinking associations. 56 In 1659, for instance, John Evelyn described a convivial group
of self-styled Hectors meeting for heavy drinking. Philanthropic
organizations started to become prominent. The older Scottish box
or benet society, run now by a group of `the most discreet and
substantial men of our country', was joined from 1655 by a body called
the Sons of Ministers, which aimed to raise money for indigent clerical
families (a forerunner of the Sons of the Clergy established under
Charles II). The most notable of these London charitable societies
were the county feast meetings. Between 1654 and 1658 at least ten
counties held one or more annual meetings with sermons and feasts
attended by London merchants, county gentry, and ministers. Many
sought to carry out poor relief and other godly works, as well as aiding
newcomers to the capital. 57
Among other London societies, the society of Finsbury archers was
formally established by 1652 and had target matches, stewards, and an
annual feast. Ashmole also mentions an antiquaries feast in the late
1650s, perhaps an attempt to revive the earlier society, and political
clubs multiplied towards the end of that decade. John Wildman
organized the Commonwealth Club in Bow Street, which was attended
by Henry Marten, Arthur Haselrig, and other republicans, while the
55

C. Hill, Century of Revolution (London, 1961), 174; C. Webster, The Great Instauration:
Science, Medicine and Reform, 162660 (London, 1975), 5467; Thomas, Religion and the Decline of
Magic, 304; H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution, ed. C. Hill (Nottingham,
1976), 314; C. H. Josten (ed.), Elias Ashmole (16171692) (Oxford, 1966), ii. 3956.
56
Latham and Matthews (eds.), Pepys Diary, i. 208, 2734; vi. 1478; Clark (ed.), Wood Life,
i. 204, 423; Harley, Music, 141; R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass.,
1933), 12.
57
J. Evelyn, A Character of England (London, 1659), 378; The Original Design, Progress and
Present State of the Scots Corporation at London (London, 1730), 34; N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A
History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . . 16551978 (Oxford, 1978), 310; see below,
pp. 27580.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

51

famous Rota was instituted in November 1659 by James Harrington at

the Turk's Head coffee-house in Westminster. Attended, more or less
regularly, by Wildman, Aubrey, Pepys, William Petty, and others,
debate ranged over controversial political, moral, and other issues.
There were strict rules of conduct, the members sitting around a large
oval table with a space in the middle for coffee to be served; votes
were taken by ballotan important innovation. For Harrington, it has
been said, the Rota was more vital for the spread of his ideas during
his lifetime than his own writings. 58 The late 1650s also saw the revival
of scientic activity in the metropolis, with meetings at Gresham's
College involving Laurence Rooke, Christopher Wren, and John
Webster, whose ranks were reinforced by recruits from Oxford,
Cambridge, and elsewhere. 59
Outside London, Oxford seems to have been the principal centre
for clubs and societies. This may, in part, reect the reportage of that
assiduous clubman Anthony Wood, but it is also a sign of the real
intellectual vitality there, shaped by pre-war developments and the
university reforms of the late 1640s. From 1656 Wood attended
regular weekly music meetings at William Ellis's house, and heard
instrumental and vocal concerts and performances by musicians
from London and abroad. Missing the club at Ellis's, Wood sighed,
he `could not well enjoy himself all the week after'. In addition, there
were college music clubs and a club of wits. Of particular importance,
after 1649, were the weekly meetings of the `experimental philosophical
club', associated rst with John Wilkins at Wadham College and later
with Robert Boyle. A set of formal rules was drawn up in 1651, and
the club and its thirty members founded both a laboratory and
observatory. The Oxford club proved one of the intellectual springboards for the Royal Society after 1660. 60
Otherwise, only a meagre clutch of societies were formed before
1660. The largest regional city, Norwich, saw the revival of its orists'
feast about 1645, while at Bristol at least one, and probably several
county societies appeared on the London model; thus the society of
Gloucestershire men, complete with stewards and other ofcers, held
annual feasts and processions after 1657. Bedford gained a well-known
58
Guildhall, MS 193/1; Steeves, Learned Societies, 56; D. Allen, `Political Clubs in Restoration London', HJ, 19 (1976), 5634; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 16612, 86, 196; Allen,
Clubs, 1519; O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey's Brief Lives (London, 1949), 125; C. Blitzer, An Immortal
59 Webster, Great Instauration, 915, 1569.
Commonwealth (New Haven, 1960), 59.
60
Clark (ed.), Wood Life, i. 204, 212, 2567, 273, 275, 466; 290; Webster, Great Instauration,
1547.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

52

Emergence

ringing society in 1655, and various country towns hosted meetings of

Baxter's Associations of Ministers, though it is unclear whether these
had any secular functions. Further aeld, voluntary associations landed
in colonial America with the establishment of a Scottish box or benet
society at Boston, probably similar to its London counterpart. 61
As in so much else, the English Revolution marked a breakthrough
in the development of voluntary associations, the proliferation of
increasingly elaborate and formal public meetings being encouraged
not only by an atmosphere of greater political and religious freedom
and an expanding press, but also possibly by the growing presence of
landowners in towns after the end of the Civil Wars. Taking the whole
country, however, the number and membership of clubs and societies
remained relatively small.

v
The Restoration ushered in a period of renewed uncertainty for
associations. Following General Monck's seizure of power and moves
for the return of Charles II, Pepys noted that the Rota, after `a small
debate upon the question whether learned or unlearned subjects are
the best . . . broke up very poorly and I do not think they will meet
any more'. The Commonwealth Club at a Bow Street tavern terminated in 1661 after Wildman's imprisonment. Government anxiety
over, the threat of political disorder, and the 1662 Printing Act
(restoring censorship), had a negative impact on society meetings.
The Cheapside Scholars ceased to meet about 1662, and the Esquire
Youths, a new, fashionable ringing society of lawyers formed in 1662,
lasted only a few months. 62 The obvious exception was the Royal
Society, which began in November 1660, bringing together those who
had met at Gresham College in the late 1650s and members of the
Oxford experimental club, but with a sizeable contingent of gentlemen and others persona grata at Court. The society's weekly meetings
won the king's approval. Detailed regulations were drawn up and
formed the basis of the statutes of the society, which received its rst
61
Norwich Central Library, C 821.STE; H. Bush, History of the Gloucestershire Society
(Bristol, n.d.), 57; Morris, Change Ringing, 2468; N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall (eds.),
Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (Oxford, 1991), i. 1069, 111, 113, and passim;
The Constitution and By-Laws of the Scots' Charitable Society of Boston (Boston, Mass., 1896), 911.
62
Allen, Clubs, 19; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 16612, 86, 196; R. Hutton, The
Restoration (Oxford, 1985), 1567; BL, Sloane MS 3463; F. W. M. Draper, `Rules for the
``Esquire Youths'', 166263', Trans. London and Middlesex Arch. Soc., ns, 11 (19514), 2418.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

53

royal charter in July 1662; the society's privileges were amplied by a

second charter the next year. Good political contacts at Court, the
king's personal interest in science, and a desire to emulate the royal
academies in France gave the society a head start over more informal
bodies. This was conrmed by the society's policy of building up a
network of national and overseas contacts through correspondence
and the successful Philosophical Transactions. About 1665, the Scottish
box society likewise thought it prudent to get a royal charter and was
duly incorporated as the Scots Corporation at London. 63
Political problems were compounded by the outbreak of plague in
the capital in 1665. Royal Society meetings were discontinued between
June 1665 and the subsequent March, and while Henry Oldenburg, the
secretary, stayed in Westminster, some members held meetings at
Oxford. The Great Fire of London in 1666 had less impact on the
society, but it had to remove its meetings from Gresham's College,
which was sequestered by the city authorities. Several more informal
societies were said to have lapsed at this time, probably due to the
exodus of gentry and merchants from the capital. The Paracelsian
society of Chymical Physitians, established in 1665 with favour at
Court, came under erce attack from the College of Physicians,
defending its Galenic traditions, and, after failing to obtain a royal
charter, faded away. 64 Difculties persisted into the late 1660s due to
the outbreak of the Anglo-Dutch War and growing religious persecution. Even the Royal Society ran into difculty, and suffered criticism
from established institutions like the church, universities, and the
College of Physicians. Through Sprat's History of the Royal Society
(1667), the society fought back, appealing to the elite classes by
stressing the utilitarian and empirical nature of its work. The only
new type of society to surface in this decade was the open benet
society. Though trade- and ethnic-based societies had existed since
before the Civil War, John Aubrey claimed that Robert Murray, a
London milliner, `invented and introduced into this city the club of
63
Webster, Great Instauration, 8899; H. Lyons, The Royal Society, 16601940 (Cambridge,
1944), 2142, 567; R. Porter, `The Early Royal Society and the Spread of Medical Knowledge', in R. French and A. Wear (eds.), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge, 1989), 2728.
64
T. Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London (London, 17567; new edn., New
York, 1968), ii. 602, 65, 11314; E. Fowler, A Sermon Preached at the General Meeting of
Gloucestershire-Men (London, 1685), 33; H. Thomas `The Society of Chymical Physitians', in
E. A. Underwood (ed.), Science, Medicine and History (Oxford, 1953), ii. 5671; also French and
Wear (eds.), Medical Revolution, 25562.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

54

Emergence

commerce consisting of one of each trade, whereof there were after

very many erected'. An early example, probably, was the Civil Club
instituted in 1669, with members comprising respectable citizens from
different trades.65
In the provinces there was more progress. Oxford's music clubs
may have lost musicians leaving for posts in the restored cathedrals,
but Wood notes meetings in the city of a catch club and chemistry
club (in the early 1660s), and the forming of county societies of
Berkshire and Oxfordshiremen. In the university there was the rst
appearance at Merton College of the common room, a social club for
dons separate from the college administration. 66 At Bristol the earlier
county societies probably continued to gather, and though plague in
1665 led to the suspension of the Gloucestershire, Somerset, and
Wiltshire feasts, the Gloucestershire meeting was revived by 1668.
Seven years earlier a so-called fraternity, with quarterly meetings, was
established at the Rose tavern. Most of the members seem to have
been lawyers, and the aim of `this sociable meeting was for encouragement to a friendly compliance . . . one with another in their practise
and employment'. Probably an early type of professional society, the
organization had a formal structure with a prior and other ofcers,
distinct categories of member, and detailed records. By the end of the
decade, however, growing internal conict caused it to dissolve,
though about this time Bristol seems to have gained an informal
scientic society. A few societies also appeared elsewhere, as at
Winchester and in the Oxford area, where a group of magnates of
differing political persuasions, including the Earl of Westmorland,
Lord Falkland, and Sir John Packington, belonged to `a fraternity of
the order of St Andrew'. 67
The growth of political dissension among the gentry and party
division in Parliament, culminating in the Exclusion Crisis in 1678
and the ending of ofcial censorship the following year, generated a
more open political and social climate. One sign was the Tory
ministry's inability, because of public opposition, to enforce its
65

Lyons, Royal Society, 5861; P. B. Wood, `Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's
History of the Royal Society', British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980), 120; Dick (ed.),
Aubrey's Brief Lives, 216; Timbs, Clubs, 45.
66
Clark (ed.), Wood Life, i. 275, 4678, 4725; ii. 154; Tyacke (ed.), Oxford, 1723.
67
Bush, Gloucestershire Society, 78; Bristol Central Library, Bristol Collection, 26064, pp.
3543; J. Barry, `The Cultural Life of Bristol, 16401775' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis,
University of Oxford, 1985), 252; Hants. RO, 120 M 94 W/F8; PRO, C 104/109 (part 1)
(I owe this reference to Keith Thomas and Christina Colvin).

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

55

proclamation for the suppression of London coffee-houses in

December 1675. Another indication of the changing situation was
the rapid expansion of voluntary societies. The Whig Green Ribbon
Club, established by 1674 in Chancery Lane, was only the best known
and organized of a choir of new political clubs in the metropolis: thus,
nearly thirty Whig clubs organized meetings, processions, and petitions in favour of Exclusion. Loyalist clubs also multiplied, like that
meeting at a tavern in the Inner Temple from 1679 to 1684, along with
Catholic clubs, encouraged by the Romanist sympathies of the king's
brother. 68 Rising to this Catholic challenge, but also in response to the
growing visibility of Protestant dissenters, Dr Anthony Horneck,
preacher at the Savoy chapel, encouraged the formation of Anglican
religious societies about 1678. These met weekly in churches, primarily
for devotional purposes and instruction. Most of those joining were
young men and apprentices for whom the attraction of the meetings
was not just spiritual: according to the Scot Robert Kirk, discussions
included `advice for advancing [in] trade, getting a maintenance, [and]
helping the sick of their society'. Anglican support was further consolidated at a higher social level by the establishment of the Sons of
the Clergy in 1674. Like the earlier Sons of Ministers, this body was
devoted to the relief of orthodox clergy and their families, particularly
those who had suffered from sequestration during the English Revolution. Help was provided to widows, and children were apprenticed
or sent to university. To avoid the taint of factionalism, the society
obtained a royal charter in 1678, and the early governors included not
only prominent Tory clergy but sympathetic gentry, merchants, and
professional men (Sir Christopher Wren became the rst vice-president). Less successful was the Welsh trust or society established in the
1670s to provide devotional books in Welsh and to promote schools in
the principality. This enjoyed a spread of Anglican and dissenting
support in the capital, but seems to have foundered about 1681 in
the wake of mounting religious and party strife. 69
68
D. Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II (Oxford, 1956), i. 1012; Allen, `Political
Clubs', 56480; T. Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge, 1987), 923,
1001, 11920, 1323; also G. de Krey, `London Radicals and Revolutionary Politics, 1675
83', in T. Harris et al. (eds.), The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford, 1990), 1423.
69
J. Woodward, An Account of the Religious Societies in the City of London etc. (4th edn.,
London, 1712, repr. Liverpool, 1935), 33 ff.; D. McLean, `London in 168990: Part IV',
Trans. London and Middlesex Archaeological Soc., ns, 7 (19337), 153; E. H. Pearce, The Sons of the
Clergy (London, 1928), 124; Cox, Bridging the Gap, 1728; M. J. Jones, The Charity School
Movement (London, 1964), 2829.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

56

Emergence

The surge of county societies in London in the 1670s also

needs to be viewed in this divisive political and religious context.
Though clothed in the rhetoric of philanthropy, the annual meetings were, increasingly, occasions for rallying political support. The
same may be true of the local or parish societies which appeared
in the capital at this time, often in the rapidly expanding suburbs.
Among them was the Stepney charitable society (1674), and the
society of Natives of St Martin's in the Fields (1676), a strongly
Tory body. 70
Whether other new societies in the 1670s had a similar political
dimension is more uncertain. One important type comprised school
alumni societies, with their annual meetings (often in London and
attended by pupils and old boys), their stewards, sermons and feasts.
St Paul's school had a feast society more or less continuously from
1674; Eton after 1679; Charterhouse after 1680; Brentwood school in
Essex from 1682; and Hitchin in Hertfordshire after 1684. As well as
socializing, participants usually contributed money towards school
funds. Though the main focus was on the annual feast, some of these
bodies probably had more regular meetings during the year, like the
society of Christ's Hospital, whose stewards and members assembled
quarterly from about 1681. 71 More hazy were the various patronymic
societies, which increased at this time. Though one or two had existed
earlier, the rst of the later Stuart associations was the `society of the
Gregories dwelling in about the city of London', which held a feast in
1673, preceded by a sermon by Francis Gregory and the baptism of a
baby Gregory in the church of St Michael's Cornhill. Other societies
existed for the Smiths, Adams, and Lloyds by the end of the decade,
and some probably organized weekly meetings. By the early eighteenth
century this type of association was well established; a few societies
may have been party-oriented, but most were primarily philanthropic
and migrant organizations. 72
70

See below, pp. 281, 285; The Rules and Orders of the Stepney Society . . . (London, 1759), 1;
J. Horden, A Sermon Preached at St Martin's in the Fields (London, 1676); see also below, 2856.
71
A St Paul's feast may have been held in the 1660s, but records survive from 1674: R. B.
Gardiner, The Admission Registers of St Paul's School (London, 1884), 447; A Catalogue of all the Books
In the Library of St Paul's School, London (London 1743). T. Horn, A Sermon Preached at the
Anniversary Meeting of the Eton-Scholars (London, 1679); N. Resbury, A Sermon Preach'd at the
Anniversary-Meeting of the Charter-House Scholars (London, 1681); The Loyal Protestant and True
Domestick Intelligence, 13 May 1682; London Gazette, 59 June 1684 (I owe this reference to
Mr P. Morgan); Roberts, Amicable Society, 57,10.
72
F. Gregory, The Gregorian Account . . . (London, 1673); A Congratulatory Poem upon the
Noble Feast . . . of the Smiths (London, ?1680); J. P. Malcolm, Anecdotes of the Manners and

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

57

Formal and public societies comprised only a minority of the

voluntary associations which spread in the capital in the 1670s. All
the signs indicate a growing range of informal literary, musical, drinking, and other clubs, though details are fragmentary. The collapse of
Exclusion in 1681 and the subsequent Tory reaction, the return of
censorship in 1685, and the renewal of political and religious uncertainty under James II failed to stop the growth of voluntary
associations. In London the Green Ribbon Club fell to pieces in
1683, after the Rye House plot, though it was not ofcially banned
by the authorities. The county feast societies turned to preaching Tory
propaganda against the radical Whigs and dissenters. Rather than
seeking to suppress associations, the Court sought to exploit them
to promote its cause: in the early 1680s Tory clubs mobilized large
groups of loyalist youths and apprentices in support of the government. When James II became king, the Anglican religious societies
deemed it prudent to hold fewer public meetings and to call themselves clubs, but their activity continued. 73
Fashionable ringing societies also spread. In addition to older
societies, London acquired the Western Green Caps and the All
Hallows Staining society. In the shires, Leicester, Nottingham, Chester,
and Licheld all had their societies by the 1680s. That at Licheld was
headed by the Tory landowner Richard Dyott as master and, with
clergy and gentry support, raised well over 200 for recasting the
cathedral's ten bells. Members had their own uniform of black silk
caps and annel waistcoats, and feasted on a great joint of roast beef
on 5 November. 74
Up to the 1680s Oxford remained the leading provincial centre for
voluntary associations. In 1683 the Oxford Philosophical Society was
set up by Robert Plot, John Wallis, and others. This organized lectures
and experiments and maintained close links with the Royal Society.
There were also music meetings and county feasts on a regular basis,
and a growing number of the colleges had common rooms for their
fellows. Elsewhere, Norwich acquired its own diocesan Sons of the
Clergy in 1684, while Bristol supported several formal societies, including political clubs. Other clubs also sprang up in country towns, as at
Customs of London (London, 1811), i. 353; The Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, 15
Dec. 1681; D. F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator, Vol. I (Oxford, 1965), 40-n.
73
R. North, Examen (London, 1740), 574; see below, p. 285; Harris, London Crowds,
176 ff.; Woodward, Account, 346.
74
Morris, Change Ringing, 73, 250, 254, 569; Guildhall, MS 16,791; William Salt Library,
Stafford, MS 24(i).

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

58

Emergence

Taunton and possibly Royston in Hertfordshire.75 Outside England

the evidence is patchier. Scotland had an ancient fraternity of free
gardeners of East Lothian after 1676, if not before, as well as its earlier
benet societies; but attempts by the Oxford society to set up similar
scientic bodies at St Andrew's and Aberdeen proved abortive. On the
other hand, Scottish freemasonry seems to have enjoyed growing
momentum from the 1670s, helped by increased gentry involvement. 76 Ireland boasted the Dublin philosophical society after 1683,
fortied by links with London and Oxford, and Dublin also had at
least one county meeting (of Cheshire men) and a Welsh feast during
the 1670s. Across the Atlantic, too, associations began to increase. As
well as the earlier Scottish box society at Boston, reorganized in 1684,
the port town boasted a short-lived philosophical society in 16834. In
Virginia, in April 1684, the tiny capital of Jamestown was entertained,
before the onset of the mosquitoes and stiing summer heat, by a
feast and sermon for a Loyal Society of Citizens born in and around
London. A similar society existed at Bridgetown, Barbados, from the
same decade. 77

vi
By the time of the Glorious Revolution the achievements of British
voluntary associations were still modest. The incidence and range of
societies, even in the capital, remained fairly small. Outside London
we nd only a sprinkling of societies, some evidently inuenced by
metropolitan exemplars, others, such as the society of the Rose tavern
at Bristol or the East Lothian gardeners, reecting more localized
traditions and needs. There was no single London-centred pattern of
75
A. Clark (ed.), The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. III, Oxford Historical Soc., 26
(1894), 768 and passim; M. Crum, `An Oxford Music Club, 16901719', Bodleian Library
Record, 9 (19738), 8591; Tyacke (ed.), Oxford, 172 ff.; Bodl., Tanner MS 92, fo. 70; J. Barry,
`Politics of Religion in Restoration Bristol', in Harris et al. (eds.), Politics of Religion, 1767;
Somerset RO, DD/SAS TN11 c/795 (16814) (Dr A. Scrase kindly provided information on
this club); Herts. RO, D/EX 319, Z1.
76
SRO (GRH), D 420/1; R. T. Gunther (ed.), Early Science in Oxford, Vol. XII (Oxford,
1939), 249, 251, 2557, 271; Stevenson, First Freemasons, 1569.
77
K. T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the 17th Century (London, 1970), esp. ch. 1;
R. Gillespie, `Dublin 16001700: A City and its Hinterlands', in P. Clark and B. Lepetit (eds.),
Capital Cities and their Hinterlands in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 1996), 92; O. T. Beall,
`Cotton Mather's Early ``Curiosa Americana'' and the Boston Philosophical Society of 1683',
WMQ., 3rd series, 18 (1961), 3612; Scots' Charitable Society of Boston, 1317; R. B. Davis, `A
Sermon Preached at James City in Virginia . . .', WMQ, 3rd series, 17 (1960), 37194.

5.11.99 15:00 02 Chapter 0394

Emergence

59

associations, nor a single class of society. Instead, a good deal of

experimentation is visible, with groups trying out different names,
more or less frequent times of meeting, and forms of organization.
Three principal types of organization are increasingly clear, however.
One comprised the formalized and heavily structured chartered
bodies, such as the Royal Society or the Sons of the Clergy, replete
with a raft of ofcials, regulations, and regular meetings. A second,
larger group were the feast societies such as the county, school, and
patronymic societies, having their principal emphasis, as with the late
medieval fraternities, on anniversary feasts and sermons. Finally, we
see a host of more or less informal clubs and societies, sustained by a
limited number of rules and ofcials but holding more frequent
meetingsreminiscent perhaps of the old private circles before the
Civil War.
The decades before 1688 marked the infancy of British clubs and
societies, the rst, stumbling steps of a new social institution. Political
upheavals, government intervention, and natural disasters all had their
disruptive effect. There was strong competition from that dense mesh
of established social and cultural institutions surveyed in the rst part
of this chapter. In the 1660s and after, rivalry and resentment from
these older bodies led to vigorous criticism of the newfangled
associations. There were charges that they were divisive `parents of
separation'; opponents ridiculed one Oxford society as the `insect
cabal'. 78 However, by the time of the Glorious Revolution the club
and the society were increasingly accepted as part of the smart cultural
world of towns. Offspring of a mixed marriage of foreign and domestic
models and inuences, promoted by an army of prosperous drink
retailers, and patronized by the growing ranks of gentry and other elite
groups in towns, the new-style voluntary association was on the way
to becoming an important vehicle for public discourse.
78
W. Wyatt, A Sermon Preached to . . . Scholars of St Paul's School (London, 1679), 24; J. R.
Magrath (ed.), The Flemings in Oxford, Vol. II, Oxford Historical Soc., 62 (1913), 106 n.107n.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

3
National Expansion: 16881760

Between the Glorious Revolution and the death of George II clubs

and societies matured as a national social institution. Hitherto largely
conned to London and a handful of other centres, they now sprang
up across the English provinces and also appeared in growing
numbers elsewhere in the British Isles. Small clusters even developed
for the rst time in British settlements overseas. They remained
almost exclusively an urban phenomenon, but, in Britain at least,
they began to ower in a mixed variety of towns. It is not just the
geographical penetration that is striking; there seems to be a widening
of social participation as well. In terms of organization, the trend was
towards greater formality, evinced by detailed rules and regulations, a
higher frequency of meetings (with the eventual decline of the feastday societies), and more clearly dened aims. Associated with this was
the emergence of the rst `national' bodies, like the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which created a network
of contacts with local religious societies and corresponding members
across the provinces. Some `national' societies went further and
acquired an international prole, most notably the English, Scottish,
and Irish grand lodges of freemasons, which soon had a battalion of
afliated lodges across the British empire and, to a lesser extent, in
continental Europe. 1
One should be cautious about seeing the rise of voluntary associations as an inevitable developmentsimply the sociable face of the
Whig oligarchic ascendancy after 1714. Clubs and societies continued
to operate in a highly competitive environment with considerable
pressure and rivalry for public support from traditional forms of
sociable activity, from other fashionable urbane entertainments such
as assemblies, plays, sporting activities, and concerts, and from other
kinds of association. Even with the shift towards enhanced formality,
many individual bodies had a limited shelf-life, probably no more than
three or four years on average; some types of society experienced a
1

See below, pp. 30910.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

61

roller-coaster of support, at rst swept forward by a rush of fashionable enthusiasm, only to suffer from terminal attrition. Competition
and the ckleness of fashion were not the only factors at work. War,
economic recession, and political conict might all take their toll. In
1753 a Catholic charitable society in Lancashire noted how `during the
late storms'the 1745 rebellionit had been forced `to lie under the
bushel for so long that it has in a manner quite expired'; the Honourable Society of Improvers in Edinburgh was foreclosed by the same
event. 2
Yet, as Chapter 5 will explain, the rise of clubs and societies was
undoubtedly boosted by long-term developments after 1688. Among
the most important of these were urbanization, rising living standards,
the growth of gentry and professional demand, and the diminished
role of the state and civic government.

i
The accession of William and Mary heralded an upsurge of older types
of association, together with a proliferation of new forms of society.
Among the former, the county societies enjoyed a last burst of activity
in the 1690s, with ve or six shires a year holding London feasts, often
accompanied by grandiose public processions. At the same time, more
regular weekly or monthly county clubs started to appear. School feast
societies, likewise, increased their number: Merchant Taylors held its
rst feast in December 1698; provincial smaller schools at Felsted,
Hertford, and Canterbury began meetings under Anne; college alumni
societies also arrived about 1700. 3 With annual parliaments after 1689
and the resurgence of party conict between the Tories and Whigs,
organized political clubs, which had faded under James II, returned as
a major feature of the political landscape, especially in the metropolis.
One of the most successful was the Whig Kit-Cat Club organized
after 1699, though probably initiated earlier as an informal club by
2
Lancs. RO, DDX 1130/7; J. H. Smith, The Gordon Mill's Farming Club 175864 (Edinburgh,
1962), 37.
3
See below, ch. 8; Post Man, 269 March 1698, 79 Aug. 1707; H. Nelson, Charity And
Unity . . . Hertford School-Feast (London, 1708); C. W. Woodruff and H. J. Cape, Schola Regia
Cantuariensis (London, 1908), 364. The increased regularity of meetings is exemplied by
Eton, which had annual feast meetings for a number of years after 1699; Flying Post, 1114
Feb. 1698/9; Eton College Library, Sermons; I owe this last information to the College
Librarian Mr P. Quarrie. Post Man, 1820 Dec. 1701; Huntington, MS Stowe 26(1)
(unfoliated).

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

62

National Expansion

John Somers and the bookseller Jacob Tonson. At its height it served
as `a sort of permanent joint committee of the party in the two
Houses [of Parliament], meeting regularly to concert political
measures'. Naturally, not all its energies were devoted to high politics.
At a club meeting in 1708 Tonson, sitting drunkenly between James
Dormer and Robert Walpole, reportedly told them `he sat between the
honestest man in the world and the greatest villain', upon which he
was attacked by Walpole. After 1712 the Kit-Cat's position as the
leading Whig club was usurped by the Hanover Club, with its own
rules and ofcers. 4 The revival of the Tory interest under Anne was
similarly sustained by a urry of club activity. Attracting over 150
members in its heyday, the October Club held noisy dinners during
the parliamentary session `at two long tables in a great ground room'
of a tavern. The membership included independent Tory backbenchers, scions of old royalist families, and even some Jacobites.
Highly organized, it brought pressure to bear on the Tory ministry
both inside and outside Parliament, as well as ghting for a share of
ofcial patronage for its members. Less divisive was the Board of
Loyal Brotherhood established by Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort,
in 1709, which won the support of high-Tory and crypto-Jacobite
grandees, though its main importance seems to have come later. Other
Tory clubs included Swift's Saturday Club and those in provincial
centres such as Royston, Cambridge, Gloucester, and Liverpool. 5
Not content with joining Tory societies, Jacobites arranged their
own gatherings. One club in Blackfriars, London, kept `wonderful
rejoicings' at every French defeat over the Allies under Anne, and
`are so impudent as to have music, trumpets and ddles'. Jacobites
also held `clubs and private meetings' over the border in Scotland. 6
Music clubs had met intermittently in London and Oxford since the
1650s. During the 1670s and 1680s commercial concerts, often held in
taverns and alehouses, were increasingly in vogue, and about 1683 a
music society organized in the capital the rst public concert and feast
4
W. F. Lord, `The Development of Political Parties During the Reign of Queen Anne',
TRHS, ns, 14 (1900), 117; HMC, Portland MSS, IV, 493; J. Bayliss, `The October Club, 1710
1714: A Study in Political Organization' (unpublished M.Litt. thesis, University of Bristol,
1973), 18.
5
Bayliss, `The October Club', 13, 22, 93, and passim; G. Holmes, British Politics in the Age of
Anne (London, 1967), 3145, 3423; BL, Additional MS 49,360; also L. J. Colley, `The Loyal
Brotherhood and the Cocoa Tree: The London Organization of the Tory Party, 172760',
HJ, 20 (1977), 801.
6
The Observator, 58 May 1703; J. Ker, The Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland (London,
1726), 48.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

63

on the anniversary of St Cecilia. Subsequent meetings were erratic,

with no gatherings in 1688 and 1689, but from 1690 the Society of
Gentlemen Lovers of Music held a sequence of major anniversary
concerts, sermons, and feasts. In 1691 the concert included music by
John Blow, and was attended by `most of the lovers of music, whereof
many are persons of the rst rank'. Next year Henry Purcell's ode
`Hail Bright Cecilia' was `performed twice with universal applause,
particularly the second stanza which was sung with incredible grace by
Mr Purcell himself '. Over the next decade the feast became a prestige
event in the London social calendar, attended by `many persons of the
rst rank', and the six stewards included knights and noblemen. On a
less elaborate scale, Oxford held a St Cecilia feast after 1696, while a
music club assembled at Thomas Hall's tavern from 1690, and another
well-documented club functioned after 1712. 7
Societies concerned with the visual arts began to materialize.
Though informal circles may have existed earlier, both in London
and the provinces, in about 1689 the Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke
was founded with formal meetings at a public tavern (see plate 6). The
rst steward was John Riley, principal painter to William III, and after
1698 there were detailed rules and minutes, and an annual feast.
Drinking and socializing were clearly an important part of the proceedings, but a fund was established to buy paintings. In 1711 several
members were involved in establishing the Academy of Painting, a
training school for young artists in Great Queen Street, by which,
George Vertue asserted, `many young geniuses have distinguished
themselves and given great hopes of becoming ourishing men in
this kingdom'. 8
Scientic specialization led to the formation of smaller clubs and
societies in the orbit of the Royal Society. Thus, the Temple Coffeehouse Botanical Club was inaugurated about 1689 and two years later
possessed about forty members, including Hans Sloane, Martin Lister,
and James Petiver. An attempt was made to establish an antiquarian
society after 1707, and among a medley of other new bodies were
masonic-style meetings and early trade benet clubs; in 1692 even a
7
W. H. Husk, An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St Cecilia's Day (London, 1857),
1051, 879; J. E. Philips (ed.), Two St Cecilia's Day Sermons, Reprint Soc., 49, (1955), pp. iiv;
P. Dennison (ed.), The Works of Henry Purcell, Vol. VIII (Sevenoaks, n.d.), p. ix ; M. Crum, `An
Oxford Music Club, 16901719', Bodleian Library Record, 9 (19738), 8499; Merton College,
Oxford, MS 4.33.
8
BL, Additional MS 39,167, fos. 7385v; Vertue Note Books, Vol. III, Walpole Soc., 22,
(1934), 7.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

64

National Expansion

gang of thieves in Whitefriars was said go by the name of `the boxing

club'.9
One of the most inuential and numerous types of new association
in the metropolis after 1688 comprised the moral reform societies.
Anglican religious societies had ourished in London since the 1670s,
but these had been largely low key. The royal letters and proclamations
against vice and immorality in 1689, 16912, 1698, and 1699, combined with the revival of low-church Anglicanism and mounting
upper-class concern about the growth of disorder and crime in an
increasingly sprawling capital, stimulated not only an increase of
religious societies, but also the advent of interventionist societies
for the reformation of manners, concerned to prosecute prostitutes,
disorderly houses, swearers, drunkards, and the like. By 1701 London
may have had as many as twenty moral reform societiessome
established by gentry, but others stemming from middle-rank activity
and concern. In addition to strong Anglican involvement (not all of it
from low-churchmen), nonconformists were active, reecting the
heightened public prole of Dissent after the Toleration Act of
1689. 10 At the same time, the prosecuting tactics of the societies
generated considerable popular hostility, and they were criticised for
seeming to usurp the authority of local magistrates, for using
informers, and for encouraging legal corruption and abuse. 11
What was remarkable about the moral reform societies was the way
they spread rapidly from London across the British Isles, the rst time
this had occurred in the case of associations. Bristol had an important
and active society after 1699 and others sprang up in numerous
English and Welsh towns. Similar bodies multiplied in Dublin after
1693, and by 17012 Edinburgh had over a dozen. The support and
activity of societies varied considerably at the community level,
responding to local religious and other circumstances. In Dublin the
movement was encouraged by close links with the English capital
9

D. E. Allen, `John Martyn's Botanical Society . . .', Proceedings of the Botanical Society of the
British Isles, 6 (19657), 3056; see below, p. 77; M. C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment
(London, 1981), 118; D. Defoe, An Essay upon Projects 1697 (Menston, 1969), p. iv ; see
also below, p. 353; City of London RO, Sessions 2/1692.
10
D. W. R. Bahlman, The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven, 1957), 1516, 31, 34, 37;
A. G. Craig, `The Movement for the Reformation of Manners, 16881715' (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1980), 17 ff.; R. B. Shoemaker, `Reforming the City:
The Reformation of Manners Campaign in London, 16901738', in L. Davison et al., (eds.),
Stilling the Grumbling Hive (Stroud, 1992), 99105; for the rise of Dissent in London after
1688, see G. S. de Krey, A Fractured Society (Oxford, 1985).
11
Craig, `Reformation of Manners', 11927; Bahlman, Moral Revolution, 468, 83 ff.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

65

(Irish clergy had ed to London as refugees in 1689), and also by the

determination of Irish Protestants to take advantage of William III's
military victory over the Irish Catholics. In addition, the Anglicans (led
by Archbishop Marsh) sought to reinvigorate the position of a
weakened Church of Ireland against the challenge of Catholics and
Presbyterians, while the dissenters endeavoured to carry out a programme of godly and moral discipline in a city that was experiencing,
like London, rapid expansion and an upsurge of social problems. 12
Local conditions played a powerful part in the general progress of
societies, but metropolitan inuence was also crucial. As well as clergy
and laity having personal contact with London societies, the latter
promoted provincial activity through publicity about their work,
notably Josiah Woodward's An Account of the Rise and Progress of the
Religious Societies in the City of London . . . (1697), which included advice
and model rules for establishing local societies. In both Scotland and
Ireland this propagandist material was cited in the formation of
societies, and subsequent editions of Woodward's work (three more
by 1712) publicized the progress of provincial societies too. The
London societies also provided practical help, dispatching to Dublin,
for example, thousands of printed forms for the presentment of
offenders. 13
During Anne's reign the moral reform societies lost momentum.
This was due not just to public dislike of the societies' tactics, but also
to tensions between Anglicans and dissenters, growing high-church
Tory criticism, and concern at the scale of middling and artisan
involvement. Furthermore, the movement suffered from the lack of
any formal co-ordination, though this was partially remedied in 1699
through the establishment by leading Anglican activists of the SPCK.
This society was a highly structured organization which quickly
acquired its own permanent secretary, premises, and committees.
Strongly supported by leading members of the church hierarchy, it
encouraged the establishment of local religious societies across the
country (about thirty in all), by corresponding with the clergy in the
shires and big towns, sending out letters of advice, books, money, and
12
Bahlman, Moral Revolution, 468; G. V. Portus, Caritas Anglicana (London, 1912), 1203,
1257, 14653; T. C. Barnard, `Reforming Irish Manners: The Religious Societies in Dublin
during the 1690s', HJ, 35 (1992), 81138.
13
J. Woodward, An Account of the Religious Societies in the City of London etc. (4th edn.,
London, 1712, repr. Liverpool, 1935), 7984; F. W. B. Bullock, Voluntary Religious Societies,
15201799 (St Leonards-on-Sea, 1963), 143; Portus, Caritas, 1479; Barnard, `Reforming Irish
Manners', 813.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

66

National Expansion

so on. There was less emphasis on moral reform than on proselytization and education. In the metropolis the society played an active part
in advancing and supervising the new charity schools112 by 1711
often established by parish religious societies; there was also a society
of trustees of charity schools. In 1701 the SPCK was closely involved
in the chartering of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts (the SPG) to undertake missionary and educational
work in North America. 14
The national effect of the moral reform and religious societies was
considerable. In 1714 just over fty English and Welsh towns had one
or more religious societies of some kind: those places included not
just regional cities like Bristol, Norwich, or York, but middle-rank
centres like Chester, Nottingham, and Carmarthen, and small towns
such as Kendal, Kidderminster, Kingston, Lewes, Luton, and Bangor.
In Scotland, which had its own Society for Propagating Christian
Knowledge (chartered in 1709), societies were mostly concentrated
in the Edinburgh area, while across the Irish Sea, Dublin was the
leading centre. In North America there were several societies at
Boston (including one for blacks). 15
Metropolitan societies had a growing, if less direct, impact on
provincial developments in other areas. The Anglican Sons of the
Clergy served as the model for various diocesan bodies: at Norwich
in 1684, Bristol in 1692, Chester archdeaconry in 1697, Ipswich 1704,
Newcastle 1709, and elsewhere after 1714. One or two received or
sought recognition as branches of the London society, but all were
effectively autonomous. 16 About 171617 the Three Choirs Festival
started, rotating between Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester, and
married the function of a charitable society with music-making on the
model of the Sons of the Clergy; by the 1720s this body was run on a
formal basis. The London feast of St Cecilia also had its provincial
imitators, some of which continued even after the London body
lapsed: thus the Oxford meeting of the Lovers of Music was still
14
Craig, `Reformation of Manners', 130, 24178; W. K. L. Clarke, The History of the
S.P.C.K. (London, 1959), 78, 212, 29; W. O. B. Allen and E. McClure, Two Hundred Years:
The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London, 1898), 126, 12930, 143, 1467;
C. Rose, ` ``Seminarys of Faction and Rebellion'': Jacobites, Whigs and the London Charity
Schools, 17161724', HJ, 34 (1991), 832 ff.
15
Portus, Caritas, 113, 11517, 12533, 1489, 153; Bullock, Voluntary Religious Societies,
147, 153; Rules For the Society of Negroes, 1693 (Boston, Mass., ?1714).
16
N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . . 16551978
(Oxford, 1978), 3642, 92.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

67

holding meetings in 1707 and 1708; Winchester had a meeting in 1703;

while at Salisbury Thomas Naish preached to the Society of Lovers of
Musick twicein 1700 and 1727, clearly a labour of loveand the
society may have continued to organize musical events into the mideighteenth century. Elsewhere music clubs multiplied, one at Wells
hearing concerts of music by Purcell, Byrd, Scarlatti, and Handel. 17
Despite the inuence of metropolitan associations, what is also
visible in the decades after 1688 is the multiplication of provincial
clubs and societies of different kinds, many of them located in towns
previously without associations. The year 1694 saw the establishment
at Stoke on Trent of a society for the prosecution of felons, with other
similar bodies in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Like the moral reform
societies, these sought to strengthen the effectiveness of local law
enforcement through rewards for information against thieves (at
Stoke, horse-thieves), the pursuit of offenders, and funding prosecutions in the courts. Another important type of society starting about
this time represented professional interests: for example, the father of
William Stukeley, the antiquary, was elected steward of a meeting of
East Midlands attorneys held in Northamptonshire in 1695. Commonor-garden drinking clubsalready quite widespread in London
began to ourish now in country towns, sometimes linked with an
existing social institution such as a bowling green. An early club (its
origins may pre-date 1688) was that at Royston in Hertfordshire,
which boasted its own handsome meeting rooms at the Red Lion,
decorated with club portraits; this had strong Tory leanings. At
Oxford there was the Red Herring Club; Ralph Thoresby was a
member of the Town-end Club at Leeds; and Manchester had its
Calf 's Head Club. 18
Provincial capitals like Bristol displayed a growing variety of
17
W. Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992), 113
20; D. Lysons, Origin and Progress of the Meeting of the Three Choirs (Gloucester, 1895); Husk,
Musical Celebrations, 89, 925; D. Slatter (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Naish, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Soc., Records Branch, 20, (1965), 4, 42; E. Hobhouse (ed.), The
Diary of a West Country Physician, AD 16841726 (London, 1934), 1819, 39.
18
Staffs. RO, D(W) 1742/56; Lancs. RO, DDBa (unnumbered); Leeds University,
Brotherton Library, Wilson MSS 233 (I am very grateful to John Styles for these references);
D. Philips, `Good Men to Associate and Bad Men to Conspire', in D. Hay and F. Snyder
(eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 17501850 (Oxford 1989), 122; W. C. Lukis (ed.), The
Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley Vol. I (Surtees Soc., 73, (1880), 9; Gentleman's
Magazine, 53 (1783), 8136; HMC, Portland MSS, IV, 1534; VCH, Oxfordshire, iv. 434; J.
Hunter (ed.), The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S. (London, 1830), i. 4578; J. Harland (ed.),
Manchester Collectanea, Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 68, (1866), 191.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

68

National Expansion

societies by Anne's reign, including county societies, a militia society, a

loyalist club, a society for the reformation of manners, and a local
version of the Sons of the Clergy. That inveterate clubbing centre,
Oxford, also continued to host a goodly cluster of associations. But as
we have seen, even county and market towns in England might now
support one or more society gatherings. North of the border,
Edinburgh had a number of religious societies and political clubs,
together with a music society, antiquarian society, philosophical
society, and convivial social clubs such as the Easy Club, formed
about 1712 by a group of young men for `mutual improvement in
conversation that they may become more adapted for fellowship with
the politer part of mankind'. 19 Outside the Scottish capital, however,
there was only a sprinkling of benet, gardening, masonic, and other
bodies, such as the Kilwinning Society of Archers established in 1688
and led by a captain and `several gentlemen of note and distinction
through many places of the kingdom'. The situation was not dissimilar
in Ireland: Dublin made a strong showing with its religious, musical,
political, and scientic societies and the odd masonic lodge, but
relatively little activity is found elsewhere. 20
Across the Atlantic, the isolated social gatherings before 1688
became rather more common. At Boston the earlier Scottish box
was joined now by religious societies, while New York had several
ethnic clubs. In the West Indies, Jamaica gained a religious society at
St Jago de la Vega, and Barbados under Anne celebrated an annual
cockney feast in the London style, marked by a procession to church,
sermon, and grand feast, `preceded by a mighty clangor of 12
trumpets'. 21
By the death of Anne, clubs and societies were increasingly
19
J. Barry, `The Cultural Life of Bristol 16401775' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University
of Oxford, 1985), 172 and passim; VCH, Oxfordshire, iv. 4345; G. Madan, Records of the Club at
Oxford, 17901917 (Oxford, 1917), 910; D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman,
Wash., 1969), 12, 1418, 26; R. L. Emerson, `The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh,
17371747', British Journal for the History of Science, 12 (1979), 156.
20
See below, pp. 3534; SRO (WRH), FS 4/5; SRO (GRH), GD 420, GD 1/896/1;
D. Stevenson, The First Freemasons: Scotland's Early Lodges and Their Members (Aberdeen, 1989),
156. See above, pp. 645; Phillips, `Two St Cecilia's Day Sermons', p. i; J. Barrington, Personal
Sketches of his Own Times (London, 1827), i. 2456; K. T. Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the
17th Century (London, 1970), 23 and passim; R. E. Parkinson, `The Lodge in Trinity College,
Dublin 1688', AQC, 54 (1941), 96.
21
See below ch. 8; E. M. McClure, A Chapter in English Church History . . . 16981704
(London, 1888), 150 n.; `T. Walduck's Letters from Barbados, 1710', Journal of the Barbados
Museum and Historical Soc., 15 (19478), 467.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

69

regarded as a necessary component of public sociable activity, particularly in the big cities. As well as major long-term factors promoting
this trend, specic changes after the Glorious Revolution played their
part. Particularly vital in the case of London was the growing tide of
landowners coming to the annual Parliaments after 1689, and the end
of censorship in 1695, which led to a mushrooming of newspapers and
magazines. By 1709 London's nineteen newspapers were publishing
fty-ve editions a week, and the rst provincial newspapers came off
the press at Norwich in 1701 and Bristol in 1702. More inuential than
the latter were new periodicals like the Spectator and Rambler. 22 In
Scotland the founders of the Edinburgh Easy Club declared the `rst
thing that induced us to join in a society was the reading of . . . [the]
Spectators'. But Scottish readers also beneted from an assortment of
Edinburgh newspapers after 1700, whilst Dublin had a dozen or so
papers, a number of them regular publications. American colonists
could read London newspapers by George I's reign, supplied via
improved transatlantic communications. 23
Political changes after 1688 affected voluntary associations in other
ways. Reduced state intervention in the domestic arena led to a
growing sense of administrative vacuum, one into which voluntary
associations, like the moral reform and religious societies, began to
move.24 The long tradition of British societies assuming quasigovernmental functions had been established.

ii
The two decades after the Glorious Revolution had another important
effect in terms of the organization of British societies. The old type of
feast society, in which activity was concentrated around grand
anniversary gatherings, seems to have declined by 1714, as indicated
by the general disappearance of the county and St Cecilia societies in the
capital and the advance of more regularly organized county and music
clubs as alternatives. One of the few London feast organizations to
22

I. K. Steele, The English Atlantic 16751740: An Exploration of Communication and

Community (New York, 1986), 13657; J. Black, The English Press in the 18th Century (London,
1987), 113; E. A. Bloom and L. D. Bloom, Joseph Addison's Sociable Animal (Providence, RI,
1971).
23
McElroy, Scotland's Age, 15; J. P. S. Ferguson, Directory of Scottish Newspapers (Edinburgh,
1984), 13455; J. O'Toole, `Newsplan: Report of the Newsplan Project in Ireland' (National
Library of Ireland, 1992) (information supplied by Dr D. McCabe); see below, pp. 3945.
24
See below, pp. 175, 1789.

5.11.99 15:45 03 Chapter 0394

70

National Expansion

survive, the Sons of the Clergy, had not only secured incorporation by
royal charter under Charles II, but spawned two associated bodies
which provided further administrative continuity.25
If many clubs and societies became more formal in their organization after 1700, a signicant group of informal clubs, almost certainly
growing in number during the early Georgian period, continued to
hold their noisy gatherings in drinking premises and private houses
without formal rules, records, or subscriptions. Most were drinking or
dining circles, growing naturally out of tavern or coffee-house
socializing and discourse. The diary of the Northern physician John
Byrom, a regular visitor to the capital from the 1720s, is full of
references to informal drinking clubs at coffee-houses and
tavernsat the Leg, King's Arms, and Anchor and Baptist (where
in March 1736 he had `greens to [for] supper, vastly good and toasted
bread and cheese, [ate] heartily, and drank white wine'). Coming to
London in George II's reign, Ralph Heathcote quickly joined `a society
of gentlemen who met once a week to drink coffee and to talk
learnedly for three or four hours'. At the Robin Hood, Butcher's
Row, an informal literary club gathered around the publisher Edward
Cave and read papers which were afterwards printed in his Gentleman's
Magazine. 26 Informal clubs had the advantage of exibility, allowing
the chopping and changing of venues and members. The downside
was that they frequently foundered on the absence of rules. Typical
was an informal gentlemen's club whose members `from a happy
correspondence in their humours and capacities entertained one
another agreeably'. For six months this occasional club `subsisted
with great regularity though without any restraint', but then one night
three newcomers arrived and spoke so incessantly and tediously that
there was a universal demand for a set of rules. 27
This was not an isolated case. Formalization became increasingly
common in the early eighteenth century, not least for drinking and
dining clubs. Hence the establishment of Beefsteak clubs, based in
London and other theatres with weekly meetings, usually on
Saturdays, attended by performers and writers; that at Covent Garden,
25
Cox, Bridging the Gap, 489, 813; see also Constitutions of the Society of Stewards and
Subscribers For Maintaining and Educating Poor Orphans of the Clergy (London, 1768).
26
R. Parkinson (ed.), The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom Vol. I(1),
Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 32, (1854), 228, 230, 235 and passim; Vol. II (1), Chetham Soc.
Remains, os 40, (1856), 16 and passim; R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge,
Mass., 1933), 283; C. L. Carlson, `Edward Cave's Club and its Project for a Literary Review',
27
Grub St Journal, 20 Feb. 1734/5.
Philological Quarterly, 17 (1938), 11519.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

71

instituted about 1735, had a maximum membership size, a rotating

presidency, and club regalia. Other variants included the so-called
Hellre or blasphemy societies of the 1720s, which, despite their various
rituals, were probably more concerned with drunkenness than irreligion;
and formally constituted gambling clubs (the records of White's Club,
for instance, start in 1736).28 Soon after, port towns like Liverpool
hosted meetings of Ugly Face or Ugly clubs whose members prided
themselves on their heavy boozing and facial eccentricities. Among older
informal dining clubs, the Royal Society Club, which may have existed
since Charles II's reign, was formally established with rules and constitution in the 1740s, while the long-established Bull Club was formally
instituted at Cirencester in Gloucestershire in 1745.29
Other kinds of older society assumed a more established and
regular format during the early Georgian era. In this category came
prosecution and school societies. At St Paul's school elections to
university scholarships were held at the society feasts, and the society
raised substantial sums to enlarge school endowments. From the
1720s records survive for the stewards of the Charterhouse founder's
day, whilst at King's School, Canterbury, the society helped nance
students going to Oxford and Cambridge. Across the country, smaller
schools began to follow suit. School societies became important at the
universities, despite ofcial attempts at Cambridge to suppress them
in order to prevent drunkenness and disputes. In turn, college alumni
societies made their presence felt: leading the way (as ever), societies
of Balliol men gathered at London, Exeter, and Hereford. 30
Evidence is especially good for bell-ringing societies. Here established bodies like the society of College Youths were joined by a host
28
Allen, Clubs, 11923, 1419; B. Victor, The History of the Theatres of London and Dublin
(London, 176171), i. 1534; W. Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks
(London, 1871), 19. The Hell-Fire-Club Kept by a Society of Blasphemers (London 1721); see also
similar clubs at Edinburgh: McElroy, Scotland's Age, 1523; and Dublin: L. C. Jones, The Clubs
of the Georgian Rakes (New York, 1942), 645.
29
E. Howell (ed.), The Ugly Face Clubb Leverpoole (Liverpool, 1912); J. Timbs, Clubs and
Club Life in London (London, 1886), 568; J. Barrow, Sketches of the Royal Society Club (London,
1971), 8; Rules and Regulations of the Bull Club Cirencester (n.p., 1956), 34.
30
A. Shubert, `Private Initiative in Law Enforcement', in V. Bailey (ed.), Policy and
Punishment in 19th Century Britain (London, 1981), 256; R. B. Gardiner, The Admission Registers
of St Paul's School (London, 1884), 447, 44951; the Charterhouse stewards' book is at
Charterhouse School Library, Godalming (information kindly supplied by Mrs A. Wheeler);
Woodruff and Cape, Schola Regia, 3645; Ipswich Journal, 26 Apr. 1755 (Lavenham), ibid., 23
Aug. 1755 (Monk Soham); Sherborne Gazette, 8 June 1742 (Shepton Mallet). R. B. Johnson, The
Undergraduate (London, 1928), 175, 2601. Daily Post, 22 Nov. 1737; Daily Gazetteer, 16 Aug.
1737; Gloucester Journal, 31 July 1750.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

72

National Expansion

of new organizations, often created from informal ringing bands. In the

capital the Society of Union Ringers was founded in 1713, based on
the parish ringers of St Dunstan's in the East; ofcers were chosen
annually with an anniversary festival on 1 May. The Eastern Scholars
was instituted in the capital about 1733 and attracted more than a
hundred members over the next two decades. The Cumberland Ringers,
another London society, began about 1747, and six years later the First
Society of London Youths was formed, meeting at the Three Goats'
Head on Whitechapel Road. Interest and support was stimulated by
highly publicized ringing matches involving heavy gambling and upperclass sponsorship (some societies became highly fashionable). Metropolitan growth led to new suburban societies at Twickenham, Mortlake,
and Richmond. One of the best documented of the London societies
was established by William Laughton, a Holborn clockmaker, in 1733.
This `Rambling Club of Ringers' agreed to ring all the peals of three to
six bells within the metropolitan Bills of Mortality. According to
Laughton's execrable verse history of the club, they undertook their
task with enthusiasm, travelling out by foot or on boat down the
Thames, to tumbledown churches with tottering towers, inspecting
tombs and monuments, and ringing hard: `though some bells sounded
like cleavers, yet variety still made 'em please us.' Afterwards they would
decamp to a nearby hostelry to feast and drink, as at Rotherhithe, `where
beans and bacon boiling hot, was taken smoking from the pot'.31
Outside the capital, records survive from 1724 for the society of
Cambridge Youths, which met monthly and had a steward and
steeple-keeper as ofcers. Like other such clubs, the Cambridge group
did a good business ringing for weddings and other celebrations `on
occasion of prot'; and members shared an annual dividend from the
club box. At Norwich the society of ringers, established in 1716,
doubled as a purse or benet club with up to forty-ve members
and substantial funeral and other benets; the ringers were chosen
from the society membership. The nancial advantages for members,
on top of the publicity surrounding matches, played an important part
in the growth of formalization. Ringing societies pealed out across the
regions: in East Anglia at Yarmouth, Redenhall, Fakenham, East
Dereham, Kenninghall, and Diss; and in the West Midlands at
Birmingham, Oswestry, and Shrewsbury. 32
31
BL, Additional MS, 19,370, fo. 208v; E. Morris, The History and Art of Change Ringing
(London,1931), 97102, 11619; Guildhall, MS 254.
32
Rules and Regulations of the Society of Ringers denominated `The Cambridge Youths' (Cambridge,
1857), 18; NNRO, S0 78/1,2; Morris, Change Ringing, 18994, 260, 278, 280.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

73

On the political front, party clubbing remained an important

element in the storm of party factionalism, which continued into
the early Georgian era. After the death of Anne, Londoners saw a
wave of activity by Whig mug-house clubs. The principal one met in
Long Acre every Wednesday and Saturday during the winter, with a
half-dozen others elsewhere in the metropolis. John Macky described
the Long Acre club as `a mixture of gentlemen, lawyers and tradesmen
[who] meet in a great room and are seldom under a hundred'. Each
member had his own mug for loyal toasts, and proceedings were
accompanied by a harpist, as well as political and drinking songs.
Principally concerned to support the Hanoverian settlement, the
mug-house clubs launched erce attacks on their Tory and Jacobite
opponents. In 1718 the clubs planned a great procession on 5 November
with efgies of leading Jacobites as well as the Pope and Devil, to be
burnt at Cheapside. This was banned by the city authorities, but the
Whigs were increasingly in the ascendant in Parliament and government, supported by elite associations like the old Kit-Cat and Hanover
clubs, and by more middle-rank organizations at the city, ward, and
parish level (see plate 7). Thus, the political club at the Crown tavern
near the Exchange helped organize the Whig interest at city elections
and served as a conduit for ofcial patronage. On the Tory side, the
October Club folded after 1714, but the Board of Loyal Brotherhood
increased in importance from the 1720s as a rendezvous for leading
high Tories in Parliament, sparking in turn Edward Harley's creation
of a moderate Tory Board, meeting at the Cocoa Tree coffee-house
and attracting mostly county MPs; by the 1750s the Cocoa Tree
functioned as the organizational base of the Tory party in London. 33
In provincial towns, competing societies, often supported by the
local elite, mobilized voting at local and national elections, consolidating Whig and opposition support: hence the Whig Constitution Club
at Norwich and the Tory Recorder's Club in Newcastle. The Jacobites
and their allies likewise developed a network of sociable activity
focused on clubs: the Cycle Club meeting after the 1720s at Wrexham
and elsewhere on the Welsh borders; the Sea-Serjeants in South Wales;
half a dozen mock-corporations in Staffordshire and Lancashire; and
assorted sporting clubs, like the Jacobite hunt club at Durham in the
33
Allen, Clubs, 703; N. Rogers, Whigs and Cities (Oxford, 1989), 2930; J. Macky, A
Journey Through England (London, 1724), i. 2702; The Roe-Buck Procession (London, 1718);
Guildhall, MS 197, transcribed in H. Horwitz (ed.), `Minutes of a Whig Club, 17141717', in
London Politics, 17131717, London Record Soc., 17, (1981), 147; Colley, `Loyal Brotherhood',
8191.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

74

National Expansion

early 1740s. Because of ofcial harassment some of these Jacobite

bodies met in the countryside.34
In science the pace of specialization accelerated, encouraged by the
growing stagnation of the Royal Society. The successful Temple
Coffee-house Botanical Club may have lapsed about 1713, but John
Martyn, later professor of botany at Cambridge, instituted the
Botanical Society at a Watling St coffee-house in 1721, recruiting a
number of young medical men to the membership, and that decade
the capital also had its Aurelian Society for lovers of lepidoptera.
Mounting interest led to the formation of a mathematical society at
the Monmouth's Head in Spitalelds about 1717; many of the early
members came from the middling and artisan ranks of East End
society, and included a large number of weavers. Similar clubs also
functioned elsewhere in the capital, and another society had started at
Manchester before 1720. Mathematical and scientic subjects were
increasingly popularized by books, public lectures, and experiments,
and inltrated the activities of non-scientic clubs as well. Masonic
societies listened to lectures on medical and related topics, and when
the herald William Oldys went with a friend to his London club in
1737, they `saw the operations of phosphorus'. 35

iii
Alongside these elements of continuity in associational activity, there
were important shifts of direction, particularly during the 1730s and
1740s. Moral reform societies were already waning under Anne and,
despite the revival of low-church Whiggery after 1714, support and
activity steadily faded, and the last society publications appeared in the
late 1730s. An attempt to revive the movement about 1729, through
34
K. Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 171585
(Cambridge, 1995), 64; Rogers, Whigs and Cities, 314, 340; P. D. G. Thomas, `Jacobitism in
Wales', Welsh History Review, 1 (19603), 28793; P. Jenkins, `Jacobites and Freemasons in
18th-century Wales', ibid. 9 (197879), 3945, 3989 ; P. K. Monod, Jacobitism and the English
People, 16881788 (Cambridge, 1989), 2939.
35
R. P. Stearns, `James Petiver, Promoter of Natural Science c.16631718', American
Antiquarian Society Proceedings, ns, 62 (1952), 253 ff.; Allen, `Martyn's Botanical Society',
30622; D. E. Allen, `Joseph Dandridge and the rst Aurelian Society', Entomologist's Record,
78 (1966), 923; H. H. Cawthorne, `The Spitalelds Mathematical Society (17171845)',
Journal of Adult Education, 3 (19289), 1558; there were two mathematical clubs in later
Stuart London: S. J. Rigaud (ed.), Correspondence of Scientic Men of the 17th century (Oxford,
1841), ii. 526. W. E. A. Axon, The Annals of Manchester (London, 1886), 77; see below, p. 336;
N&Q, 2nd series, 11 (1861), 103.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

75

the establishment of the Moral Society by Anglicans and dissenters

concerned `to restore and advance the practice of morality', had little
success, and another moral reform society formed in the 1750s proved
equally abortive. Affected by the increasing fragmentation of Dissent,
the movement may also have suffered from growing public dislike of
direct action against moral offenders. More successful, the SPCK
provided institutional and nancial support for the numerous religious
societies in the capital and elsewhere, though in 1737 James Hutton
complained that many societies were `altogether slumbering'. From
the late 1730s John Wesley used existing societies and their membership as the basis for the Methodist revival, endeavouring to mobilize
these and new societies to reform the established Church from
within. 36
As for regional organizations, in place of the old-style London
county feast societies a handful of counties created associations on
a permanent basis with philanthropic funds. Particularly important
was the Society of Ancient Britons, formed in 1715, which won the
patronage of the Prince of Wales. As well as the Scots Corporation,
other ethnic bodies in the capital started to develop. In the provinces
county and ethnic societies made little headway outside their longestablished centre at Bristol, but in the American colonies such
organizations were increasingly important from the 1720s, heading
the growth of associations at Philadelphia and Charleston. 37
In England at least, societies suffered not only from problems
associated with their organization (as with the feast societies) and
with changes in their basic constituencies (as with the moral reform
societies), but from the pressure of competing attractions, including
the spread of subscription concerts and music festivals (galvanized by
the popularity of Handel's oratorios), the upsurge of horse-racing in
major centres, the rise of commercial theatre companies, and the
enormous growth of public lecturing, especially on scientic subjects.
No less signicant was the exponential increase of new societies,
poaching members and even some of the domain of existing associations. While the market for associational activity undoubtedly
expanded in the early eighteenth century, as living standards improved
among the upper and middling groups of society, the increase in
36
Shoemaker, `Reforming the City', 105; The Plan of the Moral Society with some Account of
their Undertaking (London, 1729); Bullock, Voluntary Religious Societies, 17185, 2256; Clarke,
History of the S.P.C.K., ch. 7; W. J. Townsend et al. (eds.), A New History of Methodism (London,
37
See below, p. 289 ff.
1909), i. 281, 284.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

76

National Expansion

demand may not have been able to absorb all the growth of associational activity.38
One prominent growth sector comprised masonic and pseudomasonic societies. The key development here was the setting up of
the Grand Lodge of England in the capital in 1717. Freemasonry
quickly took off and the grand lodge soon acquired John, second
Duke of Montagu, as grand master, the rst of a series of noble
patrons. Numbers of lodges rocketed, reaching over 180 in 1740. By
this date both Ireland and Scotland had their own grand lodges, with
networks of afliated lodges. After 1751 the English grand lodge had
to contend with a successful rival order, the Ancient masons, who
claimed to revive ancient neglected rites (consequently the original
order became known as the Moderns). 39 Yet for all its spectacular
advance, freemasonry was only the biggest of a set of newly minted,
quasi-secret, pseudo-mystical organizations. The next most important
was the Noble Order of Bucks, claiming to have been founded by
Nimrod in ancient Babylon, but probably hatched in the back room of
a London tavern in the 1730s, and within a few years the order was
well-established, led by its Noble Grand and other ofcers. A Candid
Enquiry into the Principles and Practises . . . of the Bucks (1756) revealed an
elaborate organizational structure, with rituals and regalia, akin to that
of the English freemasons. During the 1770s the Bucks boasted over a
dozen lodges in London, with ve more in the provinces and at least
one in the colonies; and the order survived into the next century. 40
Other masonic clones were less successful. The Gormogons started
earlier than the Bucks, about the same time or soon after the formation of the Modern grand lodge. Concerned with `the cultivation of
arts and sciences', the order was supposedly transplanted to England
by a Chinese mandarin and was ruled by the Grand Volgee, but, never
expanding beyond a single lodge, it soon gave up the ghost. Of the
other orders, the Gregorians began in London about 1730 and had
acquired ve lodges by mid-century, three in the metropolitan area.
38
P. Clark and R. Houston, `Culture and Leisure, 17001840', in P. Clark (ed.), The
Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. II (Cambridge, forthcoming); P. Borsay, The English
Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 16601770 (Oxford, 1989), 11827,
18096; P. Clark (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns (London, 1984), 456.
39
A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 17171967 (Oxford, 1967), 536; see below, pp. 30910.
40
W. H. Rylands, `A Forgotten Rival of Masonry: The Noble Order of Bucks', AQC, 3
(1890), 14062; N&Q , 6th series, 8 (1883), 3613; 9th series, 4 (1899), 399400; [P.D.], A
Candid Enquiry into the Principles and Practises of the Most Ancient and Honourable Society of Bucks
. . . (London, 1756; also 1770 edn.)

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

77

Members enjoyed the usual masonic-style cocktail of strange ofcers,

feasts, rituals, and songs. Active in the 1730s but more obscure were
the Free Sawyers, the Gallant Scheamers (`a merry society'), the Quid
Nuncs, and the Khabairites (chiey `wealthy merchants and eminent
traders'); most had only one branch.41 The Order of Ubiquarians
which assembled at Deptford in the 1730s and 1740s may have
been more serious, with an interest in Egyptian learning, and
sociability moderated by temperance. Among regional orders, we
nd the British Arthurites, who met at Exeter and Taunton, while
in Ireland the Benevolent Order of Friendly Brothers of St Patrick had
a General Grand Knot, or grand lodge, by 1750, and afterwards
established branches in England and in Irish regiments abroad. 42
Learned societies comprised another important type of association
in the early eighteenth century, with a growing national impact.
Antiquities were, of course, a ourishing genteel and scholarly pursuit
throughout the seventeenth century, but after the end of the Society
of Antiquaries in 1614 the study lacked a formal associational focus.
There may have been an antiquaries' feast in the 1650s, and after the
Restoration the Royal Society dabbled in the topic, while the Oxford
and Dublin philosophical societies attracted well-known antiquaries. It
was not, however, until 1707 that Humfrey Wanley, encouraged by his
employer Robert Harley, met with several friends to form a tavern
society dedicated to antiquarian studies. Wanley was very much a
society man, having previously served as assistant secretary to the
Royal Society and (after 1702) as secretary of the SPCK. With Harley's
political star on the wane the society soon disappeared, but in 1717
renewed interest led to the erection of the present-day Society of
Antiquaries, with Peter le Neve as president and William Stukeley as
secretary. 43
The new society was part of the general trend towards specialization and fragmentation in metropolitan learned societiesalready
41
N&Q, 9th series, 8 (1901), 480; The Grand Mystery of the Free Masons Discover'd (2nd edn.,
London, 1725); W. H. Rylands, `Notes on the Society of Gregorians', AQC, 21 (1908), 91
109; N&Q, 9th series, 9 (1902), 4434; Daily Journal, 8 May 1736; Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 136,
fo.122; Read's Weekly Journal, 9 Feb. 1733/4; Mist's Weekly Journal, 17 July 1725; F. W. Levander,
`The ``Collectanea'' of the Rev. Daniel Lysons', AQC, 29 (1916), 51.
42
J. Bate, The Practice of Religion and Virtue (London, 1738); Two Sermons . . . Before . . . the
Order of Ubiquarians (London, 1746); Sherborne Mercury, 8 July 1751, 13 July 1752; R. Portlock,
The Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of St Patrick: History of the London Knots
(London, 1973).
43
J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 26, 289, 3546, 51.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

78

National Expansion

noted in the case of science. In the eld of art, the earlier Society of
Virtuosi was joined now by a gallery of new bodies especially concerned
with Mediterranean civilization. One was the Roman Club founded in
1723, which attracted both professional and gentle members and aimed
to promote the appreciation of Italian art and culture. By the early 1740s
this had been eclipsed by the Society of Dilettanti (see plate 8). Though
minutes survive from 1736, the Dilettanti probably dates from a few
years earlier, recruiting a select membership of young nobles and
devotees of cultural fashion. `The nominal qualication' for membership, Horace Walpole jibed, `is having been in Italy, and the real one,
being drunk; the two chiefs are Lord Middlesex and Sir Francis
Dashwood, who were seldom sober the whole time they were in
Italy'. 44 High conviviality was certainly an important part of the
proceedings (which sometimes bordered on the carnivalesque), but
so was patronage of the arts. In the 1750s, for instance, the society
supported the investigation of Greek antiquities, and the next decade
sent an expedition to Asia Minor, with important publications as a
result. In 1742 an Egyptian Society was established under the
presidency of the Earl of Sandwich to promote knowledge of Levantine antiquities. Both these societies testied to that growing upperclass interest in early civilizations which also helped spawn masonic
and pseudo-masonic activity. Another London society which sprang
up in the 1740s was the Pope's Head Club, which took over some of
the interests of the Roman Club and was frequented by a coterie of
artists, gentry, booksellers, and antiquaries. 45
Outside the metropolis, societies depended on a more restricted
clientele and needed, like earlier London societies, to pursue a wider
agenda of interests. At Spalding, a small but prosperous market town
in south Lincolnshire, the Gentlemen's Society originated in a small
circle of `gentlemen of the town who met at a coffee-house to pass an
hour in literary conversation and reading some new publications'.
Rules were drawn up in 1712, and in the early Georgian period the
society ourished under the cultivated leadership of Maurice Johnson,
a lawyer and landowner, with a dozen or more members and a
contingent of overseas correspondents. As well as antiquities, the
society made `discoveries in natural history and improvements in
44
L. Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond (London, 1983),
1920; L. Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), 5, 7; W. S. Lewis et al. (eds.),
Horace Walpole's Correspondence (London, 1937 83), xviii. 211.
45
Cust, Dilettanti, 37, 7781, 82 ff.; J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century
(London, 181215), v. 334; Lippincott, Selling Art, 289.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

79

arts and sciences in general their object', established a library,

museum, and physic garden, organized concerts, and exchanged
minutes with the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries.46 Similar
bodies came on the scene at Stamford and other East Midland market
towns, and further aeld at Doncaster and Worcester. Minutes of the
Stamford Brasenose Society reveal a potpourri of subjects under
discussion, from Roman antiquities and the Northern Lights to
meteorology and the destruction of stained glass in the town's
churches. In Scotland Edinburgh's Rankenian Society, named after
the tavern where it met, had an analogous function as a general
learned society dedicated to `mutual improvement by liberal conversation and rational enquiry'. 47
In the musical arena, the decline of the feast societies under Anne
led to a greater emphasis, at least in the capital, on better-organized
bodies with a regular programme of meetings. Indicative of the new
arrangements were the Bylaws of the Musical Society at the Castle-Tavern in
Pater-Noster-Row (1731), which prescribed a complex organization of a
president, treasurer, and ten managers and stewards, together with
performing and auditing members enjoying specied privileges.
Members paid four guineas on admission, and two guineas thereafter,
for weekly Wednesday concerts in the `concert-house' between
Michaelmas and Lady Day. Another society, the Academy of Vocal
Music, began in 1726 as a professional body for London's leading
musicians, but soon widened its appeal (changing its name to the
Academy of Ancient Music after 1731). Among subscribers for its
fortnightly concerts at the Crown and Anchor tavern gured not only
musicians, but also lords, gentry, clergy, and artists, like William
Hogarth. Other metropolitan music societies under George II
included the Swan tavern club, the later Madrigal Society, and hybrids
like the Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas, which assembled at
the Queen's Head near Temple Bar and cross-dressed concerts with
masonic rituals. Led by the Italian composer Francesco Geminiani as
`sole and perpetual dictator of all our musical performances', this
society owned an extensive library of scores by Geminiani himself,
Albinoni, and other Italians; its demise in 1727 appears to have been
46
Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vi. 565; D. Owen (ed.), The Minute-Books of the Spalding
Gentlemen's Society, 17121755, Lincs. Record Soc., 73, (1981), pp. viiixiv; see also the
Gentlemen's Society, Spalding, MS Accounts, vols. 13.
47
Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vi. 4 n, 5 n; Lukis (ed.), Stukeley Family Memoirs, i., 93; id.
Vol. II, Surtees Soc., 76, (1883), 2856; Bodl., MS English Misc. e. 121, fos. 412, 50; 122, fos.
1215, 309, 824; McElroy, Scotland's Age, 223.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

80

National Expansion

orchestrated by the Modern Grand Lodge. As the music profession

expanded in the capital, boosted by commercial and club concerts, the
Society of Musicians was formed to relieve decayed practitioners.48
Although London supported the largest concentration of organized
music-making, by the 1730s and 1740s music concerts were a crucial
element of public sociability across the kingdom. In addition to
individual benet and commercial subscription concerts, many larger
and middle-rank provincial towns supported clubs and societies:
Gloucester from the 1720s, Salisbury, Licheld, Birmingham,
Coventry, and, of course, Oxford. By George II's reign East Anglia
swarmed with music societies, not just in major towns like Norwich,
Ipswich, and Cambridge, but in small market centres such as
Swaffham, Fakenham, Dedham, and Saxmundham. 49 In Scotland,
Edinburgh's Musical Society, formally instituted in 1728 though
probably existing informally since the 1690s, attracted valuable
fashionable patronage and hired leading Scottish and foreign
musicians. Holding concerts every Friday, the society increasingly
dominated music-making and teaching in the city, and its success
inspired the opening of the Aberdeen Music Society about 1748. By
this time Dublin had a choir of musical societies, usually linked to a
philanthropic cause. At least some of the provincial music societies
had women as members or participants. 50
As for the natural world, orists' feasts may date back to before the
Civil War, but they came into their own during the early eighteenth
century. One such club, near Hoxton Hospital, Ned Ward described as
that `odiferous society of pink and tulip worshippers who can walk ten
miles to see a new stripe in a clove gilly-ower'. In addition to its
weekly meetings, the society's calendar climaxed with the `tulip,
48
The Bylaws of the Musical Society at the Castle-Tavern, in Paternoster-Row (London, ?1731); BL,
Additional MS 11,732, fos. 117; S. McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn
(Cambridge, 1993), 34, 32; Weber, Musical Classics, 29, 5660, 190; BL, Additional MS 23,
202, esp. fos. 6, 13v, 51, 72-v; P. Drummond, `The Royal Society of Musicians in the 18th
Century', Music and Letters, 59 (1978), 26878.
49
S. Sadie, `Concert Life in 18th-Century England', Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 19589 (1959), 1923; Gloucester Journal, 30 Nov. 1725, 1 Dec. 1730; William Salt Library,
Stafford, Salt MS 2015/1 (unfoliated); Jopson's Coventry Mercury, 19 Mar., 9 Apr. 1759; J. H.
Mee, The Oldest Music Room in Europe (London, 1911), 78, 30, 4562; NNRO, MSS: 434, pp.
1367, 153 ff.; 427, pp. 79, 208; 443, pp. 17980.
50
D. Johnson, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the 18th Century (London, 1972), 33
40, 434; H. G. Farmer, `Concerts in 18th Century Scotland', Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Soc. of Glasgow, 69 (19445), 1003; T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds.), A New
History of Ireland, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1986), 6201. Half the subscribers (in 1743) at the
Licheld Music Club were women: William Salt Library, Salt MS 2015/1.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

81

auricula, rose, gilly-ower [and] carnation] feasts' and their competitions for the best owers. Members wore owers in their buttonholes
and the proceedings ended, as ever, with lavish eating and drinking.
Feasts of this type were a major provincial phenomenon by the 1740s,
involving lively competition between growers from neighbouring
towns and shires. Activity was encouraged by the interest in botany
and the upsurge of amateur gardening, highlighted by the tremendous
burgeoning of ower books, and linked to the development of
commercial nurseries across the country and the falling prices of
plants. 51
In comparison, other kinds of leisure association made more
limited progress. Whilst sports like horse-racing, cock-ghting, and
bowling were major components of elite sociability at this time,
associational activity in England was mostly conned to the informal
cricket clubs that began to appear at the metropolitan crease about the
1730s. In June 1735 there was a match for a large wager between
eleven gentlemen of Surrey and the `gentlemen of London called the
London club'. A couple of decades later we discover a growing
number of country clubs in the South-East: the famous village club
at Hambledon in Hampshire was established by 1750, while ve years
later the Maldon cricket club was challenging any town in Essex to a
match for a prize of eleven gold rings. 52 In Scotland local curling
societies were starting to surface, while at least three golf clubs were
meeting in the 1750s (at Edinburgh and St Andrew's).53
Philanthropic associations had a growing impact in this period.
English charity school societies, which had developed out of the
religious reform movement under William and Mary, continued their
activities almost exclusively in urban centres. There were recurrent
charges of party bias, but important support and publicity was provided
51
E. Ward, A Compleat and Humorous Acccount of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the
Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1756), 24956; J. Harvey, Early Nurserymen
(Chichester, 1974), 37, 71; e.g., Northampton Mercury, 10 July 1738, 17 July 1749; K. Thomas,
Man and the Natural World (Harmondsworth, 1983), 2239; J. Thirsk (ed.), Agrarian History of
England and Wales, Vol. V(1) (Cambridge, 1984), 1689.
52
Read's Weekly Journal, 14 June, 23 Aug. 1735; J. Arlott (ed.), From Hambledon to Lords
(London, 1948); Hants. RO, 4 M 85/1 (Hambledon Club Minute Book 177295); Ipswich
Journal, 28 June 1755; also A. F. J. Brown (ed.), Essex People, 17501900 (Chelmsford, 1972), 36.
53
J. Kerr, The History of Curling (Edinburgh, 1890), ch. 4; D. B. Smith, Curling: An Illustrated
History (Edinburgh, 1981), 2634. I am very grateful to Sheriff D. B. Smith for his advice on
curling. J. Lowerson, `Golf and the Making of Myths', in G. Jarvie and G. Walker (eds.),
Scottish Sport in the Making of the Nation (London, 1994), 79; I. T. Henderson and D. I. Stirk,
Royal Blackheath (London, 1981), 7.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

82

National Expansion

by the SPCK, and a wave of new schools sprang up in Wales. North of

the border, the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge
expanded its work in the Highlands after 1715, and by mid-century
over 150 schools had been instituted. 54 In Ireland earlier local school
societies received a boost in 1717 through the formation of the
Dublin Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Modelling itself
on the London SPCK, the Dublin society encouraged the establishment of new schools, and by 1725 the number had risen to 163.
Unfortunately, lack of local support led to falling momentum, which
was only reversed in 1733 through the chartering of the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in
Ireland. This received nancial aid from a corresponding society in
London and strong ofcial backing, including parliamentary grants
after 1747. 55
On a wider front, more societies organized for the relief of poor
clergy and their families, while George I's reign saw the foundation of
public medical facilities by subscription bodies. In 1719 a charitable
society of `several well disposed gentlemen' set up the Westminster
inrmary in St James Street, while a breakaway body opened St
George's Hospital near Hyde Park Corner in 1733. The previous
year a Dispensary Society had been launched with the aim of opening
a public dispensary in Great Russell Street. The provinces followed
suit. The wave of new regional inrmaries established from the 1720s
included a large number organized on a voluntary basis, as at
Shrewsbury, where the inrmary society was led by local gentry. 56
Such bodies should be seen as part of a larger philanthropic movement in the early Georgian period, which put a new stress on institutional charity for orphans, prostitutes, and the sick. This was especially
notable in the capital, with the establishment of the Foundling
Hospital (1739), the Lock Hospital (1746), the Lying-in Hospital
(1749), the City Lying-in Hospital (1750), and the Magdalen (1758).
Many of these institutions were run by governing bodies on a
54
M. J. Jones, The Charity School Movement (London, 1964), 5661, 6972, 11030, 179,
198201, 2906; also Rose, `Seminarys of Faction', 8357, 839 ff.
55
Jones, Charity School Movement, 22738, 3867.
56
Cox, Bridging the Gap, 92; An Account of the Proceedings of the Charitable Society for Relieving the
Sick and Needy at the Publick Inrmary in James-St Westminster, printed as an appendix to
T. Sherlock, The Nature and Extent of Charity (London, 1735); An Account of the Proceedings of the
Governors of St George's Hospital . . . (London, 1742); Proposals by the Dispensary-Society (London,
1732); J. Woodward, To Do the Sick No Harm (London, 1974), 12 and passim; An Account of the
Proceedings of the Society for Establishing a Public Inrmary at Salop . . . (n.p., 1746).

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

83

subscription or donation basis rather than as conventional voluntary

associations.57
Meanwhile, a growing number of small-scale charitable societies
emerged. Early Georgian Bristol, for instance, had a cluster, including
the Colston, Loyal, Dolphin, and Grateful Societies, as well the
Society for the Relief of Poor Persons when Ill. In addition to those
providing public charity, an increasing range of societies offered
mutual aid. In the case of masonic lodges or patronymic societies,
relief for members was only one part of their activities; for others
mutual help was the prime concern. Benet societies had appeared
earlier in the seventeenth century, particularly in Scotland, but following the Revolution of 1688 we nd a steady advance of artisan box
clubs. By the late 1730s the capital was said to have `great and
numerous societies which consist of thousands of members'. There
was a similar trend in the provinces, as leading regional centres and the
textile towns of the South-West hosted sizeable contingents, their box
clubs sometimes doubling as trade and social clubs. Thus the
`Norwich Weaver' happily proclaimed:
'Twas then I could to jovial clubs repair,
And pass my evenings pleasurably there;
With boon companions talk of mutual trade,
And spend the wagers we before had laid.58

In Scotland too, rising numbers of journeymen organizations appeared

by the 1740s, encouraged by economic revival and rising demand for
skilled labour. At Dublin a calvalcade of journeymen craft clubs
paraded through the bustling streets of the city from the 1720s.59

iv
The growth of artisan benet clubs in the early eighteenth century
exemplied the enlarged social support for voluntary societies. All the
signs are that this broader pattern of recruitment from skilled and
middling social groups stemmed in part from the declining importance of older organizations like the gilds. There was a minor inux of
57
D. T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the 18th Century (Princeton, NJ,
1989), 5472.
58
Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 1789; see below, pp. 3534; W. Maitland, The History of
London (London, 1756 ed.), ii. 1,326; poem quoted in P. J. Coreld, `The Social and Economic
History of Norwich, 16501850' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1976),
59
See below, pp. 264, 266.
243.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

84

National Expansion

non-elite groups into upper-class societies, but mostly they set up

their own bodies: thus, artisan box clubs were joined by distinct
middle-rank friendly societies and masonic lodges.60 It is true that
clubs and societies remained almost wholly a masculine preserve:
women were limited to a handful of music societies, social clubs,
and benet societies. By the death of George II, however, voluntary
associations were no longer the predominantly elitist organizations
they had been at the Glorious Revolution.
What about the diffusion of voluntary associations? In 1688 the
great majority of known clubs and societies had been located in
London, and no more than a handful of provincial centres could
claim any array of associations. By the 1740s and 1750s, however,
virtually all the larger towns in Britain and a growing number of the
smaller ones, especially in England, hosted a mix of societies. Much
of the initial momentum after 1688 derived from the rapidly expanding capital, whose religious and moral reform societies, music societies,
masonic lodges, inrmary societies, learned societies, and smart
social clubs set the pattern for the spread of provincial associations.
But there is growing evidence by the 1730s, if not before, of
considerable provincial, and, indeed, regional autonomy. Florists'
feasts, for instance, though present in London, appear to have
enjoyed their greatest support in the provinces, attracting the backing of local gentlemen, professional men, traders, and nursery-men.
Regional capitals like Bristol, Newcastle, and Norwich had societies
from the 1720s; the Ancient Society of York Florists dates formally
from 1768, but a society met there in the 1740s. By then, or soon
after, similar bodies had appeared in middle-rank towns like
Canterbury, Oxford, Bath, Ipswich, Derby, Northampton, and
Gloucester. 61 In the Midlands in particular, activity took root at
the level of market towns, as places like Kettering, Stamford,
Wellingborough, Daventry, Rugby, Banbury, and Woodstock began
organizing meetings. Similarly, Cheshire and Lancashire had their
meetings of orists and gooseberry growers under George II. In

60

See below, pp. 3546.

Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 1524; J. H. Hinde, `Public Amusements in Newcastle',
Archaeologia Aeliana, ns, 4 (1860), 240; Read's Weekly Journal, 5 Aug. 1732, 5 Aug. 1738; York
City Reference Library, MSS, Ancient Society of York Florists, I; Kentish Post, 10 Mar. 1750/1,
13 Apr. 1751; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 14 Aug. 1754; Boddely's Bath Journal, 18 Apr., 15 Aug.
1757; Ipswich Journal, 12 Apr. 1755 and passim; Derby Mercury, 30 Mar.6 Apr., 1320 July 1750;
Northampton Mercury, 10 July 1738; Gloucester Journal, 20 July 1742 and passim.
61

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

85

Scotland another variant appeared in the climbing number of gardeners'

lodges in provincial towns.62
Regional bunching is also evident in the case of provincial learned
societies. In the East Midlands the Spalding Gentlemen's Society was
emulated by similar bodies at Peterborough, Stamford, Boston,
Lincoln, Wisbech, Market Overton, West Deepham, and Greetham.
Many of these small towns celebrated rising commerce, specialist
trades, and genteel patronage, and were increasingly ornamented (as
one can see at Wisbech and Stamford) by handsome, brick or stone
classical-style houses for the afuent classes. Learned societies were
an essential part of their new smart social world. Though leading
members like Roger Gale and William Stukeley looked to London,
the most important connections of these societies were regional. They
corresponded with each other, took in fellow members, and in several
cases exchanged society minutes. Such bodies not only celebrated
urban revival but shone as beacons of urbane improvement to the
neighbouring countryside. 63
Improvement was an increasingly pervasive theme in British discourse by George II's reign: self-improvement; private, commercial,
and landed improvement; and public improvement. The pursuit of
improvement gures, to a greater or lesser extent, in the activity of
virtually every associational type, from smart metropolitan societies to
the contingents of local book and artisan clubs. In Scotland and
Ireland the concern with improvementheightened by a new sense
of backwardness compared to Englandspawned a specic class of
self-styled improvement associations. Scotland led the way with the
efforts of its Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge to promote
educational improvement in the Highlands and Islands, and the
founding in the early 1720s of the Honorable Society of Improvers.
This supported agrarian innovation through premiums and publications, lobbied for legislation to advance agriculture and the linen
industry, secured state funding for a Board of Trustees for encouraging manufactures and sheries, and inspired other improvement
62

Northampton Central Library, Northants. Collection, Cuttings 591; Stamford Mercury, 20

June 1728; C. Lamotte, Sermon Preached in St Martin's . . . (London,1740); Northampton Mercury,
15 July 1751; Jopson's Coventry Mercury, 10 July 1758; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 24 Aug.1754, 11
Aug. 1756; W. Harper, The Antiquity, Innocence and Pleasure of Gardening (London, 1732)
[Malpas]; J. C. Loudon, An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (London, 1822), 1,319; SRO (WRH),
FS 4/5.
63
Bodl., MS Engl. Misc. e 121, fos. 23, 41, 42; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vi. 47; Lukis
(ed.), Stukeley Family Memoirs, i. 93; Gentlemen's Society, Spalding, MS Accounts, vol. 1, p. 53.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

86

National Expansion

bodies. Agricultural clubs and societies began to spread across the

country (as in England), while the Medical Society of Edinburgh,
established in 1731 `for the improvement of medical knowledge',
had within a few years grown into the Society for Improving Arts
and Sciences, later known as the Philosophical Society. The Scottish
obsession with national improvement and catching up with the
English generated a urry of literary and intellectual societies in
Edinburgh, the best known being the Select Society set up by Allan
Ramsay in 1754 for `the pursuit of philosophical inquiry and the
improvement of the members in the art of speaking'. The society
was soon proposing major advances in arts and industry, as well as the
institution of English schools to promote Anglicization. 64
Cross-fertilization occurred between Scotland and Ireland. The
Select Society cited the work of the Dublin Society for Improving
Husbandry and Manufactures (established in 1731), which had itself
probably been inuenced by the example of the Honourable Society
of Improvers. The Dublin society endeavoured to promote changes in
agriculture, trade, and industry through numerous premiums and
pamphlets. Its Weekly Observations included advice on road-building,
the linen trade, brewing, and import substitution, but the bulk of the
society's publishing work focused on agriculture, trying to boost Irish
output in order to feed the growing national population. Incorporated
in 1749, the society subsequently obtained government grants.
Achievements of improvement societies like that in Dublin helped
to spur William Shipley from Northampton to undertake the creation
(in 1754) of the London Society of Arts, with a similar agenda for
supporting innovation in agriculture, trade, and manufacture. 65
Freemasonry was another area where the regions had a growing
impact by mid-century. It is likely that earlier developments in Scottish
masonry helped shape the evolution of speculative masonry in
64
See Clark and Houston, `Culture and Leisure, 17001840'; State of the Society in Scotland for
Propagating Christian Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1741), 78, 51 ff.; McElroy, Scotland's Age, pp. 79;
also N. T. Phillipson, `Towards a Denition of the Scottish Enlightenment', in P. Fritz and
D. Williams (eds.), City and Society in the 18th Century (Toronto, 1973), 1312, 134, 13840;
S. Wilmot, 'The Business of Improvement': Agriculture and Scientic Culture in Britain, c.1700c.1870,
Historical Geography Research Series, 24, (1990), 9; Emerson, `Philosophical Society of
Edinburgh, 17371747', 1569.
65
McElroy, Scotland's Age, 512; Select Transactions of the Honourable The Society of Improvers . . .
(Edinburgh, 1743), p. ix; K. Hudson, Patriotism with Prot: British Agricultural Societies in the 18th
and 19th Centuries (London, 1972), 38; The Dublin Society's Weekly Observations (Dublin, 1739);
K. S. Byrne, `The Royal Dublin Society and the Advancement of Popular Science in Ireland,
17311860', History of Education, 15 (1986), 81 n.; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, v. 275n.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

87

England and the inauguration of the powerful Modern grand lodge in

London in 1717. From 1725 the latter's ascendancy over the rising
number of English lodges was disputed by a rival Grand Lodge of All
England established at York, although this never achieved more than
limited support. In the case of Ireland and Scottish masonry, the
London grand lodge had a decisive effect on their evolution during
the 1720s and 1730s, promoting the creation of similar central structures, but thereafter the national grand lodges went their own way.
The Scottish grand lodge promoted Scottish lodges in the colonies,
and the Irish grand lodge warranted its own lodges both in the
colonies and England. In 1751 Irish masons, led by Laurence Dermott,
played a key role in setting up in London a rival grand lodge of
Ancients which proceeded to divide English freemasonry during the
late eighteenth century. 66
The increasing complexity of the network of British associations in
the early eighteenth century, moving steadily away from the earlier
heavily metropolitan-centred picture to a more polycentric pattern, is
conrmed by North American developments. Though these will be
discussed in more detail later, two points can be made here. First,
while London provided the model for many of the new clubs and
societies which multiplied in the colonies under George II, others
took their example from Scotland, encouraged by the inux of
Scottish migrants. Thus the Scots physician Alexander Hamilton,
who moved to Annapolis, modelled his Tuesday Club on the Whinbush Club at Glasgow, with similar burlesque ceremonies and
procedures. Likewise, Scottish societies seem to have had a considerable effect in shaping the pattern of Philadelphia's associational life. 67
Secondly, it is clear that by the 1730s and 1740s the American
colonists, like their Scottish and Irish counterparts, were pioneering
their own distinctive types of society. One example was the re club
which appeared rst in Boston in 1717, and after spread to other New
England towns, and thence to the middle and southern colonies. Fire
clubs combined re-ghting activitiesmade acute by the high
incidence of wooden houses (declining in urban Britain), and the
66
See below, pp. 311 ff; J. Lane, Masonic Records, 17171894 (2nd edn., London, 1895), 26;
W. J. Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernia Vol. I (Dublin, 1895), part i, p. 3.
67
Maryland Historical Soc., Baltimore, MS 1265, Box 3, Hamilton Letter Book 173943,
pp. 45; R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club by Dr. Alexander
Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990), i. 4458; A. Hook, `Philadelphia, Edinburgh, and the
Scottish Enlightenment', in R. B. Sher and J. R. Smitten (eds.), Scotland and America in the Age
of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1990), 230, 233 ff.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

88

National Expansion

slow development of insurance companiestogether with neighbourhood and wider social functions. Other distinctive colonial associations were library companies and shing societiesboth particularly
important in the middle colonies. 68
The distinctively regional and local dimension of British associational activity was to become increasingly marked later in the
eighteenth century. On the other hand, up to the 1750s at least
London remained the most powerful cultural actor, not least through
its domination of the media. Scottish, Irish, and colonial newspapers,
as well as their English provincial cousins, were lled with news about
London's clubs and societies, largely cannibalized from metropolitan
papers. In 1737, for example, the Virginia Gazette reprinted from the
London press at least seven pieces on freemasonry in the capital.
When various Philadephians decided to set up a Welsh society in the
1720s, they declared it was `erected in imitation of a useful society in
London' and gave it the same namethe Society of Ancient Britons.
After a masonic lodge was warranted on the West Indian island of
Montserrat, the London press underlined the metropolitan message
by declaring `a spirit appears among the people there to imitate the
customs and manners of the city of London'. Even apparent regional
autonomy may be deceptive. A number of Edinburgh and Dublin
societies had corresponding societies in London, and in such cases the
metropolitan tail often wagged the dog: for instance, the Dublin
Incorporated Society for Promoting Protestant Schools drew much
of its non-ofcial income from its London society. 69

v
By the 1750s, then, clubs and societies were an important and
distinctive feature of public sociability in many British towns.
Documentation is patchy and selective, but there can be no question
that London had the largest number and variety of associations. In the
early years of George III's reign the Duchess of Newcastle enthused
breathlessly over London's entertainments, listing not merely theatres,
pleasure gardens, exhibitions, lectures, concerts, and assemblies, but
68

See below, pp. 3901, 393.

S. C. Bullock, `The Ancient and Honorable Society: Freemasonry in America, 1730
1830' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, 1986), 445; Pennsylvania Gazette, 25 Feb.
1728/9; Read's Weekly Journal, 5 Oct. 1734; Fog's Weekly Journal, 1 Feb. 1728/9; Faulkner's Dublin
Journal, 14 June 1745; A Brief Review of the Rise and Progress of the Incorporated Society in Dublin for
Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland (Dublin, 1748), 67,11.
69

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

89

debating clubs like the Robin Hood Club, gambling clubs such as
White's, as well as `the Macaroni Club, Boodle's Club . . . the Goosetrees Club, Savoir Vivre Club, Bill of Rights, Royal Society, Antiquarian
Society, Tiptop, Border, Constitutional Society . . . Bucks, [and] AntiGallican'. This was only the fashionable tip of the associational iceberg,
and already a few years earlier Edward Kimber had claimed that as
many as 20,000 men met together every night at clubs in the capital.
Despite the fragmentary data, we know of about sixty-six different
types of association in the metropolitan area before 1760, with an
estimated total of around a thousand clubs and societies. 70
In provincial England the main regional capitals continued to enjoy
the largest concentration of associations. Early Georgian Bristol, with
50,000 inhabitants by the 1750s, supported, in addition to its older bellringing, clergy, and county societies, several oral societies, a number
of Whig and Tory political clubs, a music society, a society of Ancient
Britons, masonic lodges, and numerous philanthropic bodies: in all,
perhaps, a dozen or so different types. 71 Likewise, Norwich (36,000
inhabitants) had built up an impressive collection of societies by
George II's reign, when the chauvinistic Benjamin Mackerell declared
`for good fellowship perhaps not one city in England can match us,
the gentlemen and better sort of tradesmen keep their clubs
constantly'. Among these were a ringing society, orists' feasts, a
clergy society, nine masonic lodges, a Gregorian lodge, a natural
history society (after 1746), music society (from the 1720s) and about
fty benet societies, plus numerous social clubs. In the north-east,
Newcastle, booming on the coal trade, likewise had a goodly range of
masonic, oral, benet, clerical, charity, and other associations. 72
Among middle-rank English towns the pattern of activity was
usually more modest, albeit with considerable local variation. The
university town of Oxford had a galaxy of clubs, according to one
report, including the Anti-Gallicans and Anti-Jaspes, thirteen benet
clubs, a catch club (supported by all `true lovers of good fun, good
70
J. Greig (ed.), The Diaries of a Duchess (London, 1926), 2067; P. Langford, A Polite and
Commercial People: England, 17271783 (Oxford, 1989), 100. Estimates of numbers and types of
society here and below taken from a database in progress on British Clubs and Societies,
15801800 (for more details see below, pp. 1278).
71
Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 176180; Read's Weekly Journal, 9 Mar. 1733/4; A List of
Regular Lodges (London, 1760); see above passim for references to other Bristol clubs.
72
NNRO, Rye MS 78, vol. II, p. 218; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760); Norwich
Mercury, 1421 Oct. 1749; 916 Feb. 1750/1; T. Fawcett, `Measuring the Provincial Enlightenment: The Case of Norwich', Eighteenth Century Life, ns, 8 (19823), 1517; for other
Norwich clubs see above, p. 83.

5.11.99 15:46 03 Chapter 0394

90

National Expansion

humour and good music'), dining and social clubs, such as the Eternal
Club, Jelly Bag Society, and Town Smarts (members `dressed in white
stockings, silver buckles, chitterlings [shirt frills] ying, and hair in
kidney'), Irish and Welsh clubs, a poetry and philosophical club, ringing club, and antiquarian society; in company with several masonic
lodges, and benet, social, political, cricket, botanical, rowing, and
college clubs. With its long heritage of clubbing and population of
relatively well-off students and bachelor dons, Oxford was rather
exceptional, however; even Cambridge seems to have had a more
restricted mix of sociable, political, and learned associations. 73 Among
ordinary county towns, Northampton (5,000 or so inhabitants) made
do with orists' feasts, a masonic lodge, and a ourishing philosophical society. Gloucester hosted a music society, a masonic lodge,
a orists' feast, and a ringing society, while Ipswich did somewhat
better with a oral society, masonic lodge, school alumni society,
clerical charity society, music society, and the Tory Monday Night
club. At this urban level, associational activity, while growing, was
constrained both by the competition of other forms of sociability and
by the narrow local audience of gentlemen, professional men, and
traders. 74
Such constraints were even more pressing in the smaller market
towns, often counting fewer than 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants. At
Spalding, Maurice Johnson noted the limited number of local people
who could be induced to attend society meetings, just as William
Stukeley complained repeatedly of the difculty of setting up clubs
and societies at Stamford, owing to the absence of suitable members,
`there being none proper persons in the town, none in the county,
neither clergy nor lay in any direction from the place'. Stukeley's
exposure to metropolitan societies made him too dismissive of
Stamford's performance. In fact, by the last part of George II's reign
the town supported a healthy band of clubs and societiesnot just
Stukeley's Brasenose Society, but masonic, music, and other bodies.
Recent research has uncovered various book, literary, and other clubs
73

VCH, Oxfordshire, iv. 4345; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 22 May 1762; A List of Regular
Lodges (London, 1760); J. Gascoigne, Cambridge in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1989),
58 and passim; also Johnson, Undergraduate, 1757.
74
D. G. C. Allan, William Shipley: Founder of the Royal Society of Arts (London, 1968), 323; A
List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760); see above for other Northampton societies. Gloucester
Journal, 11 Mar. 1735/6, 1 Jan. 1751/2; see also above for Gloucester societies. Ipswich Journal,
12 Apr., 21 June, 23 Aug. 1755; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760); The Suffolk Garland
(Ipswich, 1818), 1802.

5.11.99 15:47 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

91

in English small towns in this period. However, at the local level a

great deal of variation existed; some market towns, notably the bigger
ones, had two or three different types of association, but many others
had none at all.75
North of the border, Edinburgh (population about 50,000) consolidated its importance as a focus of voluntary societies. After the
Union citizens could choose from twenty or more different types of
society, ranging from the literary, social, and convivial, to the religious,
improvement, medical, musical, masonic, and artisanal. Demand was
boosted by the growing inux of landowners and professional folk,
improved trade after 1707, and a widespread elite concern to emulate
the English upper-classes. In 1742 Aaron Hill praised the way that `not
the gentlemen alone, but the very ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into select and voluntary societies for the improvement of their
knowledge instead of the entertainment of their fancy'. Among these
early female societies was the Fair Intellectual Club, reportedly
founded by three young women about 1717. 76
Elsewhere in Scotland, signicant groups of societies were
restricted to Glasgow and Aberdeen. The former, bolstered by
American trade, had a number of nightly social clubs in the 1750s,
together with university student clubs, neighbourhood societies, the
literary club (attended by Adam Smith), and the fortnightly Hodge
Podge Club of tobacco merchants, who gathered for the improvement
of public speaking and political and literary composition. 77 Aberdeen's
cultural fortunes were more fragile, linked to university reform, but
the town's associations included the philosophical society, the Gordon
Mill's Farming club, music society, and trade clubs.78 Otherwise,
Scottish activity was mostly conned to a scattering of artisan, gardening, farming, convivial, and leisure societies, with few towns standing
75
J. Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, Vol. III(2) (London, 1790), 390; Lukis (ed.),
Stukeley Family Memoirs, i. 109, 123, 379; ii. 340; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760);
M. Reed, `The Cultural Role of Small Towns in England, 16001800', in P. Clark (ed.), Small
Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 1379.
76
McElroy, Scotland's Age; Phillipson, `Towards a Denition of the Scottish Enlightenment', 1339; The Plain Dealer, 28 Aug. 1742, cited in McElroy, Scotland's Age, 201;
D. McElroy, `The Literary Clubs and Societies of 18th Century Scotland' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1952), 5161.
77
J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs (Glasgow, 1864), 23, 212, 3745, and passim; McElroy,
Scotland's Age, 301, 401, 121, and passim.
78
W. R. Humphries, `The First Aberdeen Philosophical Society', Trans. of the Aberdeen
Philosophical Soc., 5 (1938), 20321; J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock (eds.), Aberdeen and the
Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987), 25, 15, 1245, 2823; Smith, Gordon's Mill Farming Club.

5.11.99 15:47 03 Chapter 0394

92

National Expansion

out. The situation was similar in Wales, where the only signicant
grouping of social, masonic, improvement, and political societies
occurred at bigger country towns like Wrexham and Cowbridge.79
Over the Irish sea, Dublin (in George I's reign the second-largest
city under British rule), directed a large force of societies by the 1750s.
In addition to those religious, improvement, musical, and masonic
bodies already noted, other elite societies included the PhysicoHistorical Society (established 1744), which collected rare plants and
commissioned county surveys; school alumni societies, catch clubs,
and the Dublin version of the Sons of the Clergy. Conviviality was
sustained by heavy drinking clubs like the Blasters, and there were
numerous trade clubs. 80 Apart from Dublin, however, only Cork, with
perhaps 50,000 inhabitants by 1750 and a reputation as a progressive
and improved city, could claim trade, music, and masonic societies,
alongside its suite of concerts, theatres, bowling greens, and
promenades. Elsewhere in the country, societies were more notable
for their absence. 81
Port cities like Bristol, Glasgow, and Cork began to develop as
signicant centres of sociability in the early eighteenth century not just
because of their commercial prosperity, buoyed up by the rise of the
Atlantic trades, but as a result of their rapidly improving communication with London. Nor were these developments restricted to the
bigger ports. In the Channel Islands the small town of St Peter Port,
hitherto largely Francophone, turned into a centre of English-style
public sociability through its incorporation into the British Atlantic
economy via smuggling and privateering. Already by the 1730s the
port had a societe de la chambre or social club, with its own supply of
newspapers and magazines and patronage by many of the island elite;
there were also other social clubs and two masonic lodges. 82
79
See above, pp. 68, 81, 85, 86; P. Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan
Gentry, 16401790 (Cambridge, 1983), 153 and passim; G. Walters, `The Eighteenth Century
``Pembroke Society'' ', Welsh History Review, 3 (19667), 2917.
80
An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Physico-Historical Society (Dublin, 1745); London
Daily Post, 27 Feb. 1734/5; Dublin Gazette, 26 Nov. 1708; Rules of the Society for the Relief of the
Widows and Children of Subscribing Clergymen of the Diocese of Dublin (Dublin, 1720); Jones, Clubs
of Georgian Rakes, 51, 645; see below, p. 264.
81
J. H. Lepper and P. Crossle, History of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of
Ireland, Vol. I (Dublin, 1925), 10910; C. Smith, The Antient and Present State of the County and
City of Cork (Dublin, 1750), i. 4057.
82
G. Stevens-Cox, `The Transformation of St Peter Port, Guernsey, 16801831' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leicester, 1994), 118 ff., 2602; further information kindly
supplied by Dr Stevens-Cox.

5.11.99 15:47 03 Chapter 0394

National Expansion

93

Across the Atlantic societies were increasingly to be found in all the

major and several of the lesser ports down the East Coast. By the
1750s there were also signs of associations starting to penetrate some
of the inland townsnotably in Pennsylvania and New England.
Elsewhere in the British empire, in India and the West Indies, associations were mostly concentrated in the main port towns, normally the
principal centres of British residence. 83

vi
Overall, the picture is of a general expansion in the number and
diversity of voluntary associations during the early eighteenth century,
but with England clearly in the lead, followed by Scotland, and Ireland
(apart from Dublin) and Wales well behind. This was in line with the
variable pace of urbanization across the British Isles. As the empire
expanded, there was also a signicant growth of colonial associations.
On the ground, however, even in England, the pattern of associational
growth was far from uniform, displaying considerable volatility in the
numbers and types of organization and marked regional and local
variations in the incidence and mix of societies. The geographical
pattern of associations appears both to exemplify and underpin the
position of the most dynamic centres in an urbanizing worldthe
metropolitan centres and major port towns, those with good
communications and a substantial elite of landed, professional, and
commercial classes; only in such places do we see the growing role of
middling and artisan associations. At the same time, the particular
regional and communal patterns of activity show the cross-cutting
power of local circumstances, such as the role of individuals, the needs
of different social groups, media inuences, economic trends, and
competition from other forms of sociable activity. Such regional and
local pressures were to become more, not less, crucial in shaping the
universe of British associations during the late eighteenth century.
83

See below, pp. 389 ff, 420 ff.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

4
An Associational World: 17601800

In the cathedral city of Lincoln, at the height of the political furore

over John Wilkes, a grand masquerade was held, the scene crowded
with the dedicated and desiccated followers of fashion. One of the
participants appeared Janus-like, on one side dressed as `Crown Law',
and on the other side `Club Law': a smart reminder of the enthusiastic
support which Wilkes enjoyed from clubs and societies across the
country. Under George III, voluntary associations of all sorts became
an essential part of the social and cultural language of urban life,
praised or satirized in literature and art. By the 1780s The Times could
comment that `we have numberless assemblies, clubs and societies in
this kingdom'. Across the Atlantic similar sentiments were voiced. It
was not only the accelerating number of voluntary associations which
impressed, but their activity and inuence. On a tour of England, the
Frenchman Francois de la Rochefoucauld proclaimed that clubs and
societies are `one of the most sensible institutions, the best mark of
condence felt in society and in general'. Another, Scottish, visitor
stressed their impact: `there are few circumstances which have
contributed more to the advancement of useful knowledge than the
establishment of academies or societies of learned men'. 1
The earlier trend towards specialization in associational activity was
accentuated, mirroring wider developments in the national economy
and society. The diversity of private social clubs, learned associations,
and lower-class benet clubs was recognized, while the American
William vans Murray wrote from London to a `chum' in Maryland
that `here the pursuits [of knowledge] are kept separate and there are
whole societies united in the object of discovery and improvement',
much more than at home. But it was only a question of scale and
timing. By 1800 a growing variety of specialist societies had appeared
in the United States, and new types of association sprang up in the
1

Dublin Mercury, 13 Feb. 1770; see above, pp. 45; The Times, 8 Jan. 1785; below, p. 404;
N. Scarfe (ed.), A Frenchman's Year in Suffolk, Suffolk Record Soc., 30 (1988), 188; Aberdeen
Magazine, 1 (1796), 74.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

95

furthest outposts of imperial rule. One of the rst things the British
did when they seized the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch in
the 1790s was to set up a race-course, complete with its own Turf
Club.2
Continuity with the early eighteenth century was notable, not only
in the scale, range, and exportability of clubs and societies, but in
their overall format. For much of George III's reign the great mass
of societies remained concentrated in towns, limited mainly to men,
holding their meetings in public drinking houses, and with a variety
of ritual activities. However, from the 1780s major changes were
starting to take place: rst, a greater stress not just on formality but
also on institutionalization, marked by charters, greater bureaucracy,
and a hierarchy of ofcers; secondly, the increase in national networks of societies; and thirdly, a new emphasis on social discipline,
seeking to regulate not just the behaviour of the membership but
increasingly that of outsiders as well, especially lower social groups,
through a multiplicity of organizations including prosecution
societies, philanthropic bodies, and new religious and moral reform
societies.
How do we explain this rash of developments? Fundamental was
the quickening pace of urbanization during the last decades of the
century, particularly in England and Scotland, which had important
repercussions for voluntary associations. On the one hand, it boosted
participation among the urban respectable classes, blessed with rising
afuence, improved education, and new comfortable suburban villas.
On the other hand, rapid urban growth conjoined with rising population levels and agrarian improvement generated severe social
problems and pressures, not least a massive inux of outsiders into
towns, in particular rural migrants and ethnic newcomers (mainly
Irish). After the peace of 1783 and during the economic upheavals
of the 1790s, with war with France and harvest failures, the country
seemed almost overwhelmed by urban social problemscrime, prostitution, deprivation, and sicknesswhich cried out for concerted
action. There was a widespread sense that the state was failing to
respond effectively to these problems, and that stability and order
could only be preserved through collective action on a voluntary basis:
local prosecution societies, for instance, frequently attributed their

2
Scarfe (ed.), Frenchman's Year, 18890; Maryland Historical Soc., Baltimore, MS 1376
(May 1784); see below, p. 404 ff.; Sport. Mag., 11 (17978), 31314.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

96

An Associational World

establishment to the proliferation of robberies and felonies and the

`the want of public prosecutions'.3
Also determining the transformation of associations was the
religious awakening in Britain from the 1780s, as Methodists, older
dissenting churches, and Anglicans became caught up in a new movement to reform society. While the growth of Anglican evangelicalism
is difcult to compute, in the late eighteenth century the ranks of
Congregationalists doubled, Baptists trebled, and Methodists quadrupled. The effect was a concern to save communities from the spread
of irreligion and moral depravity associated with rising urban poverty,
as well as to efface the national sense of defeat after the American War
of Independence through the reassertion of religious discipline. Many
of the new philanthropic, religious, and social surveillance societies
established in the last two decades of the century had strong evangelical or church connections, an identication which continued to shape
British voluntary activity into the Victorian era. 4
A further element in the picture was political. The American and
French revolutions encouraged an upsurge of reformist, radical, and
revolutionary clubs and societies across the countrywell over a
hundred in all. In turn, government allies fought back with their own
voluntary organizations. In November 1792 the lawyer John Reeves
founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property at the
Crown and Anchor tavern in London, and this body was soon calling
for the formation of similar societies across the country. Up to 2,000
loyalist associations may have been established, though many were
ephemeral. Loyalist associations also played a part in the creation of
the Volunteer forces after 1794. As the threat of French invasion and
insurrection grew, the state had recourse to more direct action against
societies. Radical and trade clubs often went underground, while other
bodies sought respectability through increased formality and publicity.
Relations between voluntary associations and the state became more
wary, a wariness which persisted throughout the nineteenth century. 5
3
E. A. Wrigley, `Urban Growth and Agricultural Change in England and the Continent in
the Early Modern Period', in P. Borsay (ed.), The 18th-Century Town (London, 1990), 45; I. D.
Whyte, `Urbanization in Early Modern Scotland: A Preliminary Analysis', Scottish Economic and
Social History, 9 (1989), 28. T. W. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working
Class Culture (London, 1976), 45; NNRO, PD 209/445 (25 Feb. 1787).
4
A. D. Gilbert, Religion and Society in Industrial England (London, 1976), 31, 37; E. R.
Norman, Church and Society in England, 17701970 (Oxford, 1976), 24 ff.; D. W. Bebbington,
Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1989), 6974.
5
A. Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French
Revolution (London, 1979), chs. 412, appendix 3; S. Maccoby, English Radicalism, 17861832

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

97

i
For most of the eighteenth century, however, the state showed little
appetite for regulation or intervention. After the chartering of the
Royal Society and a few other associations in the Restoration era,
incorporations were infrequent: the Society for Propagating the
Gospel (SPG) was one of the few exceptions. In the aftermath of
the Glorious Revolution chartered bodies were disdained as monopolistichence the collapse of most of the overseas trade companies.
Declining government interest in domestic policy and the high cost of
obtaining charters also contributed to the relative paucity of incorporations: the Society of Antiquaries had to pay over 300 for its
charter in 1751. 6
Under George III, however, pressure for incorporation mounted,
reecting the trend towards larger and more formal organizations. The
Society of Artists was chartered in 1765 and, as a result of divisions
within that body, the Royal Academy received royal recognition three
years later. Freemasons lobbied for ofcial recognition in the late
1760s, albeit with less success, but in subsequent decades the Marine
Society and the Newcastle Keelmen won corporate status, as did the
Society of Musicians. 7 In Scotland the beneciaries included the Royal
Medical Society of Edinburgh (1778), the Royal Society of Antiquaries
(1783), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1783), the Clyde Marine
Society (1786), the Highland Society (1787), the Royal Physical Society
(1788), and the Sons of the Church of Scotland (1792).8 Several Irish
societies received charters, while in North America incorporation,
already fairly common before the Revolution, increased thereafter,
as certain state governments sanctioned it for a range of societies.
(London,1955), 957; A. Mitchell, `The Association Movement of 17923', HJ, 4 (1961), 56
77; D. Eastwood, `Patriotism and the English State in the 1790s', in M. Philp (ed.), The French
Revolution and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991), 1558; M. Philp, `Vulgar Conservatism, 17923', English Historical Review, 90 (1995), 4269; I. McCalman, Radical Underworld
(Cambridge, 1988), 10 ff. For government action see below, p. 176.
6
See above, pp. 523, 66; J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century (London, 1812
15), v. 4334; J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 1056.
7
W. Thompson, The Conduct of the Royal Academicians . . . (London, 1771), 1843; S. C.
Hutchinson, The History of the Royal Academy, 17681968 (London, 1968), 3846; see below, pp.
3402; J. S. Taylor, Jonas Hanway: Founder of the Marine Society (London,1985), 97; J. M. Fewster,
`The Keelmen of Tyneside in the 18th century', Durham University Journal, ns, 19 (1957), 21;
C. Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain Since the 18th Century (Oxford, 1985), 278.
8
D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman, Wash., 1969), 73, 78; Commons
Journal, XLI, 2923, 841, 976; H. Moncreiff-Wellwood, The Inheritance of a Good Man's Children
(Edinburgh, 1792).

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

98

An Associational World

In 1791, for instance, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed a law

enabling new societies to obtain incorporation by petitioning the
attorney-general, so avoiding the cost and delay of legislative
approval.9
Incorporation conferred legal and ofcial protection, strengthened
internal controls, and, above all, offered the prize of fashionability.
However, it was not always favoured, for, it was said, `where there is
one person who has a good opinion of incorporated societies there are
ve more who have a very bad opinion of them'. One critic of
masonic incorporation in 1772 complained that, if granted, `the greasy
clubs of every tavern through the kingdom might apply for a charter
to neglect their business'. Often there was a belief that administrative
stability could be better achieved by different means: through registration in the high court, more elaborate rule-books, or in other ways.
Towards the end of the century public subscription associations
emerged, usually as bodies with a large national or regional membership in which organizational power was concentrated in the hands of a
central oligarchy. 10
Another important development was the advent of networking
among voluntary societies, creating a web of dependent or linked
bodies, in order to ensure greater public recognition and the dissemination of ideas. Previously, the only two English associations which had
attempted this were the SPCK and the Modern order of freemasons.
The latter was quickly emulated by the Irish and Scottish grand lodges,
and after 1751 by the English Ancients; masonic clones like the noble
order of Bucks may have followed a similar path, so likewise the
Friendly Brothers of St Patrick. From the late 1760s the Modern
freemasons went further and attempted to convert their rather loose
federation of lodges into a more centralized organization, increasing
administrative and nancial controls over the membership. 11
Other networks were formed on a more ad hoc basis. In the 1750s
Jonas Hanway led the way on the philanthropic front, setting up
9
Laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Vol. III (Philadelphia, 1795), 403; see also
Massachusetts: P. Maier, `The Debate Over Incorporations: Massachusetts in the Early
Republic', in C. E. Wright (ed.), Massachusetts and the New Nation (Boston, Mass., 1992),
748.
10
NLW, MSS, Honourable and Loyal Society of Ancient Britons, British School, vol. 3
(May 1775); Virginia Gazette,18 June 1772; see below, p. 256 and passim.
11 See pp. 60, 656, 76; W. H. Rylands, `A Forgotten Rival of Masonry: The Noble Order
of Bucks', AQC, 3 (1890), 1445; R. Portlock, The Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Brothers of
St Patrick: History of the London Knots (London, 1973), 1.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

99

provincial branches for his London Marine Society at Bristol, Exeter,

and Dublin. He also took over the long-established Stepney Society
and played a leading part in founding the Troop Society in 1760
(which helped British soldiers in Germany and America), the
Magdalen Hospital for prostitutes, and the Misericordia Hospital
(1774) for venereal disease. Bodies like this had overlapping memberships and activities, and, on occasion, shared premises. A skilful
publicist, Hanway attracted nancial support from other associations,
building up a secondary circuit of sympathetic societies. 12 In the
political world, John Wilkes mobilized support against the government
during the 1760s via a battery of radical clubs, often sharing names
(the 45), rites, and probably informal contact, and through a wider
circle of friendly associations, embracing masonic lodges, the Lumber
Troop, Leeches, Hiccobites, Anti-Gallicans, Beafsteak, Albion, and
Cumberland clubs; at Dublin he had the backing of the Liberty
Tree Blues and old Nol Club as well as the 45 Club. 13 In the late
1770s and early 1780s the reformist county associations held national
meetings, but effective co-ordination was missing. The Society for
Constitutional Information endeavoured from the 1780s to develop
links with reform societies across the British Isles, and during the next
decade the London Corresponding Society became the focus for a
loose network of radical societies, both in the capital and provinces.
John Reeves's loyalist Association movement with its numerous local
societies also depended, to a considerable degree, on the London
society meeting at the Crown and Anchor. 14
Nor was networking limited to England. The Association of the
Friends of the People, established at Edinburgh in 1792, was quickly in
touch with other similar societies across Scotland; as it became more
radical, it forged ties with its English and Irish counterparts. In
12
Taylor, Hanway, 726, 125; J. Hanway, Motives for the Establishment of the Marine
Society (London, 1757), 13; An Account of the Society For the Encouragement of the British
Troops . . . (London, 1760), appendix; see below for the Humane Society and its sister
societies, p. 107.
13
N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London,
1982), 232 ff.; Middlesex Journal, 46 Apr 1769 and passim; K. Wilson, The Sense of the People:
Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 171585 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 67.
14
E. C. Black, The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organisation, 17691793
(Cambridge, Mass., 1963), chs. 23; also E. A. L. Moir, `The Gloucestershire Association
for Parliamentary Reform', Trans. of the Bristol and Gloucs. Archaeological Soc., 75 (1956), 17986;
Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, 63, 113 ff., 277 ff., 398402; Mitchell, `Association Movement';
H. Dickinson, `Popular Loyalism in Britain in the 1790s', in E. Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford, 1990), 517 ff.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

100

An Associational World

Ireland, reformist volunteer bodies from the 1770s, often linked to

masonic lodges, presaged the upsurge during the early 1790s of United
Irishmen clubs, which were associated with local reading and trade
clubs. As the United Irishmen turned radical and revolutionary,
Protestant Orange lodges mushroomed, their federated structure
modelled on that of the masons. 15
Artisan trade societies built up informal networks from the early
eighteenth century and became increasingly organized towards the end
of our period, as big employers entrenched their position and as trade
uctuations posed new challenges to skilled labour. Benet societies
preferred to maintain their formal autonomy, often banning members
from joining other clubs: afliated orders, like the Oddfellows and
Foresters, with their national networks of lodges only arrive in the
early nineteenth century. But already by the 1780s we nd friendly
societies meeting and working together to lobby Parliament. North
America saw moves in a similar direction. Towards the end of the
revolutionary war ofcers in the Continental Army formed the order
of the Cincinnati, a veterans and philanthropic body, which developed
a hierarchy of local and state meetings. The Cincinnati had close ties
with American freemasonry, which created a state-based organization
after the Revolution, while other American societies also formed
provincial structures. 16 Networking was a transatlantic phenomenon
by 1800.

ii
Parallel to the transition towards more institutionalized and coordinated arrangements for larger, high-prole societies, a signicant
proportion of associations, particularly smaller ones, retained at least
some of their traditional informality until the close of our period. As
in the past, many were social clubs primarily concerned with drinking.
In the 1760s a group of young men who dined at a tavern in St
Martin's Lane disliked the company in the public rooms, organized a
private room upstairs, and set up `a roaring club', whose boozy
suppers were followed by excursions to the brothels of Covent
Garden. Some years later the silversmith Joseph Brasbridge joined
the Highyer Club at London's Turf coffee-house, which was `purely
15

D. Dickson et al. (eds.), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion
(Dublin, 1993), 43 ff., 1513, 16774 and passim; also P. O'Snodaigh, The Irish Volunteers,
16
See below chs. 10, 11.
171593 (Dublin, 1995).

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

101

for social intercourse and abounded in members every way capable

of bringing their individual stores of wit and good humour'. By
1789 we know of several dozen convivial clubs in the capital,
doubtless only a fraction of the total.17 Even small dining clubs
tended to be run on more regular lines, however. Loyalist refugees
in the capital during the American Revolution drafted detailed
regulations for their weekly dining club at the Adelphi tavern, just
as the Court of Equity at the Bell Savage on Ludgate Hill was ruled
by a set of ofcers and rules. In Liverpool the sociable club of seacaptains and tradesmen at the Three Tuns kept a minute book to
record wagers and nes, and similar long-running records survive
for the Chelmsford Tradesmen Club, which met weekly from 1777,
and the so-called Doctors Club at York, whose sessions after 1781
attracted not only medical men but merchants, tradesmen, lawyers,
and gentry. 18 At Oxford, the descendant of a long line of informal
student drinking societies, the Club, opened in 1790 with strict rules
concerning admission, toasts, and ofcers. North of the border,
Edinburgh's Poker Club held regular weekly dinners embellished
by the presence of many of the city's literati. By 1800 London
drinking and dining clubs had begun to move away from public
drinking houses into dedicated premises, becoming more private
and closed. One such club was established at Cumberland House,
Pall Mall, in about 1799, though the main growth of closed clubs
came after the Napoleonic wars. 19
Increased formality did not stop individual clubs going to the wall,
but compared to the earlier period, greater stability can be seen in the
range of associations, with many older types continuing to thrive and
multiply. Among these were parish and neighbourhood clubs, gaming
clubs like the St James' Club, ethnic societies, orist societies, bellringing societies (retaining their social cachet until the 1790s), school
and college societies, patronymic associations, and literary societies
17
A. Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey (London, n.d.), i. 71; J. Brasbridge, The Fruits
of Experience (London, 1824), 14; The Attic Miscellany, 1 (1789), 89.
18
New England Historical and Geneaological Register, 3 (1849), 823; Guildhall, MS 551, fos.
34; C. F. B. Wilson, `The Records of a Liverpool ``Fireside'', 177581', Trans. of the Historic.
Soc. of Lancs. and Cheshire, ns, 12 (1896), 13548; Essex RO, D/Z 4/1 (unfoliated); York
Minster Library, Additional MS 129 (I am grateful to my student Roger Bellingham for
information here).
19
G. Madan, Records of the Club at Oxford, 17901917 (Oxford, 1917), 1314; N&Q, 9th
series, 6 (1900), 366; EUL, Special Collections Dept., Dc.5.126; R. C. Rome, Union Club
(London, 1948), 45.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

102

An Associational World

like the Turk's Head, patronized by Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds,

and Burke, and the later Essex Head Club.20 This is hardly surprising.
Demand for associational activity of all kinds was now extremely
strong, not only sustaining the impetus of established clubs and
societies, but feeding an explosive increase of new forms of voluntary
association.

iii
One major category of late Georgian society has already been
mentioned: social control or surveillance associations, including prosecution, moral reform, and philanthropic societies. While a small
number of prosecution societies can be found earlier, the main upturn
occurred after mid-century. Various game associations had appeared
by 1750 to prosecute poachers and others under the game laws, and in
1752 a national Society of Noblemen and Gentlemen for the Preservation of Game was established in London, though this encountered
erce opposition. As concern mounted over crime and disorder,
public attitudes towards prosecution societies became more positive.
Thus, in 1774 the Birmingham Free Debating Society resolved that
`combinations for the prosecution of felons are not prejudicial to the
community in general'. 21 During that decade over half a dozen were
established in the Chester area, at Chester itself, Wrexham, Chirk, and
elsewhere, for the prosecution of horse-thieves and other felons.
Many of Oxfordshire's market towns had societies a few years later,
and in Essex eighty different societies advertised in local newspapers
during the last part of the century. While prosecution societies ourished in rural counties, a growing proportion were located in urbanizing and industrializing areas. By the beginning of the nineteenth
century the total number in England and Wales may have exceeded
20

Strathclyde Regional Archives, T-TH 21/1/1; Guildhall, MSS: 6863; 20,748; Greater
London RO, Acc. 2371; for ethnic societies see below pp. 296300; Leicester Journal, 8 Apr.,
22 Apr. 1780, and passim; Boddely's Bath Journal, 11 Apr., 18 Apr., 25 July 1757 and passim;
E. Morris, The History and Art of Change Ringing (London, 1931); The Glasgow Almanack For 1798
(Glasgow, 1798), 2345; N&Q, 8th series, 9 (1896), 424; M. E. G. Duff, The Club, 17641905
(London, 1905); S. Johnson, Diaries, Prayers and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam et al. (New Haven,
1958), 267, 329, and passim.
21
C. Kirby, `The English Game Law System', American Historical Review, 38 (19323),
2545; A. Shubert, ` ``Lest the Law Slumber in Action'': Associations for the Prosecutions of Felons in England' (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Warwick,
1978), 34.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

103

1,000, though they were largely absent in Scotland and Ireland for
institutional and political reasons.22
If prosecution societies were increasingly common in England and
Wales, there was no standard format. Those in Staffordshire and
Shropshire required members to join in a posse to pursue offenders;
other societies conned themselves to offering rewards for the arrest
and conviction of felons and paying for prosecutions. Frequently
societies had specialist memberships and objectives. At the small
textile town of Dursley in Gloucestershire, which had two societies,
one was comprised of clothiers and aimed to pursue criminals stealing,
damaging, and receiving cloth and yarn; the other (formed of gentlemen and farmers) was mostly concerned with sheep-stealing and
house-breaking. In Exeter one society took over the work of the
old gilds and attempted to pursue non-free traders, and London
bankers set up their own association to prosecute forgers. 23 At the
same time, an undercurrent of popular hostility persisted. In 1796 a
society formed at Shefeld campaigned against the local game law
association, and in the same decade radicals denounced prosecution
societies as instruments of `opulent men' that fed paranoia among the
propertied classes. Radicals especially resented the way prosecution
societies tended to back Reeves's conservative Associations. 24
Other social surveillance societies were less controversial. A
Gloucester printer and newsman, Robert Raikes, helped launch the
Sunday school movement in the early 1780s with the objective of
teaching lower-class children basic literacy and keeping them off the
streets. Similar schools multiplied in other provincial towns and
enjoyed a broad coalition of Anglican, Methodist and dissenting
support. In 1785 a national society, the Sunday School Society, was
established in London to promote local schools and distribute textbooks. By 1801 over 22,000 schools had been established, most run
locally by committees (linked to different churches), rather than by
22

Adams's Weekly Courant, 1 Feb. 1775, 23 Feb., 16 Mar. 1779; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 1 Jan.
13 Feb., 9 May 1784; P. J. R. King, `Prosecution Associations and Their Impact in 18thcentury Essex', in D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 17501850
(Oxford 1989), 172; also D. Hay and F. Snyder, `Using the Criminal Law, 17501850', in ibid.
28, 32; J. E. Pulham, `Associations for the Prosecution of Felons in County Durham'
(typescript, Durham University, Paleography Dept.).
23
A. Shubert, `Private Initiative in Law Enforcement', in V. Bailey (ed.), Policing and
Punishment in 19th Century Britain (London, 1981), 33; Gloucester City Library, J.F.11.25 (25);
Exeter Flying Post, 16 Dec. 1784; Bath Chronicle, 2 Oct. 1788.
24
Sport. Mag., 7 (17956), 3301; An Address to the Public from the Friends of Freedom (London
1793), 39; for the effectiveness of prosecution societies see below, pp. 4345.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

104

An Associational World

fully edged societies. The movement provided a nexus for activists

involved in a wide range of other associations.25
In fact, Sunday school organizations constituted one of a family of
reformist agencies. In 1786 the cleric Henry Zouch urged the need for
Sunday schools, prosecution societies, and moral reform associations
in the West Riding. The regional connection was important. Within a
short time another Yorkshire evangelical, William Wilberforce, had
begun his national campaign for the reformation of manners. Wilberforce
won powerful upper-class support for his attack on vice and immorality, and in 1787 George III issued a proclamation against vice. The
Proclamation Society, which Wilberforce and his allies created to
advance reform, was a small upper-class body which sought to
persuade local magistrates to suppress moral disorder, while also
promoting legislation for Sunday observance. Too elitist and metropolitan to maintain momentum, the society was soon eclipsed by other
reformist bodies having better provincial links. In 1802 the Society for
the Suppression of Vice was launched which appealed more to the
middle classes and ran an aggressive campaign of nancing prosecutions by informers. Many of the new reformist and religious societies
were not concerned solely with the heathen at home, but also with
those in the burgeoning empire. Wilberforce himself was closely
involved in another stream of reformist activitythe anti-slavery
movement. In 1787 he played a leading part in the institution at
London of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which
spawned scores of local committees, often recruiting from established
dissenting and reformist groups. The society organized waves of
petitioning and protest against the devilish trade in 1788 and 1792. 26
Missionary activity proved an equally fertile eld of action for
societies. From the early eighteenth century both the SPG and, to a
lesser extent, the SPCK had been involved in Anglican missionary
work. During the 1760s the Moravian church revived their own
Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel and, at about the same
time, there was an attempt at Boston to found an American missionary body to convert the Indians, a move which was thwarted by the
25

Laqueur, Religion and Respectability, 267, 335, 44, 635.

J. Innes, `Politics and Morals: The Reformation of Manners Movement in Later 18thCentury England', in Hellmuth (ed.), Transformation of Political Culture, 68100; M. J. D.
Roberts, `The Society for the Suppression of Vice and its Early Critics, 18021812', HJ,
26 (1983), 16076; J. R. Oldeld, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (Manchester 1995), 415,
96 ff.; R. Anstey, The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 17601810 (London, 1975), esp. chs.
11, 12, 1415.
26

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

105

SPG. However, with the religious revival after the 1780s the churches
vied with each other to set up new missionary societies, mainly
targeting the native peoples of Africa and the Pacic. In 1792 the
Baptists, at a meeting at Kettering, Northamptonshire, set up their
own association for propagating the gospel among the heathen. Two
years later David Bogue argued that the Congregationalists were in
danger of being left behind in the missionary race, and in 1795 they
and other evangelicals created the London Missionary Society, whose
branches or subcommittees appeared in major towns across England
and Scotland. This society quickly dispatched an expedition to the
South Seas, funded in part by local societies. In 1799 the Anglicans
founded the Church Missionary Society to penetrate those parts of the
world which long-established bodies like the SPCK could not reach.
The object of missionary work was not simply external. As the
preacher Robert Grifn declared in 1798, it reinvigorated the domestic church through `country associations', so that the `missionary
spirit set in motion in the metropolis . . . extends its inuence to
the extremes of the British empire'. 27
Grifn saw the churches being revived not just by prayer meetings
and missionary organization but also by `societies for the benet of
the poor'. Certainly the clergy played a vital role in the spread of
philanthropic societies during the 1780s and after. In 1784 the
Anglican minister Henry Peckwell established the Sick Man's Friend
Society, which aided thousands of destitute migrant families in
London through food parcels, visits, and medical helpliberally laced
with doses of religious instruction; another society was planned at
Birmingham in 1793. Inspired by Peckwell's example, the Methodist
John Gardner founded his own Strangers' Friend Society in London,
and a urry of others followed at Bristol and Leeds, Dublin,
Manchester, Sunderland, Hull, Bradford, Liverpool, Bridlington,
York, and Bath. Largely nanced by Methodist congregations, these
societies were principally concerned with helping incoming poor,

27

W. K. L. Clarke, The History of the S.P.C.K. (London, 1959); [ J.H.], A Letter to a Friend; in
which Some Account is Given of the Brethren's Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen
(London, 1769), 310; [P. Thacher], Brief Account of the Society for propagating the Gospel among the
Indians . . . (Boston, Mass., 1798), 2; Sermons Preached in London, at the formation of the Missionary
Society (London, 1795), pp. vvi; R. Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society (London,
1899), i. 45, 8, and passim; Four Sermons, Preached in London at the Second General Meeting of the
Missionary Society (London, 1796), pp. viiiix, xix; R. Grifn and T. Haweis, Thanksgiving
Sermons Preached before the Missionary Society, London (London, 1798), 31.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

106

An Associational World

particularly Irish and Scots, who lacked settlements under the poor
law and fell through the safety-net of parish relief.28
Fusion of religious and moral reform with charity is also evident in
the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts
of the Poor, set up in 1796 with support from members of the
Proclamation Society (including Wilberforce). Through its annual
reports and other publications, the society endeavoured to promote
lower-class self-help, friendly societies, educational and medical
improvement, and religious discipline. Moral and religious discipline
was more crudely explicit in the plan of the Philanthropic Society,
instituted in the capital in 1788. Decrying the indiscriminate charity of
older associations, it took pride in being `formed rather on principles
of police than of charity'. The aim was to sequester pauper children
from the corrupting inuence of their families, teach them a trade,
and stop their drift into crime and disorder. Initially, the society's
School of Morals was open only on Sunday evenings, but soon a
juvenile reformatory-cum-factory had been established, `the Reform',
where the children were taught carpentry, tailoring, and shoemaking;
a printing press was also installed. Everything was geared to making a
prot to fund the society's activity, though complaints were made that
it censored pamphlets printed on its press. Here, and in a similar
society in Edinburgh, moral, social, and political conservatism were
intimately entwined. 29
Of course, not all the charitable associations in the last decades of the
eighteenth century were dominated by a preoccupation with social
surveillance or redemptive policing. Poverty was increasingly seen as
stemming from sickness among the lower classes, and more and more
inrmaries were established in provincial towns to address this problem:
many were run on a voluntary basis, quite often by associations of
28
The Necessity, Utility, Nature and Object of a Society, Entitled The Sick Man's Friend (London,
1788), esp. 5670; R. Little, A Proposal For Raising A Society for the General Relief of the Sick Poor in
the Town of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1793); The Nature, Design, Rules and Regulations of a
Charitable Institution termed the Stranger's Friend (?London, 1798); J. M. Gardner, History of the
Leeds Benevolent or Stranger's Friend Society (Leeds, 1890), 13; Nature, Design, and General Rules of
the Poor and Stranger's Friend Society, Instituted at Hull . . . (Hull, 1795); see also R. F. Wearmouth,
Methodism and the Common People of the 18th Century (London, 1945), 21216.
29
J. R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism (London, 1969), 918 (branch societies were set up
after 1799); First Report of The Philanthropic Society (London, 1789), 2; The Second Report and
Address of the London Philanthropic Society (London, 1789), pp. xi, 1, 39 ff.; Address to the Public by
the Committee of the Philanthropic Society, 1796 (London, 1796); P. Stockdale, A Letter to a
Gentleman of the Philanthropic Society (London, 1794), 10, 12; D. Black, Christian Benevolence
Recommended . . . Preached before the Edinburgh Philanthropic Society (Edinburgh, 1798).

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

107

subscribers. In 1770 the General Dispensary was inaugurated in

London. Among the leading gures was John Coakley Lettsom,
who was also a founding member of the Medical Society of London
(1773) and the Humane Society. The General Dispensary Society was
run by ofcers and a committee elected by subscribers; by 1800 there
were sixteen dispensaries in the capital and twenty-two in the provinces. Numerous other medical relief societies came on the scene as
well. At Chester a smallpox society was set up about 1780 to
promote general inoculation in the city. 30 The Humane Society,
concerned with the diffusion of resuscitation techniques mainly to
help the poor, was one of the few British societies during the
eighteenth century inspired by a European model. The rst society
was established in Amsterdam in 1767, with another in Paris in 1771.
The Memoirs of the Dutch association were translated into English in
1773, triggering the formation of the London society. Lettsom and
others were energetic promoters, appealing for support to local
medical men and those better-off classes increasingly inuenced by
the fashionable vogue for sensibility and benevolence. In addition to
provincial societies in England, three or four societies took root in
Scotland, as did others in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and
Kingston, Jamaica. 31
Yet more philanthropic societies concentrated their efforts directly
on relieving the poorer classes. As well as those bodies founded by
Jonas Hanway, the London Society for the Discharge and Relief of
Persons imprisoned for Small Debts was instituted in 1772, with the
special object of securing the release of artisans who might contribute
to the British economy. Between 1772 and 1800 over 17,000 persons
were aided by the society, at an annual cost of between 1,500 and
2,000. Provincial bodies were likewise set up, as in Norwich and
Cork. In the 1790s societies for relieving the indigent blind appeared
30

e.g., R. Lowth, A Sermon Preached at St Nicholas Church in Newcastle (Newcastle, 1757), 16;
J. Woodward, To Do the Sick No Harm (London, 1974), 1722, 1478; An Account of the General
Dispensary for the Relief of the Poor. Instituted 1770 (London, 1772); DNB, sub Lettsom, J. C.; I. S. L.
Loudon, `The Origins and Growth of the Dispensary Movement in England', Bulletin of the
History of Medicine, 54 (1981), 3238; Adams's Weekly Courant, 7 Mar. 1780.
31
J. Wesley, A Sermon Preached . . . before The Humane Society (London, 1777), 1214; for a
recent analysis: C. D. Williams, ` ``The Luxury of Doing Good'': Benevolence, Sensibility and
the Royal Humane Society', in R. Porter and M. M. Roberts (eds.), Pleasure in the Eighteenth
Century (London, 1996), ch. 5. W. Hawes, Royal Humane Society, Annual Report (1799) (London,
1799); Proceedings of the Humane Society of Dublin . . . . (Dublin, 1778); The New Jamaica Almanack
(Kingston, 1799), 114.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

108

An Associational World

at Liverpool, Edinburgh, and elsewhere.32 Moreover, the same decade

witnessed the growth of soup-kitchen societies to feed the industrious
poor, who were aficted by shortages and unemployment caused by
harvest failures and the French war. The rst in London was established at Spitalelds in 1795, where the society's kitchen in Brick Lane
was open for eighty-eight days in 17978 and served 114,000 quarts of
soup. A similar society was founded at about this time in nearby
Clerkenwell, and within a short while others had sprung up in the
capital and major provincial cities. Dublin's Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers Society (1790) was concerned with assisting the industrious
poor who, `ashamed to beg, expired of want and were often found
dead' in garrets and cellars. Poorer women were another target group,
as middle-class women started to take a more active interest in their
welfare. One example was the society of ladies uniting to assist Poor
Married Women with Child-Bed-Linen, which was operating at
Kettering about 1800. Another was the York Female Friendly Society,
which dates from about 1786, and was run and nanced by a
committee of female honorary members on behalf of the ordinary
membersgirls previously at the city's greycoat or spinning school.
As well as providing help for poor girls during sickness and lying in,
there were rewards for those who stayed in service and behaved well.
Few came up to scratch: the majority of girls admitted before 1800
were subsequently excluded or expelled. 33
The upsurge of new philanthropic societies can be seen as eclipsing
and replacing the large-scale charitable institutions, such as the Foundling Hospital, which were losing support by the 1770s. In addition to
the charitable and related reformist and social control societies just
mentioned, there was a multitude of others, including the Society for
the Suppression of the Profanation of the Lord's Day (1774), the
Naval and Military Bible Society (1779), the Institution for the Relief
32
An Account of the . . . Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons imprisoned for Small Debts
(London, 1777), esp. 2 n.; NLW, Twiston Davies MS 8784; A Sermon Preached in his Parish
Church By a Friend . . . (Norwich, 1778); A Short Account of the . . . Cork Society for the Relief and
Discharge of Persons Conned for Small Debts (Cork, 1783). `A Plan for Affording Relief to the
Indigent Blind', Bodl., J. Johnson Collection, Charitable Socs., Box 1; Gazetteer and New Daily
Advertiser, 4 Dec. 1790; D. Johnson, The Uncomfortable Situation of the Blind (Edinburgh, 1793);
BL, `Fragmenta', vol. 3 (Call No.: 937 g 3), 146.
33
P. Weindling, `The Spitalelds Soup Society', Programme of Festival . . . Spitalelds, 1729
1979 (London, 1979), 46 (I owe this reference to Dr M. Pelling); Address to the Benevolent and
Humane (London, 1798); D. Dickson (ed.), The Gorgeous Mask: Dublin, 17001850 (Dublin,
1787), 13240; Rules for a Society of Ladies, uniting to assist Poor Married Women . . . (Kettering,
?1800); York City RO, Acc. 50/1, 2, 12.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

109

of the Poor of the City of London, the British Society for the
Encouragement of Good Servants (1792), the United Society for
the Relief of Widows and Children of Seamen and Soldiers (1793),
the Religious Tract Society (1799), and the Society for the Relief of the
Industrious Poor (1800). Although a number of these were small,
and quite often short-lived, taken together they formed a core
grouping in the dense network of metropolitan, national and regional
societies in later Georgian Britain. No less signicant, many of them
were new-style subscription associations, recruiting an extensive
membership, nationally or regionally, and with strong, often oligarchic
leadership. 34

iv
For all their signicance, these reformist and charitable societies were
only a part of the kaleidoscope of late eighteenth-century voluntary
associations. No less important was the array of educational, scientic,
professional, improvement, political, debating, and leisure societies. In
the educational sphere, we have already noted the Sunday school
movement, but equally inuential were book clubs and library societies.
Hanoverian Britain experienced a remarkable growth in publishing,
bookselling, and book consumption. Matching the large-scale increase
in circulating and other commercial libraries, voluntary activity was
widespread, particularly in England. A modest clutch of book clubs
was recorded in the rst half of the period, but the major provincial
expansion occurred in the last decades of the century, as clubs
appeared both in larger centres like Bristol, Canterbury, Ipswich,
Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham, and in a myriad of small market
towns. Paul Kaufman lists over sixty clubs founded in the late eighteenth century, and the total gure was probably much higher: in 1821
there may have been about 800 book clubs. Acquisitions and collections could be extensive, as exemplied by the Pamphlet Club at Ely,
founded in 1766 with about twelve members, whose reading included
the latest novels and magazines, works by Voltaire and Wilkes, Aikin's
history of Manchester, Captain Cook's Voyages, and Burnaby's tour of
34
D. T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the 18th Century (Princeton, NJ,
1989), 134, 156 ff. C. de Coetlogon, The Nature, Necessity and Advantage of the Religious
Observation of the Lord's Day (London, 1776), 436; R. H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical
Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 17951830 (London, 1983), 24, 812; F. K. Brown, Fathers of the
Victorians (Cambridge, 1961), 3334; The Royal Kalendar (London, 1793), 285; A List of the
Subscribers to the United Society, for the relief of Widows and Children of Seamen . . . (London, 1794).

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

110

An Associational World

America.35 Activity was often high; for instance, the little Botesdale
book club in Suffolk made 130 loans in 17889. The problem for
many book clubs was that the collection was sold off at the end of the
year. Hence the impetus for more permanent library societies. These
arrived in North America in George II's reign, but in England they
were mainly a phenomenon of the last years of the century. Norwich
had a public library from 1784, run as a subscription association with
ofcers, committee, and a salaried librarian. At Worcester the library
society (1790) had `for its object the disseminating [of] useful knowledge in every branch of science and polite literature and the promoting of harmony and good society'. Bristol's library society, founded in
1772, took over the old city library (established under James I) and
quickly built up a large lending collection, mostly serving the mercantile and professional classes. Bradford's Library and Literary Society
(1775) bought widely, including several of Joseph Priestley's works. 36
Elsewhere in the British Isles the picture was different. Despite
relatively high literacy and book-consumption rates, Scotland had
fewer book clubs or library societies, probably because of the importance of town and circulating libraries. Among the few were library
societies in the mining villages of Wanlockhead and Leadhills, and a
small book club organized by the Edinburgh apprentice George Sandy
and his friends in the 1780s. Wales likewise had only a handful of book
clubs, while Ireland hosted three library societies, at Belfast (1788),
Dublin (1791), and Cork (1792), but little more. In contrast, library
societies had become widespread in North America before 1800. 37
As at Bradford and Worcester, the interests of library societies quite
often overlapped with those of learned and scientic associations. By
and large, most provincial learned societies remained generalist bodies.
Some of the best-known were in growing industrial towns, such as the
Lunar Society at Birmingham (about 1765) and the literary and
35
J. Feather, The Provincial Book Trade in 18th-century England (Cambridge, 1985); also C. J.
Mitchell, `Provincial Printing in 18th-Century Britain', Publishing History, 21 (1987), 201;
P. Kaufman, Libraries and their Users (London, 1969), chs.23; Leics. RO, 2 D 48 (Leicester);
BL, Additional MS 44,973, fos. 2, 6 and passim (Ely); for the Lincoln Book Club see Lincs.
RO (item currently mislaid).
36
Kaufman, Libraries, 47; for American library societies see below, 3901, 393; NNRO,
SO 50/1/1; Worcester City Library, WQ.025, p. 2; Bristol RO, 01157 (22); Barry, `Cultural
Life of Bristol', 99; West Yorks. Archives Service (Bradford), 42 D81/1/1/1.
37
R. Houston, Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity (Cambridge, 1985), 401, 173 ff.;
Kaufman, Libraries, chs. 11, 15; J. C. Crawford and S. James, The Society for Purchasing Books in
Wanlockhead, 17561979 (Glasgow, 1981); `Diary of George Sandy, Apprentice W.S.', Book of the
Old Edinburgh Club, 24 (1942), 23.

5.11.99 15:48 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

111

philosophical societies at Manchester (1781), Derby (1783), Leeds

(1783), and Newcastle (1793).38 Others sprang up in regional centres
and country towns, among them the Norwich Society for the Participation of Useful Knowledge, the Gentlemen's Society at Exeter, the
Maidstone (later Kentish) Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge,
and those at Bath, Canterbury, and Darlington. 39 Although the new
provincial bodies attracted some local manufacturers, the membership
was usually socially diverse, with merchants, professional men, and
landowners applying for admission. Their discussions were similarly
broad, encompassing not only scientic and improvement issues, but
moral, literary, and antiquarian themes. In a provincial context,
specialization risked interesting only a tiny clientele, as Erasmus
Darwin found when he tried to run a specialist Botanical Society at
Licheld. Whatever the reason, the mixed character of many provincial learned societies helped to promote a many-sided and lively public
interest in scientic and scholarly innovation. 40
By comparison, several of the long-established London learned
societies experienced difculty and sometimes decline. Though
more active than earlier in the century, the Royal Society suffered
several upheavals in the 1780s and 1790s. The Society of Antiquaries
(see plate 5) became `one of our most fashionable weekly rendezvous.
Instead of old square toes you now behold smooth faces and dainty
thin shoes'; but the quality of papers was unspeakably dismal. During
the 1770s the Society of Arts was affected by a serious down-turn in
membership, income, and activity, though it subsequently revived (see
plate 11). Of the major problems confronting the established societies,
one of the most serious was the advent of a new generation of small,
more or less specialist associations. Prominent here was the Society of
Engineers (1771), later Civil Engineers, led by John Smeaton; the
38
R. E. Schoeld, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, 1963), chs. 12; A. E. Musson
and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), 89 ff.,
15666, 1909.
39
T. Fawcett, `Measuring the Provincial Enlightenment: The Case of Norwich', Eighteenth
Century Life, ns, 8 (19823), 1920; Essays By a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter (Exeter,1796);
Leics. RO, DE 3214/364/42 (I owe this reference to J. Clark); Transactions of the Kentish Society
for Promoting Every Branch of Useful Knowledge throughout the County of Kent (Maidstone, 1793);
E. Rack, A Respectful Tribute to the Memory of Thomas Curtis, Esq. (Bath, 1784), 24; `Canterbury
Royal Museum and Public Library', Kent Newsletter, 3 (1951), (unpaginated); Durham
University Library, SR 18 B/C (1793).
40
e.g.., Plan of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1793);
Durham University Library, SR 18 B/C (1793); see also below, pp. 4446; D. King-Hele (ed.),
The Letters of Erasmus Darwin (Cambridge, 1981), 109 n.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

112

An Associational World

Society for Promoting Natural History (1782), which was in turn

supplanted by the Linnaean Society (1788); the Society of London
Entomologists (1780), with William Jones as secretary; the Society
for Philosophical Experiments (1795), mainly concerned with
chemistry; the Quaker-linked Askesian Society (1796); and the British
Mineralogical Society (1799). 41
More and more, learned and scientic societies stressed the practical utility of their ideas. Self-styled improvement societies had
already developed in Edinburgh and Dublin in the early eighteenth
century, followed by the foundation of the Society of Arts in London.
During the late eighteenth century much stress was put on agricultural
improvement, linked with efforts to expand output and productivity
in order to supply a sharply rising population. Some of the early
agricultural societies grew out of more general learned bodies. Thus,
the society established at Bath in 1777 (after 1790 the Bath and West)
aimed initially at `the encouragement of agriculture, arts, manufactures, and commerce'. After a decade, however, the society's publications concentrated on disseminating the latest farming techniques, and
new crop varieties and breeds. From the 1770s a mounting number of
English shires had their county agricultural societies, usually run by
the landed class; and this trend was reinforced by a spate of morelocalized farmers' associations or clubs, some with their own libraries,
publications, prizes, and shows. Furthermore, specialist breeding
societies, inspired by Robert Bakewell, were formed across the Midland
and northern counties. 42 There was no national co-ordination of this
movement for agricultural advance, though the Society of Arts, the
proselytizing work of Arthur Young, and the support of an important
group of improving landowners proved inuential. During the 1790s
41
H. Lyons, The Royal Society, 16601940 (Cambridge, 1944), ch. 6; Evans, Antiquaries, 187,
192 ff.; D. G. C. Allan and J. L.Abbott (eds.), The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences (London,
1992), pp. xviiviii; BL, Ac. 4314/2; R. A. Buchanan, The Engineers: A History of the Engineering
Profession in Britain, 17501914 (London, 1989), 3741; A. T. Gage and W. T. Stearn, A
Bicentenary History of the Linnaean Society of London (London, 1988), 411; Oxford University
Museum, Hope Library, W. Jones MSS, Box 1; Minutes of the Society for Philosophical Experiments
and Conversations (London, 1795); I. Inkster, `Science and Society in the Metropolis', Annals of
Science, 34 (1977), 16 ff.
42
Rules and Orders of the Society Instituted at Bath . . . (Bath, 1777); Letters and Papers on
Agriculture, Planting etc. Addressed to The Society instituted at Bath (London, 1788), III; K. Hudson,
Patriotism with Prot: British Agricultural Societies in the 18th and 19th Centuries (London, 1972), 11
23; H. S. A. Fox, `Local Farmers' Associations and the Circulation of Agricultural Information in 19th-Century England', in H. S. A. Fox and R. A. Butlin (eds.), Change in the
Countryside (London, 1979), 46 ff.; Nottingham University Library, MS 24 (Dishley Sheep
Soc.); Northumbria RO, ZMD 169/11 (Northumberland Soc. of Tup Breeders).

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

113

additional impetus came from various new metropolitan bodies. In

about 1792 the Georgic Society was founded with the aim of promoting the teaching of agricultural science, and the following year witnessed the creation of the Board of Agriculture, a hybrid body with
some public funding; under Arthur Young, its secretary, the Board
offered premiums and sponsored publications. When the Smitheld
Club was established in 1798 for the improvement of the country's
livestock, Young was the rst secretary. The Royal Institution founded
the next year likewise had a strong cadre of improving landowners,
who dominated its early management and gave high priority to
scientic work on agriculture. 43
A prominent gure in the Board of Agriculture was Sir John
Sinclair, who was also active in the promotion of improvement in
Scotland, not least through the British Wool Society (1791), which
sought to import English techniques from south of the border.
Scotland had a long tradition of agricultural societies dating back
to the Honourable Society of Improvers, and in the period up to
1784 a dozen county and local societies were established, mostly in
the north-east and east. These attempted to promote practical
improvement, not the `ner arts and sciences', in what one supporter
of an Aberdeenshire club called `this poor part of the kingdom'.
Such bodies, however, were often small and ephemeral, and the
movement only really gained impetus with the establishment of
the Highland Societies in London and Edinburgh in the 1770s.
Committed to rural and commercial improvement, they developed
contacts with the Society of Arts, the Bath and West Society, the
Dublin Society, the Board of Agriculture, and existing Scottish
societies to boost new associational activity; by 1800 another
twenty-seven or so societies had been formed, serving much of
southern and central Scotland, located often in country towns, and
recruiting local landowners. 44 Agricultural societies were also
founded in Wales from the 1750s; the Glamorganshire society
43
S. Wilmot, 'The Business of Improvement': Agriculture and Scientic Culture in Britain c. 1700
c.1870, Historical Geography Research Series, 24, (1990), 14, 22 ff.; Rules and Regulations of The
Georgic Society, for the promotion of Agriculture and Husbandry (London, 1794); E. J. Powell, History
of the Smitheld Club From 1798 to 1900 (London, 1902),13, 27 ff.; M. Berman, Social Change and
Scientic Organization: The Royal Institution, 17991844 (London, 1978), 405.
44
G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VI (Cambridge, 1989),
37981; Observations on the Different Breeds of Sheep (Edinburgh, 1792), 56; SRO (GRH), GD
345/910; R. C. Boud, `Scottish Agricultural Improvement Societies, 17231835', Review of
Scottish Culture, 1 (1984), 708.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

114

An Associational World

complained that the county was `near half a century behind some
parts of England', and therefore associations were imperative for
progress. In Ireland, where agricultural change was minimal, the
contingent of local societies was much smaller (about ten by
1810), and most of the pressure for improvement came from the
Dublin Society and the Farming Society of Ireland (also in Dublin).
In North America, by comparison, the incidence of agricultural
societies soared from the 1780s. Whether these bodies actually
advanced agricultural innovation remains to be discussed. 45
In line with the growth of agricultural associations came the multiplication of medical societies. Lagging behind Edinburgh in the earlier
period, London now caught up, and between 1795 and 1815 it housed
at least sixteen medical societies. John Fothergill, who had trained in
Scotland, set up the London Medical Society in 1752, based on the
Edinburgh society, and other bodies subsequently appeared in the
capital, such as the Society of Collegiate Physicians (1767) and the
Physico-Medical Society (1771). The breakthrough came with
Lettsom's Medical Society of London (1773), which brought together
physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. As well as its lending library,
the society supported prizes, lectures, and publications. More societies
quickly followed, like the Society for the Improvement of Medical
Knowledge, founded in London by John and William Hunter about
1782, while the London hospitals supported three societies, open not
merely to those with ofcial posts but to students and local practitioners. 46 Though London dominated the English scene, a ConvivioMedical Society met weekly at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, after
1768; Liverpool beneted from a medical library society (1770); and
Colchester had its medical society from 1774, which heard reports on
difcult or interesting cases and maintained communication with the
capital. Similar bodies emerged at Oxford (1780) and Newcastle

45
Glamorganshire Society For the Encouragement of Agriculture (Cowbridge, ?1777); NLW, MSS
4548C (Montgomeryshire Soc.); Kemeys-Tynte, f.18; Wilmot, Business of Improvement, 10;
Hudson, Patriotism with Prot, 17, 1303; see below, p. 438.
46
S. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in 18th-century London
(Cambridge, 1996), 26171; R. Hingston Fox, Dr. Fothergill and His Friends (London, 1919),
141 ff.; Medical Observations and Inquiries (London, 1763), pp. ivvii; Laws of the Physico-Medical
Society of London (London, 1774), 3; M. Davidson, The Royal Society of Medicine: The Realization
of an Ideal, 18051955 (London, 1955), 1415; Wellcome Institute, London, WMS/MSL
140A; A List of the Ofcers and Members of the Physical Society, held at Guy's Hospital (London,
1786).

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

115

(1786), while Bristol had several medical clubs by the 1790s, linked to
the inrmary.47
Medical societies consolidated their importance in Scotland in this
period, though Irish activity was probably limited to Dublin. Across
the Atlantic, most American states by the 1790s had chartered medical
societies (often with county branches), which discussed cases,
monitored the spread of disease, and supervised professional controls.
Minutes of a local medical society at Harford in Maryland show a
small group of local doctors debating difcult cases and meeting in
private to exclude non-practitioners. Similar societies were set up in
the West Indies: in Jamaica, for example, as a result of a fever outbreak
during the early 1790s. As John Millar asserted to the Medical Society
of London in 1776, the impact of these activities was not just medical,
for thereby `the chains of ignorance are broken, the charms of mystery
dispelled: [and] monopoly and exclusion, the last feeble efforts of
despotism, abolished'. 48

v
The ambition of medical societies was not just to promote new
information and practices, but also to regulate the qualications and
activity of members, reecting the general process of professionalization in the early modern period. If the rise of the professions was
already notable in the later Stuart and early Georgian era, their
progress was even more momentous during the second half of the
eighteenth century, with the old professional ranksthe law, church,
and medicinereinforced by a battalion of new secondary professions. This was matched by a growing concern to promote
professional identities, solidarity, and regulation. A small number of
quasi-professional bodies may have existed in the early period: the
Sons of the Clergy and similar provincial societies offered a focus for
clerical interaction after the suspension of Convocation in 1717, while
London attorneys and solicitors had (after 1739) the Society of
47

W. J. Bishop, `Medical Book Societies in England in the 18th and 19th Centuries',
Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 45 (1957), 33840; W. Radcliffe, `The Colchester
Medical Society', Medical History, 20 (1976), 3949; EUL, Special Collections Dept., Dc. 7.53;
D. Embleton, Newcastle Medical Society One Hundred Years Ago (Newcastle, 1891), 17.
48
McElroy, Scotland's Age, 1328; Laws of the Dublin Medical Society (Dublin, 1789); Gazetteer
and New Daily Advertiser, 2 Dec. 1790; see p. 147; Maryland Historical Society, MS 1897, parts
12; Jamaica Almanack and Register . . . 1797 (St Jago de la Vega, 1797), 115; J. Millar, A Discourse
on the Duty of Physicians (London, 1776), 25.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

116

An Associational World

Gentlemen Practisers in the Courts of Law and Equity.49 Ofcial

institutions, such as the inns of court and Westminster courts, and
the chartered medical colleges, remained centres of professional
activity and regulation in some elds, but the expansion of the
professions outside the metropolis and their rising afuence necessitated new forms of organization. Medical societies were prominent,
reecting the enhanced economic and social status of the profession,
medical interest in new ideas, and a concern to exclude and marginalize the large number of traditional practitioners and commercial
quacks who still enjoyed public support. The Medical Society at
Colchester had as a principal aim that of reconciling differences
between practitioners`too frequently interrupted in country
towns'and disciplining its members, who came from a medley of
Essex and Suffolk towns. Rising afuence and professional solidarity
also led to the formation of benevolent organizations for distressed
members and their families. The founder of the Colchester society,
Robert Newell, initiated the Hertfordshire and Essex Medical and
Benevolent Society in 1786, and similar societies arose in Kent,
London, East Anglia, and Lincolnshire. The Lincolnshire society
combined its benevolent work with attempting to regulate and control
herbalists, quacks, and others. 50 Professional solidarity was further
enhanced by the growth of informal societies, such as the Medical
Club of London which served as a convivial meeting-place for leading
physicians, surgeons, and others, or the smaller, but no less inebriate,
Medical Club at St Alban's tavern in the capital. 51
Other professions moved broadly in the same direction. By 1800
most denominations of clergy had their own bodies for relieving
distressed members and their families, with the aim of protecting
their collective standing. In England the Sons of the Clergy and its
various satellite societies were complemented by diocesan associations
in most parts of the country; from the 1780s there was also a society
49

G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 16801730 (London, 1982), P. J.
Coreld, Power and the Professions in Britain, 17001850 (London, 1995), esp. ch. 2; N. Cox,
Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . . 16551978 (Oxford, 1978),
51; R. Robson, The Attorney in 18th-century England (Cambridge, 1959), ch. 3.
50
For the inns of court and their decline see D. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers: The Inns
of Court and The English Bar, 16801730 (Oxford, 1990), esp. ch. 2. For the medical context see
D. Porter and R. Porter, Patient's Progress (London, 1989). Radcliffe, `Colchester Medical
Society', 3949; Essex RO, D/Z15/1. pp. 12; Laws and Regulations of the Benevolent Medical
Society (Canterbury, 1799); The Medical Diary for the Year 1799 (London, 1799), 27; St James Chronicle,
911 Nov. 1790; A. H. Briggs, The Lincolnshire Medical Benevolent Society (n.p., 1955), 34.
51
Wellcome Institute, MSS 6214; 6216.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

117

for evangelical clerics. Dissenting ministers had their benevolent

bodies, as did ministers of the Church of Scotland. Similar bodies
functioned in North America.52
Lawyers were somewhat slower to organize. The Society of Gentlemen Practisers was busy protecting the profession in the courts,
arguing the case for higher fees, and relieving needy members and
their families, and there was an abortive attempt to erect a nationwide
benevolent society. Four provincial law societies were established by
1800, but the main upsurge of activity occurred in the following
decades. On the other hand, informal moot clubs and societies of
lawyers multiplied during the eighteenth century. In 1793 a group of
London solicitors, led by Thomas Lowton, Clerk of Nisi Prius, celebrated the defeat of a client's complaint about excessive fees by
holding a lavish dinner at the Freemasons tavern and then setting
up the Lowtonian Society `for the protection of . . . their professional
reputation'. More modest and typical, Warrington had a small society
of young lawyers which held meetings, argued cases, and circulated
books. Barristers on circuit had their own dining clubs, which they
used to distance themselves from attorneys. 53
Newer or lesser professions were increasingly organized by way of
voluntary associations. Though an earlier society had existed, London
by 1790 had a Schoolmasters Society with quarterly meetings, while
Newcastle's Association of Protestant Schoolmasters was instituted in
1774. As in other cases, the aim was to relieve distressed members and
their families, and to discipline `wicked, immoral or proigate'
teachers through the threat of exclusion. Comparable societies
appeared elsewhere. In Scotland even academics joined the process,
professors at Edinburgh university setting up the Symposium Club to
enjoy sedate annual dinners. More controversial was the Architects
Club in London during the 1790s, which included leading exponents
such as George Dance, Henry Holland, and Sir John Soane. Meetings
52

Cox, Bridging the Gap, 92; Plan of a Society for the Relief of Poor, Pious Clergymen, in the
Established Church, residing in the Country (London, 1792); Benevolent Society . . . For the Relief of
Necessitous Widows and Orphans of Protestant Dissenting Ministers in the County of Suffolk (Bury,
1799); Norfolk Dissenters' Benevolent Society (Norwich, 1864); Charter . . . of the Society for the
Benet of the Sons of the Clergy of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1793); Nichols, Literary
Anecdotes, viii. 16; S. Seabury, A Sermon Delivered before the Boston Episcopal Charitable Society
(Boston, 1788).
53
[ J. Rowe], Letters relative to Societies for the benet of Widows and of Age (Exeter, 1776), 12;
Robson, Attorney, ch. 4; The Lowtonian Society Founded in the Year 1793 (London, 1881), 914;
Warrington Public Library, MS 19; D. Duman, `The English Bar in the Georgian Era', in
W. Prest (ed.), Lawyers in Early Modern Europe and America (London, 1981), 103.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

118

An Associational World

were fraught with division since the membership consisted `only of

persons who are too much in a state of rivalship and frequently crossing each other'.54 Among other professional or benevolent associations
founded in the late eighteenth century were the London theatrical fund
society for actors (1765), with a provincial counterpart at Norwich; the
Literary Fund for authors (1790), and a similar society for artists. In the
music business, the London-based Society of Musicians, founded in
1738 and chartered in 1790, ran a fund for decayed musicians, and
organized various benevolent concerts, not least the gargantuan
Handel festivals at Westminster Abbey during the 1780s. 55

vi
In the throng of society activity under George III it is difcult to
differentiate and isolate individual types of association. We have
already noted the close linkages between religious, reformist, and
philanthropic societies. In the same way, the growth of political
reform and radical associations beneted from the general spread of
scientic, improvement, and debating societies. Debating societies in
particular were vital in stimulating social, economic, and, above all,
political consciousness in the period. Such societies were often
regarded as one of the wonders of the capital, to be attended by all
serious visitors to London. Earlier societies may have existed, such as
the Wednesday Club in Friday Street, which reportedly debated the
Anglo-Scottish union in 1706 and again ten years later. By the 1730s
there was a club of young nobles and lawyers meeting in London for
their `mutual improvement in knowledge and the art of speaking or
debating'; a more public and commercial forum at about the same
time was the Society of Oratory held in Newport Market. 56 From
54
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 1 Oct. 1790; Rules of the Association of Protestant
Schoolmasters in the North of England (Newcastle, 1807), pp. iiiiv, 16; Royal Irish Academy,
Dublin, Halliday Pamphlets, 548/8; EUL, Special Collections Dept., Dc.2.75; K. Garlick
et al. (eds.), The Diary of Joseph Farington (London, 197884), ii. 480 and passim.
55
T. Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick (London, 1781), ii. 31117; Folger Library,
Washington, Y.d. 209, 262; NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e Box 3; Literary Fund. An
Account of the Institution of the Society for the Establishment of a Literary Fund . . . (London, 1797), 3;
Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, i. 93; P. Drummond, `The Royal Society of Musicians in
the 18th Century', Music and Letters, 59 (1978), 26889. For a provincial musical benevolent
society see Derby Local Studies Library, Broadsides: `Articles for the Society of Musicians;
Vocal and Instrumental' (Derby, 1764).
56
P. J. Grosley, A Tour to London (Dublin, 1772), i. 164; `Extracts From the Journal of
Edward Oxnard', New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 26 (1872), 89; L. Medway,

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

119

mid-century London was entertained by a cacophony of open debating societies discussing a medley of topics. One of the best known was
the Robin Hood Club, which assembled rst in Essex Street in the
Strand and later in Butcher's Row at the Robin Hood tavern. Participants at the weekly meetings paid 6d a night (including beer), similar
to charges at a friendly society, and in the early 1750s the average
attendance approached 200 people, the prots being donated as
charity to the London hospitals and seamen organizations (veteran
attenders were occasionally relieved as well). Topics of debate ranged
from religious and political issues to science, trade, and navigation.
Despite attacks for alleged blasphemy and sedition, the society ourished under its chairman, the shrewd and learned baker Caleb Jeacock.
Another society at this time assembled at the Queen's Arms in
Newgate Street, where debates were preceded by lectures, which
were sometimes printed and even on occasion translated into Welsh. 57
By the late 1770s, as controversy ignited over the American war, a rush
of new debating clubs arrived; the number reached over 30 in 1780,
though it fell sharply following Bishop Porteus's attack on Sunday
societies, only to revive within a few years.58
Public debating had become a popular rational entertainment, and
some of the venues were run on a largely commercial basis. Women
increasingly attended, and a number of female debating clubs came on
the scene where women themselves were the speakers, often to loud
applause (see plate 9). The capital during the 1790s `usually had two
but sometimes three or four debating societies successful enough to
advertise in the newspapers and to attract paying audiences of
between 200 and 600 people'. In total, about a dozen or so debating
societies functioned in that decade. During the 1780s and early 1790s
debates on political issues were frequent and some societies reserved
An Inquiry Into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland (London, 1706); An
Enquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain by the Wednesday's Club in Friday St (London,
1717). R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 156 argues that this
was a ctitious club, but the evidence is unclear. The Journal of a Learned and Political Club . . .
(London, 1738); Daily Journal, 8 Feb. 1734/5, 9 May 1735.
57
The History of The Robinhood Society (London,1764), 11722, 1268; Grosley, Tour, i. 164;
An Apology for the Robin-Hood Society (London, 1751), 23, 7, 12 ff., 48; T. Fawcett, `18thcentury Debating Societies', British Journal for 18th-century Studies, 3 (1980), 217; J. Wetherall,
Sixteen Orations on various Subjects . . . Delivered to a Public Society at the Queen's-Arms, in Newgate-St,
London (London, 1768), p. x.
58
D. T. Andrew (ed.), London Debating Societies, 17761799, London Record Soc., 30 (1994),
p. ix; id., `Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780', HJ, 39 (1996), 405 ff.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

120

An Associational World

seats for members of reformist clubs.59 But after 1792 government

fears about radicalism led to increasing problems for the public
societies (as for the radical clubs), and some old established ones
folded. In 1795 the Sedition Act required debating societies to be
licensed by magistrates, and four years later the last of London's
public societies closed its doors. But not all was lost: private debating
societies continued, though mostly dealing with non-political subjects.
Thus in the Eclectic Society, founded in about 1783 with Anglican and
dissenting membership, continued to hold debates into the late 1790s
on religious topics and missionary work. 60
Up to the 1790s debating societies also thrived outside the capital.
Some were fairly select, like the Debating Club at Leeds, whose
minutes for the years between 1776 and 1780 record lively and
wide-ranging debates, batting about ideas on superstitious customs,
drunkenness, enclosure, the advantages of low wages, the relationship
of agriculture and industry, and on the economic value of public
sociability (such as the theatre, music, and horse-racing). Birmingham
in the 1770s had two or three debating societies, which played a
signicant part in shaping public opinion over the American war,
and similar bodies functioned at Walsall and Wolverhampton; after
1789 another radical debating society was operating in Birmingham.
Of the two societies in Norwich about that time, the Tusculan Society
had a strongly radical bent, arguing in 1794 over the proposition that
`every government not founded on the will of the majority is usurpation'. 61 Other provincial towns with debating societies included
Cambridge, Manchester, Chestereld, Yarmouth, and Hull.62
In Scotland the best-known debating societies were elitist bodies
like the Select Society of Edinburgh (1754 ), whose meetings attracted
a clientele of lawyers and landowners and discussed a broad set of
economic and political issues. The fashionable Edinburgh Speculative
59
Andrew (ed.), London Debating Societies, 66 and passim; e.g. account of women at the Belle
Assemblee and King's Arms society in A. Oliver (ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen Loyalist
(Cambridge., Mass., 1972), ii. 681, 698; M. Thrale, `London Debating Societies in the 1790s',
HJ, 32 (1989), 5862; BL, Lysons Collectanea, vol. 3, fo. 125 (Call no. C 103 k 11).
60
Thrale, `London Debating Societies', 6386; J. H. Pratt, Eclectic Notes (London, 1865).
61
Doncaster Archives Dept., DD WA Call No. 251, `Proceedings of a Debating Club at
Leeds, 177680', 10, 24, 30, 47, 50, 63, 73; J. Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the
West Midlands, 17601800 (Manchester, 1977), 11117; J. Jones, Remarks on the English Language
. . . (Birmingham, 1774), 2162; NNRO, Norwich and Norfolk Arch. Soc. MSS, G 2, p. 202;
Fawcett, `Debating Societies', 2246.
62
Fawcett, `Debating Societies', 219, 2234; BL, Additional MS 19,716; C. Caine (ed.),
Strother's Journal (London, 1912), 21.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

121

Society (1769) had its own purpose-built debating chamber and an

equally smart audience. The later part of the century saw the emergence of more general debating societies in both Edinburgh and
Glasgow, while Stirling after 1782 had a debating-cum-discussion
club exercised about national and civic improvement; student debating
clubs similarly proliferated in Scottish universities.63 In Ireland
popular debating societies were established by the 1760s, with two
or three in both Dublin and Cork. Formal bodies also sprang up in
American cities after the Revolution.64

vii
Music and singing clubs comprised another important class of association in late Georgian Britain. Older musical societies continued to
function, though not without change. By the 1790s the capital's
Academy of Ancient Music had evolved from a fashionable performing club into a major subscription body, mainly championing older
composers like Handel and the Italians. At Norwich the Musical
Society established in the 1720s became more elitist in the second
half of the century, putting on an annual season of concerts for the
landed and professional classes; after 1789, however, the city's Hall
Concert Society may have served a larger, middle-class audience. The
Musical Society at York was prospering by 1786 with a select membership of about fty, who enjoyed instrumental and orchestral concerts
followed by a congenial supper. Nottingham's society, established in
1766 `for the entertainment, amusement and improvement of each
other' in music, owned a large collection of Italian and English music,
and various instruments; there was also a junior society. 65 In Scotland,
musical societies of this kind were mainly concentrated in the bigger
towns such as Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Glasgow. In
Ireland Dublin was the great hub of activity, but in North America
63
Fawcett, `Debating Societies', 2203; McElroy, Scotland's Age, 48 ff., 88 ff.,104 ff., 110
12; NLS, MS 3475; Mitchell Library, Glasgow, MS 490051; NLS, Misc. Acc. 7862; D. McElroy,
`The Literary Clubs and Societies of 18th Century Scotland' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Edinburgh, 1952), 406.
64
Freeman's Journal, 910 Mar. 1771; Hibernian Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1771, 2 Jan., 2 and 9 Apr.,
1772; Virginia Historical Soc., MS 5: 1B6386.1, p. 36; New York Public Library, Manuscripts
Dept., Uranian Society Minutes, 17913.
65
S. McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993), 6; T. Fawcett,
Music in 18th century Norwich and Norfolk (Norwich, 1979), 7,9; R. Rose, The History of the York
Musical Society and the York Choral Society (York, 1948); Notts. RO, M 190.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

122

An Associational World

musical societies performed in the principal cities down the East

Coast.66
Nevertheless, the older style music societies gave ground steadily to
singing clubs and choral societies. This was partly due to the enormous popularity of Handel's choral music from the 1740s, and in part
to the lower organizational costs, usually without the need to pay for
or hire an array of instruments. Also signicant, perhaps, was the fact
that, whereas music societies conventionally included women (at least
in the audiences), singing clubs generally excluded them from participation. Without women, serious part songs might be fortied with
salacious, drunken, and disorderly singing; for at such meetings the
`ad libitum part of the entertainment . . . many people consider as the
most pleasant part of the evening's amusement', and this would be
spoilt were ladies present. One of the earliest and most fashionable of
the singing clubs was the Catch Club at Almack's tavernformed in
1761 by the Earl of Sandwich, with two generals and twenty earls
among the other lay members; the professional members included
Karl Friedrich Abel and Thomas Arne. The club publicized and
promoted its activities through the annual award of prizes for the
best compositions and by performances within and outside the capital.
Heavy demand for membership eventually led to the creation of a new
catch club at the St Alban's tavern. The 1760s also saw the advent of
the Anacreontic Club, where `all the principal vocal performers in
England, sacred and theatrical' were honorary members. By the 1780s
an orchestral concert had been added to its programme, and Joseph
Haydn attended one of its meetings in 1791. 67 Less elitist was the Glee
Club established at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand (1787), and
the Concentores Society in Bloomsbury (1798), whose members
composed canons to be sung at meetings. At the same time, public
houses across the metropolis resounded to the songs of popular
`chanting clubs'. 68
Singing clubs spread rapidly in the provinces. Bristol had a catch
66
D. Johnson, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the 18th Century (London, 1972), 404;
H. G. Farmer, `Concerts in 18th Century Scotland', Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Soc. of
Glasgow, 69 (19445), 1023, 1089; T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds.), A New History of
Ireland, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1986), 6201; see below, p. 405 ff.
67
Morning Chronicle, 21 Jan. 1791; J. G. Hooper, `A Survey of Music in Bristol, With Special
Reference to the 18th Century' (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Bristol, 1963),
202 ff.; BL, Additional MS 27669 (reversed); BL, Music Dept., H 2788rr; The Times, 8 Jan.
1785; McVeigh, Concert Life, 33; Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1791.
68
Glee Club, Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand (London, 1797); Guildhall, MS 8593C (unfoliated); BL, Additional MS 27,825, fo. 224.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

123

club by 1774, while Norwich boasted a Harmonic Society in 1784 and

a London-style Anacreontic Society a few years later, with `a concert, a
collation, glees and songs . . . sung by many of the visitors after
supper'. Other fashionable clubs were formed at Truro, Cambridge,
Canterbury, Leicester, and Bath, where the early catch club was
transformed into the fashionable Harmonic Society, its 200 members
headed by the Duke of York. 69 But singing clubs were not the
monopoly of the smart classes. Others grew out of church or chapel
choirs. In some Oxfordshire towns we nd competitive singing feasts
by the 1780s. At Halifax the parish choir, including `poor labouring
men', established the Messiah Club, though according to one complaint, `Messiah was the only thing we could attempt, which we had
been taught to chatter like parrots'. Attempts by the sons of the vicar,
fresh from Cambridge, to convert the club into something more
fashionable led to erce resistance and the setting up of rival societies;
by the 1790s the town boasted a very respectable Harmonic Society.
Indeed, from George III's reign middle-class and artisan choral
societies became widespread in northern towns, projecting a distinctive
voice in British music-making. In New England too, singing societies
were closely associated with church congregations, nurturing sacred
music. 70

viii
The widespread interest in musical organizations was all the more
impressive because by the late eighteenth century they faced powerful
competition from a legion of other societies, catering for almost every
leisurely taste. Traditional sporting activities were increasingly run by
clubs. Hunting was a good example of the trend. Fox and deer-hunts
69
Hooper, `Survey of Music', 2012; Fawcett, Music in Norwich, 8; R. Polwhele, Traditions
and Recollections (London, 1826), i. 30; W. Dixon, A Collection of Glees and Rounds . . . composed by
the Members of the Harmonic Society of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1776); Canterbury Cathedral
Library, MS Minutes of the Canterbury Catch Club; T. Fielding Johnson, Glimpses of Ancient
Leicester (Leicester, 1906), 2623; A Selection of Favourite Catches . . . at the Harmonic Society, in the
City of Bath . . . (Bath, 1797), 13 ff.
70
e.g., Jackson's Oxford Journal, 17 June 1783, 2 and 4 June 1784; A Plain and True
Narrative of the Differences . . . [at] the Musical-Club, Holden at the Old-Cock in Halifax . . .
(Halifax, 1767), 10, 11; West Yorkshire Archives Service, Calderdale [Halifax], HAS/B/11/
5/1; B. W. Pritchard, `The Music Festival and the Choral Society in England in the 18th
and 19th Centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1968), 11950;
for popular singing clubs at Newcastle: BL, Bell Collection, vol. 1, no. 128 (Call No.: LR
264 b 1).

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

124

An Associational World

in the early eighteenth century were still largely sponsored by individual landowners, but as costs rose there was a shift towards subscription hunts run on an associational basis. Typical of the new
arrangements was the Northumberland Hunt, which had a limit of
fty members, ofcers, committee, and detailed regulations that
specied the dress of members and even the toasts at dinners. The
Ayr Hunt at Kilmarnock was run in a similar fashion. Based normally
in country towns, hunt clubs became the fulcrum of much rural social
life. Some clubs had a week-long festival of hunts, feasting, music, and
boozing. 71 For hares, the Earl of Orford established the Swaffham
Coursing Society in 1776, and by 1800 we nd similar clubs at
Ashdon and Bradwell. Though the Swaffham society had hawking
as a sideshow, the Earl of Orford was also involved in a separate
Falconers Society founded in 1772. As rie-shooting became
accepted, gentlemen's clubs for pigeon-shooting made a showing,
particularly in the Home Counties; matches were given extra excitement by the inevitable heavy drinking. Soon after 1800 a Society for
Rie Shooting was formed in London, which controlled its own
shooting ground. 72
Angling had been long been organized by informal circles and these
became more formalized during the later eighteenth century. In the
1760s the radical bon viveur Sylvas Neville went shing with an angling
club at Breydon Water in Norfolk, whose members `entertain the
company by turns with a dinner dressed by the side of the river which
affords fun'. Across the Atlantic at Philadelphia, a crew of fashionable
shing companies lined up balls and entertainments, as well as sporting excursions. The big success story of traditional sports in George
III's reign was archery. In the early part of the century the longestablished Finsbury Society of Archers lost its social cachet and
the sport apparently declined, until the new romantic fascination
with the Gothicin both architecture and literatureprompted a
revival from the 1780s, largely directed by associations under noble
patronage. Societies were set up at Dartford, Harlow, Hateld, Highgate, and Epsom in the Home Counties, but also further aeld at
Ipswich, Coventry, Meriden, Hereford, and Chepstow, as well as at
71
R. Carr, English Fox Hunting (London, 1976), 456, 52; BL, Bell Collection, vol. 1, nos.
3367; NLS, Acc. 5357; Hants RO, 89 m94/1; Herts. RO, D/ESr F12; Farley's Bristol Journal,
14 Nov. 1789.
72
Sport. Mag., 1 (17923), 136; 9 (17967), 157, 2667; 15 (17991800), 151; R. W.
Ketton-Cremer, A Norfolk Gallery (London, 1948), 181; Sport. Mag., 2 (17923), 2513; Rules
and Regulations of the Society for Rie Shooting (London, 1806).

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

125

Lancaster, Leeds, and Durham.73 Leading the renaissance was the

London Toxophilite Society formed in 1781, which had the Prince
of Wales and the Duke of Norfolk as patrons, a large, fashionable
membership, and its own grounds. There was nothing plain or rustic
about late Georgian archery. Meetings were convivial and smart, and
the great annual tournament held after 1789 at Blackheath near
London brought together clubs from across the country, with lavish
hospitality. 74
Not all sports went down this route, as the case of cock-ghting
illustrates. Though cock matches between county sides continued,
associational activity was unimportant. This may have reected (and
helped to explain) the success of the campaign against the brutality of
cock-ghting (but not of hunting) towards the end of the period:
opponents claimed that it was socially degrading for any gentleman to
be involved. Bare-knuckle ghting attracted greater upper-class
patronage in the late Hanoverian period, but this too failed to develop
clubs and associations, and was increasingly condemned by moral
reformers as a disgrace to a civilized nation. 75
The new fashionable sports, which graced late Augustan sociability.
were not only organized through voluntary associations but increasingly regulated by them. While cricket clubs had rst appeared in
George II's reign, and there was an early attempt to regulate the sport
by the Star and Garter Club in 1744, the organizational development
of cricket was relatively slow, probably because up to the 1780s the
pre-eminent club, that at Hambledon in Hampshire, was, for all its
fashionable patronage, village-based. However, after the Hambledon's
demise in the 1790s and an upsurge of clubs in provincial towns, the
metropolitan Marylebone Cricket Club asserted its control over the
game. As for horse-racing, from the mid-eighteenth century the Jockey
Club meeting at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall and at Newmarket
began to regulate the sport in Britain. In America local jockey clubs
73

B. Cozens Hardy (ed.), The Diary of Sylas Neville. 17671788 (London, 1950), 77; see
below, pp. 3901, 4045; Guildhall, MS 193/1; W. K. R. Bedford, `Archery in the Home
Counties', Home Counties Magazine, 2 (1900), 13, 15, 98, 203; Rules and Orders . . . of Royal Surrey
Bowmen (London, 1791); BL, Additional MS 6315; E. Hargrove, Anecdotes of Archery (York,
1792); Present State of the Society, of the United Woodmen of Arden, Broughton Archers, and the
Lancashire Bowmen (Stafford, ?1792).
74
Rules and Orders of the Toxophilite Society (London, ?1785); BL, Additional MSS: 6314, fo. 6;
6315, fo. 38.
75
Sport. Mag., 3 (17934), 168; 5 (17945), 218; K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World
(Harmondsworth, 1983), 15960; The Lewes and Brighthelmston Pacquet, 15 Oct. 1789;
R. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society (Cambridge, 1973), 1456.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

126

An Associational World

came to the fore in the middle and southern provinces, supervising a

multitude of race meetings.76
Rising afuence and the general commercialization of leisure
produced a spate of additional sports, almost invariably organized by
associations. Thus we come across clubs for bowling, card-playing,
chess, fencing, sailing, tennis, trapball, and skating. In Scotland, curling
societies multiplied, while golf clubs spread into England, led by the
famous Blackheath Society on the outskirts of London. Most of the new
societies had an upper- or middle-class membership, but the rowing and
curling clubs recruited more widely. British society in the later eighteenth
century was increasingly distinguished by its love of organized sport.77
A further group of leisure-oriented societies which developed in
this period reected man's growing humanity to, or at least interest in,
natural fauna. Bird-fancying clubs already existed in the capital under
Anne, and these became quite common later, joined in the 1760s by
pigeon-fancying clubs. Butteries and bees likewise had their clubs of
admirers, with apiarian interest at Exeter as well as Culross.78
By 1800 clubs and societies had penetrated almost every sphere of
British social life, frequently annexing much of the territory of established public sociability. Here one thinks not just of music-making and
sporting activities, but also of elements of the theatre. Thus, while the
public theatre continued to be run by commercial companies, private
theatricals might now be organized on an associational basis, like Lord
Barrymore's theatre club at Wargrave near Maidenhead. Even the
76

See above, p. 81; Derby Local Studies Library, Broadsides, `The game at cricket . . .
1744'; J. Arlott (ed.), From Hambledon to Lords (London, 1948), esp. ch. 4; C. Brookes, English
Cricket (London, 1978), chs. 56; R. Mortimer, The Jockey Club (London, 1958), 1011,302,
55; see below, pp. 405, 410.
77
Northants RO, CAM 1050 (Bowling Green Club, Kingsthorpe); for similar clubs at
Bedale (North Riding), and Hadley (Worcs.) see National Register of Archives, Index.
Warrington Public Library, MS 14; Birmingham Central Library, Archives Dept., MS ZZ
32, p. 99; J. Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in London (London, 1886), 2678; The Oracle, 30 Jan.
1792; Sport. Mag., 5 (17945), 50; A. Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey (London, n.d.), i.
723, 2978; Maidstone Museum, Blake Collection, `Trapball Society'; NLS, MS 24643;
A. Graydon, Memoirs of a Life . . . (Harrisburgh, Penn., 1811), 512; J. Kerr, The History of
Curling (Edinburgh, 1890), 115; D. B. Smith, Curling: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh, 1981),
27 ff.; I. T. Henderson and D. I. Stirk, Royal Blackheath (London, 1981), 79, 25.
78
The Life and Political Opinions of the late Sam House (2nd edn., London, n.d.), 12; Middlesex
Journal, 14 July 1769; M. Harris, The Aurelian: or, Natural History of English Insects (London,
1766), sig. B1; Oxford University Museum, Hope Library, W. Jones MSS, Box 1, Society of
London Entomologists, Minute Book; Rules of the Western Apiarian Society (Exeter, 1799); also
J. Caldwell, `Some Notes on the First British Beekeeping Society', Trans. Devon Association, 88
(1956), 6571; NLS, Acc. 7694.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

127

army, with its own structure of discipline and command, had a

complex of societies to promote sociability and mutual support. For
the ofcer class there was the development of the subscription mess.
The future historian of Roman decline, Edward Gibbon, in 1762 an
ofcer of the Hampshire Militia, drew up rules for a Tory ofcers mess,
`our new society', while Lord Herbert praised the `public mess booth'
in his regiment, with its replace and good company, which was run as
an ofcers' dining club. In America, in the 1770s one revolutionary
regiment had an ofcers' club `to spend a few hours in social conversation'. On leave in London British ofcers might likewise resort to
their military clubs. For the middle ranks a large array of regimental
masonic lodges appeared from the 1750s to keep tedium at bay. 79

ix
It is impossible at present to give a full picture of the extraordinary
scale and diversity of British societies in the late eighteenth century.
The preceding survey has been largely descriptive, but in Figure 4.1
we have tried to quantify in a preliminary way the trend in numbers by
recording the rst-known reference to clubs and societies in the
English-speaking world. The data are clearly incomplete. The picture
is heavily affected by the availability of sources, particularly the large
number of provincial newspapers in the late eighteenth century. The
bias towards English sources is also signicant. There are further
problems concerning the possible double counting of some societies
(where the name changed over time), and the uncertain starting dates
of others (the chronology of English benet clubs has had to be
estimated because of this). 80 Yet, for all these doubts and difculties,
79
Morning Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1791; D. M. Low (ed.), Gibbon's Journal (London, 1929), 56;
Lord Herbert, The Pembroke Papers (17341780) (London, 1939), 351; E. Bangs (ed.), Journal of
Lieut. Isaac Bangs (Cambridge, Mass., 1890), 38; St James Chronicle, 57 Feb. 1780; for military
masonic lodges see p. 310.
80
Figures 4.12 are based on a database project on British Clubs and Societies, 1580
1800, which is currently in progress. Principal sources so far surveyed include: National
Register of Archives, London, indices for clubs and societies; the Short Title Catalogues: BL
MSS; Guildhall and PRO holdings; for England: a sample of London papers and most
provincial newspapers in the BL Burney Collection; manuscripts, provincial newspapers and
the J. Johnson Collection in the Bodl.; over thirty local record ofce, public library, and
university library holdings in England; English record society series, Freemasons' Hall
collections, and J. Lane, Masonic Records, 17171894 (London, 1895); about 200 printed diaries,
and other items listed in the notes. For Scotland sources include holdings of the SRO, NLS,
EUL, Strathclyde Archives Service, and Glasgow Mitchell Library; also McElroy, Scotland's
Age; and id., `Literary Clubs'. For Wales: the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

128

An Associational World
,

Number of Clubs

,
,
,
,

Decade of Known Establishment

Fig. 4.1. Clubs in the English-Speaking World, 15801799
(the British Isles, the Colonies, and the USA)

the evidence is surely suggestive. From very small numbers before

1700 and modest increases in the early eighteenth century, the trend
soars under George III, particularly from the 1770s. This advance is
even more notable when we consider that the average size of voluntary associations was probably rising at this time, the new public
subscription associations recruiting nationally or across regions.
Equally striking, societies were no longer mainly the preserve of the
wealthier classes. Both in British (and American) society from the late
eighteenth century the vertical penetration of associational activity was
obvious, evinced by the advent of thousands of bodies patronized by
lesser traders and artisans, as well as the nascent middle class.
Membership of associations is discussed in detail below, but several
developments must be noted here. Some types of society increasingly
collections. For American societies: C. K. Shipton and J. E. Mooney, National Index of
American Imprints Through 1800: The Short-Title Evans (Worcester, Mass., 1969) and C. Shipton
(ed.), Early American Imprints 16391800 (microprint version, n.p., n.d.), and holdings of the
American Antiquarian Society, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania
Historical Societies, and a number of public and university libraries; state history series, printed
diaries, and other sources listed in the footnotes. Numbers for friendly societies have been
taken from PP, 18034, XIII, Abstract of the Answers and Returns . . . relative to the Expence and
Maintenance of the Poor in England, and allocated decennially, extrapolating from extant local lists
(see below, p. 351).

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

129

admitted members from the middling and artisan classes; in other

cases the latter set up their own individual clubs and societies, whilst a
further option was to establish a new type of society. Thus, the choral
societies which took off in northern towns during George III's reign
attracted a predominantly middling and artisan membership, compared to the fashionable catch and glee clubs of southern towns. It
is also arguable that the new Ancient order of freemasons founded in
the 1750s was primarily an organization for tradesmen and artisans. 81
The period likewise witnessed a major expansion of artisan benet
societies; by the 1790s they covered much of the country, including
big cities, market towns, and villages. Trade clubs chalked up a smaller
increase, mostly concentrated in urban areas, and by 1800 they were
joined by a wave of savings clubs (anticipating the savings bank
movement of the 1820s). Some of these were money clubs, where
the accumulated capital was either lent out to participants at interest,
or shared out among the membership at the end of the year. We also
nd lottery clubs, essentially syndicates to buy tickets in the state
lotteries. Less speculative were clock, clothing, and watch clubs, which
were often set up by craftsmen in need of business. Francis Place ran a
breeches club near Temple Bar in London, the members consisting of
about twenty working men, watermen and the like, while Samuel
Deacon, a clockmaker, organized various clubs in Leicestershire's
small towns and villages to let `members have as good clocks or
watches for the money as they can buy for ready money at any
reputable shop in the county'. Another variant of this were the watch
clubs, hat clubs, and wig clubs, where goods were rafed. 82 Building
societies also became quite common from the 1780s, at least in the
Midlands and the North. Birmingham had nineteen or so societies
between 1782 and 1795. Probably typical was the Amicable Society at
Birmingham in 1781, which proposed to build `substantial and workmanlike' houses (worth 80) for members in rotation. Most of these
clubs combined commercial functions with traditional sociability.
Other artisan clubs were essentially drinking and leisure bodies. In
81

See below, p. 194 ff.; Pritchard, `Music Festival', 118 and passim; see pp. 3223.
See below, p. 356 ff.; W. Hutton, An History of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1795), 208, 210
12; Birmingham Central Library: Articles of Agreement . . . to institute and establish a Money Club or
Society . . . (Birmingham, ?1808); Articles of Agreement . . . 21st Day of October . . . 1802 (Birmingham,
1802); BL, Additional MS 27,825, fo. 224; PRO, Assi 45/36/2/17881 and 45/34/3/4850
(John Styles kindly supplied these references); M. Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place
(17171854) (Cambridge, 1972), 1067; Leics. RO, 9 D 51/II/18; T. Negus, The PublicHousekeeper's Monitor (London, 1781), 55.
82

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

130

An Associational World

1752 we hear of so-called `rural societies' of London tradesmen and

craftsmen, `straggling about the elds, cracking merry jokes . . . and
settling where to dine and what to spend on dinner'. Young journeymen formed cutter or rowing clubs, often named after public
houses. 83
At the close of our period Francis Place described how the amusements of lower-class Londoners included `chair clubs, chanting clubs,
lottery clubs and every variety of club', among them the eponymous
cock and hen clubs and free and easies. According to his account,
there were fteen such clubs along the Thames between Blackfriars
and Scotland Yard, where the amusements included `drinking,
smoking, swearing and singing ash songs', along with picking up
women. One club at Wych Street, attended by journeymen and
apprentices, charged 4d a meeting, for which the member had `music
and a female gratis'. We also nd footmen clubs and servant societies,
while in London even thieves were said to have their criminal clubs
and, for the less successful there were masonic and other societies in
King's Bench prison. 84 However, for many working men access to
associations was restricted. Benet clubs often specically excluded
the labouring and poorer classes, and in other societies the expense of
membership served as a powerful deterrent to the poor. At Lincoln
about 1800 it was said the lowest classes have `no happiness, no
enjoyment . . . they form no social club', but sit solitary at the alehouse. There was always a nancial bottom line for associational life. 85
Like the poor, women too remained largely notable by their absence.
In the earlier period participation by women was limited to mixed
music societies, female benet clubs, and the occasional social or literary
society. During George III's reign women began to make more of
an impact, particularly with the appearance of new subscription

83
S. Chapman (ed.), The History of Working-Class Housing, (Newton Abbot, 1971), 2359;
M. Beresford, East End, West End: The Face of Leeds During Urbanisation, 16841842, Thoresby
Soc. Publications, 601 (1988), 180202; Birmingham Central Library, Archives Dept., MSS
324353, 260742; Lancs. RO, DD H 999; [T. Legg], Low-Life: or one Half of the World knows not
how the other Half Live (London, 1752), 47; Thale (ed.), Place Autobiography, 76; BL, Additional
MS 27,825, fos. 165165 v.
84
BL, Additional MS 27,825, fos. 144, 224224v; Thale (ed.), Place Autobiography, 77; M. L.
Mare and W. H. Quarrell (eds.), Lichtenberg's Visits to England (Oxford, 1938), 118; St James
Chronicle, 14 July 1780; Sport. Mag., 9 (17967), 104; F. Jonas (ed.), Letters of a Russian Traveller,
178990 (New York, 1957), 305; J. Innes, `The King's Bench Prison in the Later 18th Century',
in J. Brewer and J. Styles (eds.), An Ungovernable People (London, 1980), 279, 2845.
85
See below, pp. 3767; F. Hill, Georgian Lincoln (Cambridge, 1966), 60.

5.11.99 15:49 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

131

associations and philanthropic societies, but the great majority of

societies remained exclusively male.86

x
By 1800 voluntary associations pervaded the British world, but the
pattern was far from uniform. There were variations not only between
areas and regions, but also between different types of urban community. From Figure 4.2 we can see that England enjoyed the earliest and
largest expansion of societies, with Scotland next, and Ireland and
Wales far behind. Even when we adjust the data to take into account
different population and urbanization levels, the rankings remain
broadly the same. The `colonial' advance is also striking, though this
includes America after the Revolution, as well as the East and West
Indies. 87 Overall, despite the limitations of our evidence, the trends
indicated in the graph tend to conrm the impressionistic picture
drawn in this and preceding chapters. Regional variations are more
difcult to quantify, and we will need to look at this further through
the prism of case studies of masonic lodges and benet societies in
later chapters. So far as differences between urban communities are
concerned, it is evident that while national and regional inuences
were at work, local factorseconomic vitality, the shape of the social
order, the overall pattern of public sociability, and so onwere also
crucial.
London, the biggest city in the West, with nearly a million inhabitants by 1801, remained the heartland of societies. Present evidence
would suggest that there may have been as many as 3,000 clubs and
societies in the late eighteenth-century metropolis, with up to ninety
different types. 88 The Scottish and Irish capitals, Edinburgh (population 83,000 in 1801) and Dublin (200,000 inhabitants) also retained
their positions as leading associational centres. Edinburgh probably
had 200 or more societies functioning in the late eighteenth century,
and at least forty different varieties. After 1780 the list was almost
endless, including new elite and middle-class societies, like the
Harmonical Society and Highland Society (both 1784), the Congress
Hall Social Club, the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick (1785),
the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge (1786), the Dialectic
86

87
See below, p. 404 ff.
See n. 80.
Here and below estimates for numbers and types of association in towns taken from
database (see n. 80).
88

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

132

An Associational World
,
,

Number of Clubs

England
Wales
Scotland
Ireland
Colonies (including the USA)

Decade of Known Establishment

Fig. 4.2. Clubs in the English-Speaking World: National Trends, 15801799

and New Clubs (1787), Humane Society (1788), Society for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade, Signet Club (1790), Society for the
Benet of the Sons of the Clergy, Associated Friends of the People,
Association for the Support of the Constitution (1792), Religious
Tract Society (1795), Missionary Society (1796), Gratis Sabbath School
Society and Friendly Society of Dissenting Ministers (1797), Society
for Propagating the Gospel at Home (1798), and the Select Subscription Society (1800). On top of this, there was a multiplicity of masonic,
sporting, trade, and benet clubs. 89 The situation was similar at
Dublin, which now had a smorgasbord of associations: for ethnic
and school groups, for art, the navy, medicine, debating, music, and
learned pursuits (such as the Physico-Historical Society and the Royal
Irish Academy). Other activity encompassed professional associations;
moral reform societies, together with a large number of charitable,

89
A. J. Dalgleish, `Voluntary Associations and the Middle Class in Edinburgh, 17801820'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1991), 613 (I am grateful to Dr
Dalgleish for permitting me to refer to his valuable thesis); McElroy, Scotland's Age; see
also text above; for masonic, trade, and benet clubs see below, chs. 910.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

133

religious, political, masonic, and pseudo-masonic organizations; and

trade and reading clubs.90
In the English provinces the old regional capitals continued to
support notable assemblages of societies. Bristol, with over 60,000
people by the 1790s, had as many as twenty different types of associations in the late eighteenth century. Norwich and Newcastle, also fairly
buoyant until the last years of the century, had similar arrays. York and
Exeter were less dynamic, their populations growing more slowly and
their social world more dependent on the landed classes. York may
have had only about a dozen types of society in this period, whilst at
Exeter `the men in general spend their evenings at clubs, some of
them dignied by the name of the House of Lords, House of
Commons, Royal Society etc. . . . boasting they have not passed
one evening at home the year round'; probably most were just traditional drinking clubs. At the end of the century economic recession
may have further dampened associational activity in these older
centres. 91
However, what is clear in late Georgian Britain is that associational
momentum was moving away from some of the old major centres,
and making its presence felt now in rising industrial and commercial
cities like Birmingham and Liverpool. Birmingham by the end of the
century had forged a powerful regional role in the West Midlands, its
population of over 70,000 employed not just in the metal industries
but in the growing distributive and service sectors. Buttressing its
social and cultural position was a matrix of associationsnot just the
well-known Lunar Society and Tory Bean Club (involving leading
townsmen and county squires), but many reformist and radical clubs,
debating societies, prosecution societies, philanthropic bodies, book,
90
Dublin Evening Post, 16 Feb. 1790; Moody and Vaughan (eds.), New History of Ireland, iv.
519, 6201; J. Barrington, Personal Sketches of his own Times (London, 1827), ii. 116; T. O.
Raifeartaigh (ed.), The Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 1985), 210; Royal Irish Academy,
Halliday Pamphlets, 548/8; A Sermon Preached before the Association for Discountenancing Vice
. . . (Dublin, 1796); Account of the Funds and Expenses of the Society for Promoting the Comforts of the
Poor (Dublin, 1802); R. Graves, A Sermon in aid of the United Charitable Society for the Relief of
Indigent Room-keepers (Dublin, 1796); Society of United Irishmen of Dublin (Dublin, 1794); Dickson
et al. (eds.), United Irishmen, 173, 2867 ; W.J. Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernia,
Vol. III (Dublin, 1900); Dublin Gazette, 14 Mar., 1518 Mar. 1755; see also above.
91
P. J. Coreld, The Impact of English Towns, 17001800 (Oxford, 1982), 11, 15, 201, and
passim; P. Clark (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns, 16001800 (London, 1984),
1516, 190217. Newcastle, for instance, had sixteen political clubs 176984 (Wilson, Sense of
the People, 67). R. Newton, 18th Century Exeter (Exeter, 1984), chs. 5, 8. St James Chronicle,
268 Jan. 1769.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

134

An Associational World

musical, ringing, and sporting clubs, school alumni societies, masonic

lodges and the order of Bucks, trade, building, and benet clubs, and
so on. In his history of Birmingham written at this time, William
Hutton talks of hundreds of societies, including breeches, rent, watch,
building, money, clock, and book clubs, having in all thousands of
members. 92
Liverpool became another vital centre of associational life before
1800, as the city prospered from its dominance in the Atlantic and
Irish trades and its population soared to over 80,000. As well as
traditional social and drinking clubs, like the Fireside Club at the
Three Tuns, the Unanimous Club at the Cross Keys, or the Ugly
Face Club at Tom's Coffee-house, the late Georgian community had
philanthropic societies for the blind and poor strangers, various artistic
societies, music and choral societies, an early Literary and Philosophical
Society (1779), several book clubs, and the later Athenaeum (1798) and
Lyceum (1803) library societies. Among the rest were societies for
debating, bell-ringing, freemasonry, and artisanal and political activity
(though interestingly, radical clubs were largely absent, apparently
because of the limited and conservative dissenting interest there). 93
All the signs are that middle-class societies were taking an inuential
part in reshaping the port's cultural image and civic consciousness at
the turn of the century, in the process enhancing its pride and reputation as a rising city.
Those other successful specialist towns expanding in this period,
92
Money, Experience and Identity, esp. chs. 2, 46; J. B. Stone (ed.), Annals of the Bean Club,
Birmingham (Birmingham, 1904); J. Horden, John Freeth (17311808) (Oxford, 1993), 247; Aris'
Birmingham Gazette, 4 June 1770, 11 Mar. 1771; Little, A Proposal; Hutton, History of Birmingham,
20812, 210; Birmingham Central Library, Archives Dept., MS II R 19; BL, Additional MS 19,
369, fos. 101v ff.; VCH, Warwickshire, vii. 2212; Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 4 Aug., 18 Aug.
1766, 15 Apr. 1771; J. H. Boocock, Early Records of St Paul's Lodge . . . 17431863 (Birmingham,
1903); see also above, n. 82.
93
Coreld, Impact, 15, 4850; Wilson, `The Records of a Liverpool Fireside'; R. Brooke,
Liverpool as it was during the Last Quarter of the 18th Century, 1775 to 1800 (Liverpool, 1853), 2904,
51417; E. Howell (ed.), The Ugly Face Clubb Leverpoole (Liverpool, 1912); C. P. Darcy, The
Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Lancashire, 17601860, Chetham Soc. Remains., 3rd series, 24
(1976); E. R. Dibdin, `Liverpool Art and Artists in the 18th Century', Walpole Society, 6 (1917
18), 6584; Pritchard, `Musical Festival', 205 ff.; J. E. Vaughan, `The Liverpool Library:
Another Chapter', Library History, 5 (197981), 61; G. Kitteringham, `Science in Provincial
Society: The Case of Liverpool . . .', Annals of Science, 39 (1982), 32933; B. WhittinghamJones, `Liverpool's Political Clubs, 181230', Trans. Lancs. and Cheshire Historic. Soc., 111
(1960), 1335; Morris, Change Ringing, 287; The Free-Masons' Calendar . . . 1776 . . . (London,
1776); PP, 18034, XIII, Abstract of the Answers and Returns . . . relative to the Expence and
Maintenance of the Poor in England, 251; J. E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism
(Cambridge, 1990), 392.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

135

the spa and seaside towns, were less signicant as associational

centres. Despite their importance for the leisure industry, places like
Weymouth, Scarborough, and Tunbridge Wells suffered from the high
turnover of visitorsmostly staying only for a few weeks during the
seasonand the small resident population. Brighton, for instance,
made do with clubs for married men and bachelors, celebrations for
the royal princes, and the usual routs, plays, and balls. As one visitor
noted, `in winter it is very disagreeable', being so near the sea and
having a population of only a couple of thousand and little company.
The exception to the rule was Bath, whose permanent population
trebled in the last half of the century to 33,000 by 1801, as the town
welcomed troops of lesser gentryJane Austen's tiresome Sir Walter
Elliottand military ofcers; all this caused a general expansion of
the retailing and service trades. In the late eighteenth century the city
could boast over a dozen different types of association (similar to the
array at York), ranging from catch clubs, music societies, and social
clubs to prosecution, philanthropic, masonic, poetic, hunting, benet,
and trade bodies, plus the Bath and Wells Society and the Bath
Agricultural Society. 94
Across the English urban system, however, there was an extensive
spread of clubs and societies. Whereas early Georgian county and
market towns had only a limited number of societies, mostly for the
elite, by the end of our period we discover a thickening web. The
chance survival of the papers of John Blake, a Maidstone printer,
sheds a bright light on the spectrum of public social activity in a
prosperous shire town with nearly 6,000 inhabitants by the 1780s. In
addition to William Shipley's Maidstone (later Kentish) Society for
Useful Knowledge, which had Benjamin Franklin, Sir William Jones,
and Arthur Young among its corresponding members, the town
boasted a humane society, agricultural society, concert and music
societies, various drinking and dining clubs, trapball and card societies,
a cricket club, and book society. Party clubs like the Commonalty Club
94
P. Borsay, `Health and Leisure Resorts, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban
History; The Lewes and Brighthelmston Pacquet, 6 Aug. 1789 and passim; W. C. Ford, `Diary of
William Greene, 1778', Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Soc., 54 (19201), 86; R. S. Neale,
Bath, 16801850: A Social History (London, 1981), esp. ch. 2, also pp. 3245; J. A. Gillaspie, The
Catalogue of Music in the Bath Reference Library to 1985, Vol. I (London, 1986), pp. xxixxxxii;
Bath Chronicle, 1 Jan. 1789; 24 Apr. 1788; Wearmouth, Methodism, 215; New Bath Guide (Bath,
1826), 98; Free-Masons' Calendar 1776; Epistle To Mrs. M*ll*r . . . (Bath, 1776); J. Brewer, The
Pleasures of the Imagination (London, 1997), 6014; Bath Chronicle, 3 Jan. 1788, 18 June 1789; see
above, p. 112.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

136

An Associational World

and Keppel Society were also important, and were joined by a

batchelor's club, freemen societies, prosecution societies, benet
clubs, a masonic lodge (and provincial grand lodge), loyalist association, and, in the mid-1790s, a radical corresponding society.95 At the
textile town of Tiverton (population 6,500 in 1801) the diary of Beavis
Wood (and other sources) reveal a lively associational world of corporation and party clubs, burlesque societies (such as the Categorical
Club, eager `to promote good humour and mirth'), school feast
societies, radical clubs, dining clubs, loyalist associations, prosecution
societies, and numerous long-established benet and trade clubs. The
range of societies was narrower than at Maidstone, however, a sign
perhaps of the onset of Tiverton's economic decline. 96
Even small English market towns might enjoy a respectable range
of musical, social, book, literary, philanthropic, sporting, social,
benet, and other societies. In 18034 nearly a third of friendly
societies recorded in the ofcial returns were located in smaller towns,
and such places also had goodly numbers of masonic lodges. In the
South-West the Cornish market town of Truro maintained a school
society, a society of Hiccobites, Oxford and Cambridge clubs, and a
club of Cornish naval ofcers, while nearby Helston revelled in a
Roast Beef club and school society. At the same time, there were
regional differences in the pattern of societies, and the smallest towns
rarely claimed more than one or two clubs, sometimes none at all. 97
By the last years of the century societies had begun to disperse into
the English countryside. Hunting, cricket, and archery clubs were
sometimes based in villages; a number of prosecution societies
embraced adjoining villages; and there was a major expansion of rural
benet societies, often promoted by local landowners. But even in the
latter case, it was uncommon to nd more than one or two clubs per
parish, and in large tracts of the countryside they were totally absent.
As for elite societies, these often had links with local towns. Thus,
Lord Barrymore's theatrical club held its plays at his country house at
95
Maidstone Museum, Blake Collection (unlisted); Maidstone Journal, 10 Oct. 1786 and
passim; see also P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County
Town (Maidstone, 1995), 10910.
96
J. Bourne (ed.), Georgian Tiverton: The Political Memoranda of Beavis Wood, 176898, Devon
and Cornwall Record Soc., ns, 29 (1986), 5, 16, 21, and passim; also M. Dunsford, Historical
Memoirs of the Town and Parish of Tiverton (Exeter, 1790), 59, 239 and passim.
97
M. Reed, `The Cultural Role of Small Towns in England, 16001800', in P. Clark (ed.),
Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 135 ff.; see below, ch. 10; Sherborne Mercury,
14 Jan. 1754, 7 Aug. and 14 Aug. 1775, 1 Mar. 1779, 12 Apr., 31 July 1786, 25 Sept. 1790.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

137

Wargrave but its feasts at nearby Maidenhead. The basic drawback to

fashionable socializing in the countryside before 1800 was the difculty caused by weather, darkness, and poor communications. By and
large, associations remained an urban phenomenon. On the other
hand, country people probably had a growing opportunity to participate in such bodies. Helped by improved roads, traders like Thomas
Turner from Sussex and other middling folk travelled to their local
town for a day or so and joined one of the burgeoning number of
clubs there. 98 Progressively, they also signed up with metropolitan or
regional subscription associations, mainly philanthropic and religious
societies, which developed, via correspondence, circulars, and other
publicity, an expanding network of rural as well as urban members. In
this way associations reached even into the remote rural corners of
English society. Wales, too, was increasingly affected by the 1790s,
though the total number of societies remained smallin line with the
paucity of large towns.
In Scotland there was a comparable trend towards a wider dispersion of societies and a greater density on the ground. Riding the crest
of Atlantic commerce and growing industrialization, Glasgow (77,000
inhabitants in 1801) challenged Edinburgh economically and socially.
Demonstrating this advance was Glasgow's wealth of societies, which
comprehended the Literary Society (patronized by Adam Smith and
Edmund Burke), a Church of Scotland clergy society, Humane
Society, philosophical society, an assortment of convivial clubs (the
Morning and Evening and the What You Please, among others),
militia societies, marine society, medical clubs, philanthropic, religious,
and missionary societies, a music society, and Highland, Gaelic,
Hibernian, and county societies. Glaswegians could also go off to
meetings of professional associations, patronymic clubs, trade, benet,
and neighbourhood clubs (such as the Grand Antiquity Society),
university and student societies, school alumni or class clubs, prosecution, hunting, gardening, and veteran clubs, or debating and political
societies, together with the ubiquitous masonic and pseudo-masonic
societies. In 1779 over eighty societies from Glasgow and its vicinity
petitioned Parliament against the repeal of the anti-Catholic laws,
acting, it was claimed, on behalf of 12,000 Protestant members. 99
98
Star, 13 Jan. 1791; D. Vaisey (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Turner, 17541765 (Oxford, 1985),
99, 147, 204; see also p. 431.
99
For a recent account of Glasgow's rise, see T. Devine and G. Jackson (eds.), Glasgow,
Vol. I, Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995), esp. chs. 2, 46, also pp. 2924 ; J. Strang, Glasgow
and its Clubs (Glasgow, 1864), 212 n., 3757, 1001, and passim; C. G. Brown, `Religion and

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

138

An Associational World

As economic growth and urbanization in Scotland caught up with

England, other major towns enlarged their suite of societies. Aberdeen,
with a small cluster in the early eighteenth century, now claimed a
shooting club, a `country club', farming club, medical society, various
gardening fraternities, masonic, trade, and benet societies, and learned
and philanthropic societies; here the city's population's growth (to
27,000 in 1801) was coupled with extensive public improvement. 100
Though on a lesser scale, Dundee and Perth had respectable groups of
associations by this time, while the latter could also boast its own
magazine to boost sociable activity.101 Outside these larger centres
the incidence of societies was more limited, but benet, masonic,
leisure, and agricultural societies were regular xtures in country towns
by 1800, particularly in the central lowland region. At the same time,
the lexicon of Scottish societies was not always the same as for south of
the border: thus the important prosecution and bell-ringing societies
were missing, along with several types of sporting club.
In Ireland, Dublin's economic and cultural hegemony started to be
counterbalanced by the rise of Belfast, on the back of the linen
industry. Supporting a population of nearly 20,000 in 1791, Belfast
had an important Reading Society (later the Society for Promoting
Knowledge), Catholic society, chamber of commerce, Northern Whig
Club, Irish music society, United Irishmen society (1791), volunteer
society and other political clubs, masonic and orange lodges, and the
like. But for a while sociable activity may have been held back by the
slow progress of civic improvement. 102 In the south of the island,
the Development of an Urban Society: Glasgow, 17801914' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Glasgow, 1981), 146, 147, 151; McElroy, Scotland's Age, 301, 413; Strathclyde
Regional Archives, T-MH 29/2; T-TH 21/1/1; Mitchell Library. Glasgow, Baillie's Library
MSS 41529, 27922; Johnson, Music, 44; Glasgow Almanack For 1798 (Glasgow 1798), 1089,
2346; McElroy, `Literary Clubs', 406; SRO (GRH), RH/2/4/383, fos. 7578.
100
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 14 Sept. 1790; Boud, `Scottish Agricultural Societies',
74; An Account of the Aberdeen Medical Society (Aberdeen, 1796); I. MacDougall, A Catalogue of
Some Labour Records in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), 23; SRO (WRH), FS 4/5; Aberdeen Magazine,
2 (1797), 49; W. R. Humphries, `The First Aberdeen Philosophical Society', Trans. of the
Aberdeen Philosophical Soc., 5 (1938), 20338; Hawes, Royal Humane Society, 7; Aberdeen Magazine,
1 (1796), 74; J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock (eds.), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987).
101
MacDougall, Labour Records, 89, 79; J. G. Lamb, `David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of
Buchan' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Dundee, 1963), 1025; Perth Magazine, 13
(17723); Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 9 Sept. 1790.
102
J. Stevenson, Two Centuries of Life in Down, 16001800 (Belfast, 1920), 4834; Belfast
Politics (Belfast, 1794), 15, 39, 4950, 76 ff., 88, 97, 11821; W. H. Crawford, `The Belfast
Middle Classes in the Late 18th Century', in Dickson et al. (eds.), United Irishmen, 6473;
Ahiman Rezon (Belfast, 1782), pp. vii, xixxx.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

An Associational World

139

Cork remained the principal provincial hub for clubs and societies.
However, elsewhere the pattern appeared much less advanced than in
most of mainland Britainconrming the quantitative snapshot in
Figure 4.2. Country towns at best had only a sprinkling of clubs
hunt clubs, masonic lodges, and political societies being the most common. This lower incidence of societies stemmed from lower levels of
urbanization, the problematic state of much of the Irish economy in the
later eighteenth century, the small size of the Protestant elite, and the
importance of traditional forms of socializing and solidarity (such as
civic gilds and rituals, and those associated with the Catholic Church).103
Across the Atlantic three processes seem to have taken place in the
late eighteenth century. First, the number and variety of American
societies advanced, just as in mainland Britain. Secondly, there was an
extension of the spatial distribution of clubs and societies away from
the East Coast port cities towards the expanding towns of the interior.
Cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston supported
a growing number of societies, but their earlier overwhelming ascendancy diminished. Thirdly, one nds a social widening in the pattern
of associations, as more middle-rank and artisan-type societies
emerged across the country. These developments were already in train
by the 1760s and were only temporarily disrupted by the upheavals of
the Revolution; thereafter things moved rapidly, fuelled by accelerating urbanization, improved communications, rising prosperity, and an
onrush of national pride. By contrast, we discover a different pattern
elsewhere in the old and new empire. Although the number of
societies increased even in remote settlements, they remained heavily
identied with the British elites, usually based in the port towns and
military garrisons. 104

xi
By 1800 British voluntary associations had come of age. After their
rst faltering steps during the seventeenth century, they had now
103

Cork Evening Post, 3 June 1790; for debating clubs, see p. 121; T. A. Lunham, `John
Fitzgerald's Diary, 1793', Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Soc., 2nd series, 24
(1918), 1545; J. H. Watmough, `Letters of James H. Watmough to his wife', Pennsylvania
Magazine, 29 (1905), 36; Short Account of . . . the Cork Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons
Conned for Small Debts (Cork, 1797); Address to the Publick from the Committee of the Cork Society
for Bettering the Condition . . . of the Poor (Cork, 1799). I am very grateful to Irish friends,
including Raymond Gillespie and Kevin Whelan, for their advice here.
104
See below, p. 404 ff.

5.11.99 15:50 04 Chapter 0394

140

An Associational World

begun to reach full maturity as a powerful and pervasive social

institution. A multitude of societies in towns across the British Isles
and beyond were increasingly involved in all aspects of community
life. Enjoying not only elite but extensive middle-class and artisan
support, they now moved to the centre of the social stage, overshadowing many other forms of public sociability. With their growth
of institutional structures and regulation and greater emphasis on
philanthropy together with moral and social reform, they were already
anticipating those self-consciously serious middle-class societies which
shaped civic and class identities in Victorian Britain.
Two nal points need to be reiterated. First, competition was erce
between societies as they struggled to attract members and win
recognition. Secondly, there was no standardized format of voluntary
association in the British world of the late eighteenth century. There
were many different kinds of society, with different concerns, different forms of organization, and different roles. Though metropolitan
associations remained a powerful inuence and model, many national,
regional, and local variables were at play in determining the precise
conguration and impact of associational activity at the community
level. Of course, clubs and societies were not simply the function of
localism; rather, they reected and were formed by the many powerful
changes coursing through British society well before the classical
Industrial Revolution. In the next three chapters we will investigate
the reasons for the rise of British clubs and societies, examining in
turn demand and supply factors, recruitment, and organization.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

5
Engines of Growth

Clubs and societies were established for all kinds of reasons. Individuals might have a decisive role, like the Russia merchant Jonas
Hanway who founded the Marine Society and other philanthropic
bodies; William Shipley, an art teacher, who pushed for the creation
of the Society of Arts; and the radical philosopher David Williams,
who fought for twenty-ve years to start the Literary Fund. 1 Or
societies might be set up in response to particular problems and
perceived crises, such as the wave of moral and social reform societies
in the 1780s in the wake of the American defeat. Fads and fashions
might be vitalhence the surge of pseudo-masonic societies following the success of Modern freemasonry; while local and regional
factors also had an effect. Societies could rise and fall as a response
to short- and medium-term shifts in the cultural and political agenda,
and as a result of tough competition between associations. The pattern
of associational growth was itself a social process, serving as an
indispensable ingredient in the complex reworking of British society
during the early modern period.
Nonetheless, a series of powerful secular forces provided much of
the context, the essential architecture of conditions, for the advance
of voluntary societies in Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, helping, in some measure, to distinguish it from
continental countries. Crucial among these factors was the quickening pace of urban growth after the English Revolution, the high
levels of migration, the role of the state and civic government, and
the inuence of the press. Attention will further need to be given to
the key relationship between the expansive world of associations and
those other forms of public and private sociability introduced in
Chapter 2.

J. S. Taylor, Jonas Hanway: Founder of the Marine Society (London,1985); D. G. C. Allan,

William Shipley: Founder of the Royal Society of Arts (London, 1968); W. R. D. Jones, David
Williams: The Anvil and the Hammer (Cardiff, 1986).

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

142

Engines of Growth

i
That fundamental link between voluntary societies and urbanization has
already been identied. Unlike earlier bodies such as the late-medieval
fraternities, which were located in villages as well as towns, a high
proportion of all the clubs and societies in our period were based in
urban communities; only towards the end was there any signicant
spread into the countryside, and even then the number of rural associations (apart from benet clubs) was small. No less important, the broad
increase of associations appears to keep pace with the rate of urban
growth. By European standards, Britain experienced marked urbanization in the century and a half after the Restoration, a process in which
English cities led the way. Growth was fed by the increase in domestic
demand (boosted by agricultural improvement), the spread of industrial
specialization and innovation (with rising exports after 1760), commercial expansion, and the enlargement of the service sector. According to
some estimates, England's share of European urban growth rose from a
third in the seventeenth century to over two-thirds in the late eighteenth
century. At the end of our period the proportion of the English population living in towns was more than one in three, compared to one in ten
in the Tudor period. Demographic increase was particularly high in the
bigger English towns, with London's population more than quadrupling
between 1600 and 1800 and the older provincial capitals and county
towns generally doing well, their performance complemented and then
increasingly overshadowed by the rise of new major manufacturing and
port cities. Recent work has also demonstrated that even many of the
smaller country and market towns, often developing specic industrial,
leisure, or commercial activities, were enjoying buoyant growth. By 1800
Britain had a multi-centred urban system, with the capital's continuing
importance complemented by a plurality of expansive and specialist
provincial centres. At the same time, the picture was not uniform.
Individual towns enjoyed distinct chronologies of growth, while there
is clear evidence by the late eighteenth century of regional differentiation, as the industrializing districts of the West Midlands and North
forged ahead and traditionally prosperous areas such as East Anglia and
the South-West fared less well.2
2
E. A. Wrigley, `Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in
the Early Modern Period', in P. Borsay (ed.), The 18th-Century Town, 16881820 (London, 1990),
64, 73; P. J. Coreld, The Impact of English Towns, 17001800 (Oxford, 1982); P. Clark (ed.), Small
Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1996), chs. 56; for regional trends see P. Clark
(ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. II, (Cambridge, forthcoming), ch. 2.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

143

Scotland's urban progress was even more uneven. In the seventeenth century only 12 per cent of the population was resident in
burghs with over 2,000 people, and many towns suffered reverses in
the second half of the century; but by George III's reign the urbanization rate was accelerating, starting to close on England's, and reaching
40 per cent in the western lowlands during the early years of the
nineteenth century. Not only was Edinburgh's traditional prominence
progressively challenged by Glasgow, but by 1801 Scotland had seven
cities with more than 10,000 people. In the lowland region surrounding Glasgow and Edinburgh there were numerous afuent medium
and smaller towns by this time, revitalized by new industries, town
improvement, and rising living standards. 3 By comparison, Wales had
only 4 or 5 per cent of its population living in towns under the Stuarts
and not much more than 10 per cent before 1800; for almost the
whole period its towns remained small. Yet a modest degree of urban
afuence was increasingly noticeable by the Georgian era, particularly
in South Wales as industrial development took hold and landowners
started to move into towns; during the last years of the period there
was a quickening of economic growth. 4
Mainland trends were in marked contrast to Ireland, which
remained an overwhelmingly rural society up to 1800, one beset by
poor agricultural productivity, rising population, and growing
industrial competition from Britain; the overall level of urban population moved sluggishly from perhaps 7 per cent in 1700 to possibly 10
per cent a century later. This is all the more striking given that
Dublin's population trebled during the eighteenth century (keeping
it the second-biggest city in the British Isles), while Cork, Limerick,
Waterford, and later Belfast all shared signicant demographic and
economic expansion. Among smaller towns prosperity was much
more patchy, mainly limited to the linen towns of Ulster. 5 Across
the Atlantic urban growth rates up to the later eighteenth century were
relatively low, reecting the massive inux of migrants to the interior,
but such gures masked the expansion of the East Coast port cities,
3

I. Whyte, `Urbanisation in Early Modern Scotland: A Preliminary Analysis', Scottish

Economic and Social History, 9 (1989), 2135; also T. Devine, `Scotland', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge
Urban History.
4
P. Jenkins, A History of Modern Wales, 15361990 (London, 1992), 17, 34, 35; also id.,
`Wales', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History.
5
L. M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 16001900 (New York, 1981), esp. chs. 23;
T. W. Moody and W. E. Vaughan (eds.), A New History of Ireland, Vol. IV (Oxford, 1986),
182 ff.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

144

Engines of Growth

together with the thickening network of hinterland towns in the

middle and northern colonies, and the widespread afuence of the
upper and middling ranks of townspeople.6
In sum, the British world of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was increasingly expansive and urbanized, but distinguished
by signicant national and regional differences, a picture that, in some
measure, mirrored the conguration of voluntary associations on the
ground. However, this only takes us so far. We need to ask how
urbanization was actually translated into the complex patterns of
associational activity. As we will see, urban growth was fundamental
both as an engine of demand for new forms of public sociability, and
also as a producer of that commercial and physical infrastructure
which enabled new activities to ourish.
Demand for sociable activities can be viewed as part of the socalled `Consumer Revolution', with its apparently innite stimulus to
all kinds of fashionable goods and services. Basic to this development
was the general improvement of living standards in England from the
late seventeenth centurymuch remarked upon by foreign visitors.
The advance was particularly notable and sustained among the urban
upper and middling classes, merchants and manufacturers, professional men, publicans, and shopkeepers, succoured by economic
growth and low taxation; but even skilled workers probably did well
until the last decades of the eighteenth century. Even so, signicant
variations are visible between industries and regions. In the countryside, landowners, affected by falling cereal prices during the early
Georgian period, recovered strongly in the second half of the century
as prices soared; the main casualties in the later period were the rural
labouring classes. Scotland's rise in living standards was probably
greatest in the late eighteenth century; in Ireland improvement was
more restricted and precarious. 7 Even among the newly prosperous
there was no homogenized pattern of demand. Many of the new or
6

For details see below, p. 389 ff.

For the classic text: N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer
Society (London, 1982); but see the important qualications in C. Shammas, The Pre-Industrial
Consumer in England and America (Oxford, 1990). For a survey of the extensive and somewhat
problematic literature on 18th-century living standards, see N. F. R. Crafts, British Economic
Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985), ch. 5. J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay,
The Agricultural Revolution, 17501880 (London, 1966), chs. 15. A. J. S. Gibson and T. C.
Smout, Prices, Food and Wages in Scotland, 15501780 (Cambridge, 1995), 344, 353, 3556; also
S. Nenadic, `Middle-Rank Consumers and Domestic Culture in Edinburgh and Glasgow,
Grada, Ireland: A New
17201840', P&P, 145 (1994), 12554. Cullen, Emergence, 14157; C. O
Economic History, 17801939 (Oxford, 1994), 1323.
7

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

145

rising social groups in British towns had highly calibrated interests and
priorities in their pursuit of sociable activities, not least the gentry.
Arguably, landowners were the most crucial determinant of the
social and cultural development of European cities in the pre-industrial
era. This was certainly true of Britain during the later Stuart and
Hanoverian period, as the inux of landowners to town stimulated
local consumption, the building industry, and leisure and cultural
activities. While gentry were starting to move to London before the
Civil War, it was only during the English Revolution and afterwards
that they had a decisive impact on the capital. A `season' had appeared
by 1640, and within a generation or so we nd an extended winter
season, orchestrating the rhythms of metropolitan sociable life. About
1700 there may well have been 4,000 or so aristocratic and gentle
families living in the capital, their lifestyle sustained by a massive
transfer of rental income from their country properties. In Anne's
reign, for instance, Lord Fitzwilliam was receiving in London well
over 8,000 a year from his Norfolk and Northamptonshire estates
(perhaps three-quarters of the rental income). Financial transfers on
this scale were made possible by the professionalization of estate
management in the post-Restoration period. 8 Marching in step with
this growing gentry presence were new housing developments in the
West End: Bloomsbury Square was laid out in 1665, Lincoln's Inn
Fields and St James's Square during the 1680s, Piccadilly from the
1710s, the Grosvenor estate in Mayfair in 172544; a further housing
boom started in the 1760s and 1770s, involving the Bloomsbury district
and developments to the east, such as Brunswick Square. Instead of
urban palaces in the continental style, the preference was for compact
terrace houses tted out with a dozen or more elaborately furnished
rooms in a smart part of town, often leased or rented to allow for the
maximum exibility. Foreigners remarked on the small, cramped
character of the accommodation, which encouraged well-heeled landowners to pursue public entertainments outside the home. 9
8
L. Stone, `The Residential Development of the West End of London in the 17th century',
in B. Malament (ed.), After the Reformation (Manchester, 1980), 17382; G. Rude, Hanoverian
London 17141808 (London, 1971), 38, 48; M. G. Davies, `Country Gentry and Payments to
London, 16501714', Ec.HR, 2nd series, 24 (1971), 202; D. R. Hainsworth, Stewards, Lords and
People: The Estate Steward and His World in Later Stuart England (Cambridge, 1992).
9 Rude
, Hanoverian London, 1215; Stone, `Residential Development', 1745; M. Port,
`West End Palaces: The Aristocratic Town House in London, 17301830', London Journal,
20 (1995), 33; see also R. Porter, `Enlightenment London and Urbanity', in T. D. Hemming et
al. (eds.), The Secular City (Exeter, 1994), 3240.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

146

Engines of Growth

Developments in Edinburgh and Dublin mimicked those in the

capital. In the 1760s Edinburgh was reputed `the metropolis of this
ancient kingdom, the rendezvous of taste and winter quarters of all
our nobility who cannot afford to live in London'. As such, it was
easily the richest town in Scotland, paying a third of all the country's
excise revenue. By George II's reign the city was crowded with minor
nobility and gentry, perhaps 400 families in all, who treated it as their
social and cultural stage, where they copied and paraded the latest
ideas and fashions of metropolitan society, all in the patriotic cause of
national improvement. After 1700, if not before, housing developments in the Old Town increasingly followed `the fashion of London',
and sought to exploit the new landed demand. In 1752 the Proposals for
carrying on certain Public Works in the City of Edinburgh set in train the
grand design of the classical New Town, which came to frame the
elegant sociability of the city's genteel and professional elites. 10
Dublin's emergence as a landed capital was no less striking. Before
the Irish Rebellion in the 1640s the city was dismissed as a poor man's
version of Bristol, but by James II's reign nearly one in ten of Irish
people lived there, and after 1700 a growing tribe of landowners
attended the Parliament and Court, the lawcourts, and winter `season',
sparkling with its galaxy of social and cultural entertainments. To
house these wealthy newcomers, fashionable new squares, malls,
and suburbs were raised, modelled on London. In Dublin's world of
grand houses and elegant brick-built terraces, complemented by great
stone public buildings such as the Customs House and Four Courts,
landowners, preoccupied with metropolitan cultural values as
symbolic of the English Protestant ascendancy, played a central role
in the shaping of public sociability, not least through their support of
voluntary associations. 11
Outside these administrative capitals, the landed accession was
more tardy and limited. English provincial towns usually had only
10

R. Houston, Social Change in the Age of Enlightenment: Edinburgh, 16601760 (Oxford, 1994),
4; N. T. Phillipson, `Towards a Denition of the Scottish Enlightenment', in P. Fritz and
D. Williams (eds.), City and Society in the 18th Century (Toronto, 1973), 130, 1345; id., `Culture
and Society in the 18th century Province', in L. Stone (ed.), The University in Society, Vol. II
(Princeton, NJ, 1974), 411, 421; A. J. Youngson, The Making of Classical Edinburgh, 17501840
(Edinburgh, 1966), 3, 14, ch. 3 and passim.
11
R. Gillespie, `Dublin, 16001700', in P. Clark and B. Lepetit (eds.), Capital Cities and their
Hinterlands in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot, 1996), 84; D. Dickson (ed.), The Gorgeous Mask:
Dublin, 17001850 (Dublin, 1987), 114, 3050; N. Burke, `An Early Modern Dublin Suburb
. . .', Irish Geography, 6 (196973), 36585; M. Craig, Dublin, 16601860 (Dublin, 1980); also
D. Guinness, Georgian Dublin (London, 1979).

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

147

small clusters of resident gentry in the later Stuart period, with most
coming just for a few days for social entertainments: thus Sir Thomas
Cave of Stanford Hall stopped over at Leicester to visit the races, see a
play, and attend a ball, but he and his entourage soon went home. By
George II's reign, however, the gentry presence was growing, particularly in the regional capitals. At York, Francis Drake observed that
`the chief support of the city at present is the resort to and residence
of several country gentlemen with their families'. As well as piecemeal
development in the city and suburbs, housing in the Micklegate area
was rebuilt in the latest classical style to accommodate the new
arrivals, and expenditure was lavished on the splendid Burlington
Assembly Rooms to host their social gatherings. At the same time,
York with its ailing economy may have been more dependent on
gentle custom than other regional centres like Bristol and Norwich,
where landowners had to share the social and cultural limelight with
the prosperous mercantile and trading classes of the city. 12
Spa towns relied heavily on a landed clientele. Of Bath, it was said
in the 1760s, `there is scarcely a family in the three kingdoms that does
not sometime or other, if they be people of any distinction or fortune,
reside several months there'. According to one calculation, Bath's
fashionable visitors at the start of the eighteenth century spent nearly
60,000 a year on inns and lodgings. And by the end of the period this
seasonal inow was matched by a growing resident population. In
smaller spas visitors were much fewer and their stays often short,
narrowing the demand for ongoing sociability. 13 Of course, genteel
demand also contributed to the social renaissance of county towns. At
Shrewsbury the genteel inux boosted the service and leisure sectors,
while Northampton, handsomely rebuilt after a great re in the 1670s,
had over 200 gentlemen in the eighteenth centurynot great landowners, but minor parish gentry or professional men, traders and
retired people, assuming the smart attire of gentility. In fact the impact
of genteel demand varied a good deal from place to place.
Nottingham appears to have developed a gentried quarter around
12

Stone, `Residential Development', 184; M. M. Verney (ed.), Verney Letters of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1930), i. 656, 219; J. Hutchinson and D. M. Palliser, Bartholomew City
Guides: York (Edinburgh, 1980), 702; W. E. Minchinton, `BristolMetropolis of the West in
the 18th century', in P. Clark (ed.), The Early Modern Town (London, 1976), 298307; P. J.
Coreld, `The Social and Economic History of Norwich, 16501850' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of London, 1976).
13
BL, Additional MS 27,951, fo. 89; R. S. Neale, Bath: A Social History, 16801850 (London,
1981), 41; see above, p. 135.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

148

Engines of Growth

the castle during the early Georgian era, but Leicester's fashionable
reputation came later. Maidstone, despite its success as a smart county
centre, never had a major group of landowners resident there for any
period of time. Instead, a tide of visiting gentry and their families
journeyed in from neighbouring villages for specic entertainments,
encouraged by the improvement of local roads and transport. Genteel
visitors rather than residents were likewise more important in those
smaller market towns which developed as sociable centres in the
eighteenth century. 14
Elsewhere, the picture was a fainter version of the English pattern.
In Wales we nding gentry coming into the bigger country towns by
the mid-eighteenth century, whilst in Scotland the process seems to
have occurred in the later part of the period. Irish landowners tended
to concentrate in the larger places. 15
For the gentle classes the array of social entertainments in towns
was not the only reason for travelling there. Another incentive for
leaving their country estates, not least during the agrarian recession of
the 1720s and 1730s, was the relative cheapness of urban residence, as
the proliferation of retail outlets and speculative building helped to
keep prices and rents down. `Provisions of all sorts [are] very reasonable', Defoe noted at Tunbridge Wells, while a visitor to Harrogate in
George III's reign commented that a major inducement to live there
`is the strong motive of economy; where a single man can live and live
well for 4s a day [and] enjoy cheerful company'. 16
Complaints abounded about the exodus of gentry from the
countryside. The `poverty of the country', the Craftsman lamented
in the 1730s, `proceeds in a very great measure from the residence of
the chief nobility and gentry in the town where they live in the utmost
extravagance and but rarely go into the country with any other design
14
A. McInnes, `The Emergence of a Leisure Town: Shrewsbury, 16601760', P&P, 120,
(1988), 604; A. Everitt, `Country, County and Town: Patterns of Regional Evolution in
England', in Borsay (ed.), 18th-Century Town, 1001; J. Beckett (ed.), A Centenary History of
Nottingham (Manchester, 1997), 11428; VCH, Leics., iv. 194; P. Clark and L. Murn, The
History of Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County Town (Stroud, 1995), 87.
15
P. Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glamorgan Gentry, 16401790 (Cambridge,
1983), 2478; I. Whyte, `The Function and Social Structure of Scottish Burghs of Barony in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in A. Maczak and C. Smout (eds.), Grundung und
Bedeutung kleinerer Stadte im nordlichen Europa der fruhen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1991), 22, 24; R. A.
Butlin (ed.), The Development of the Irish Town (London, 1977), 10921.
16
D. Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (London, 1962 edn.), i. 127;
R. L. Willis, Journal of a Tour from London to Elgin (Edinburgh, 1897), 20; see also St James
Chronicle, 2628 Jan. 1769 (Salisbury).

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

149

than to squeeze as much money as they can out of their tenants'. Mrs
Foley wrote to a friend that `I grudge every penny spent in London
. . . as robbing the tenants and poor [ of the countryside] of what
ought to be spent amongst them'. But even she found Staffordshire
almost impossible to stomach in wintertime, `for in so dirty a country
it must be intolerably damp'. From the late seventeenth century rural
society was frequently dismissed as `Hampshire'backward and unfashionable. The boredom quotient was high. One Kentish gentleman,
the father of the bluestocking Mrs Montagu, avowed that `living in the
country was sleeping with one's eyes open', and for James Boswell his
ultimate nightmare was to be stranded in `an old house in the north of
Scotland and being burdened with tedium and gnawed with fretfulness'. No one, we hear in 1790, `can possibly go into the country but
to carry some troublesome point; . . . he can taste but one pleasure,
the prospect of his return'. Though waves of building and remodelling
occurred in the period, for too many gentry their country house (often
one of several) was a large, imposing, but rather uncomfortable
period-piece museum with its old-fashioned architecture and castoff furnishings. It was opened up for just a few weeks or months a
year for local politicking, summer visitors, and as a base for outdoor
sports. Only with the installation of private quarters from the late
eighteenth century did it become tolerable to live there. As for the
countryside, this was best viewed as a distant pastoral perspective for
a family portrait, whose smartly dressed members had been transported briey for a summer vacation from their metropolitan home.
As news and experience of the delights of urbane sociability spread,
the rural contrast grew increasingly bleak. `Surely you don't think me
such a fool', the northerner William Bowes exclaimed in George I's
reign, as to prefer a `stupid dull country life to the pleasures of the
Town'. Only in the last years of the century was the country rediscovered with the onset of Romanticism, and then it was the wilder,
more remote districts which were most favoured. 17
Of course, the gentry's consumption of urban leisure activities
17

The Country Journal or The Craftsman, 19 Feb. 1736/7; Lady Llanover (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany; First Series (London, 1861), ii. 127,
1623; R. B. Johnson (ed.), Bluestocking Letters (London, 1926), 27; C. Rykskamp and F. A.
Pottle (eds.), Boswell: The Ominous Years (London, 1973), 54; Gazetteer or New Daily Advertiser,
17 Sept. 1790; R. H. Clutterbuck, Notes on the Parishes of Fyeld, Kimpton . . . (Salisbury, 1898),
367; J. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, 16601914 (London, 1986), 32631; M. Girouard,
Life in the English Country House (New Haven, 1978), 18991; BL, Additional MS 40,747, fos.
1645 (I owe this quotation and reference to the kindness of Dr Joyce Ellis).

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

150

Engines of Growth

might be affected by downturns in the economy, war, and so on,18 but

there can be little question that landed incomes provided much of the
locomotion for public socializing, which was often a costly exercise.
To talk of gentry participation only in terms of money or fashionability does not get us very far, however. Public sociability provided an
opportunity for spending time away from the increasingly domesticated and crowded environment of the town house; a means of
gaining social recognition in a uid social scene; a way for newcomers to make contacts and create or join a social network, and for
establishing connections with other gentlemen and nascent social
groups in town.
Of those social groups, the most dynamic were the professions, and
their development from the late seventeenth century had a major
impact on urban society. As in so much else, London led the way,
crammed with the largest concentrations of clergy, lawyers, and
medical men. Anglican clergy were reinforced by numerous dissenting
ministers, while the Georgian capital had between a quarter and a third
of the national stock of attorneys and solicitors, plus most barristers.
Physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries multiplied, encouraged by new
hospital foundations in the capital and the breakdown of established
licensing. Already by 1720 the older professions may have employed
about 78 per cent of adult males in the capital, and the proportion
probably stayed fairly constant. By the late eighteenth century leading
barristers might earn more than 10,000 a year, while a physician like
Thomas Denman, who set up in business in London during the late
1760s, increased his annual prots nearly fteenfold over the next
decades. Even some of the newer professions, like booksellers, did
well, pushing ahead of many other afuent occupational groups. 19
Outside London, the professions exercised an equally powerful role
in British cities. Edinburgh's lawyers, often from landed backgrounds,
joined medical men, clergy, and university academics to create a new
class of literati which was to adorn the Scottish Enlightenment.
Dublin had over 1,300 lawyers by the 1780s, as well as many other
professional men. In the English provinces, the regional centre of
18
P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 16601770
(Oxford, 1989), 2004; for the impact of economic recession on sociability see e.g. BL,
Music Dept., H2788; Gloucester City Library, RF 115. 80(2).
19
L. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation (Cambridge, 1992), 269; D. Porter and
R. Porter, Patient's Progress (Cambridge, 1989), 1822; D. Lemmings, Gentlemen and Barristers:
The Inns of Court and The English Bar, 16801730 (Oxford, 1990), ch. 6; D. Duman, The Judicial
Bench in England, 17271875 (London, 1982), 106; Derby Local Studies Library, MS 3464.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

151

Exeter may have had nearly 100 professional families,20 and groups of
lawyers were increasingly resident and inuential in county towns,
such as Gloucester, or market centres, like Prescot in Lancashire.
Occupying civic and local ofce, lawyers engaged in money-lending,
acted as estate agents and surveyors, and functioned as indispensable
brokers between urban and rural society. However, their social ascendancy was challenged by medical men, beneting from heavy demand
for all kinds of treatment, and often linked to the new inrmaries in
provincial towns. Not untypical was the Leeds surgeon William Hey,
who took a leading role in local affairs, was prominent in numerous
medical and other societies, and died worth over 30,000. As in
London, the cadre of established professional men was reinforced
by new groupsdissenting ministers, schoolmasters, booksellers, and
government ofcials. 21
Professional men thus formed a major consumer group in many
British towns and an important market for fashionable sociability. Yet
their importance varied from place to place, and their prosperity and
social status was less assured than it seemed. For example, the income
of the physician Thomas Denman uctuated markedly, rising sharply
after the peace of 1783 but falling away badly during the economic
upheavals of the mid-1790s. Professional men faced other difculties,
including recurrent public criticism (and lampooning) of their
activities. Professional dynasties discouraged outsiders from setting
up in business, and erce competition occurred between and within
the older professions over status. 22 In Scotland, too many aspirants
chased too few jobs. Professional support for public sociability has,
therefore, to be seen not just as the afuent pursuit of pleasure but as
an economic imperative: an important way of making contacts,
winning business and patronage, and consolidating public standing.
A young country-town apothecary starting out in business, Erasmus
Darwin advised, should dine every market day with the farmers and
20

Phillipson, `Towards a Denition', 133 ff.; P. J. Coreld, Power and the Professions in
Britain, 17001850 (London, 1995), 30; Devon RO, MS C 36 (Sir A. Hamilton's diary).
21
P. Clark, `The Civic Leaders of Gloucester, 15801800', in id. (ed.), The Transformation of
English Provincial Towns, 16001800 (London, 1984), 330; B. L. Anderson, `The Attorney and
the Early Capital Market in Lancashire', in J. R. Harris (ed.), Liverpool and Merseyside (London,
1969), 5174; S. T. Anning, `The History of Medicine in Leeds', Proceedings of the Leeds
Philosophical and Literary Society, 16 (19758), 2079; also W. G. Rimmer, `William Hey of
Leeds, Surgeon (17361819)A Reappraisal', ibid. 9 (195962), 187210; T. Bewick, A
Memoir of Thomas Bewick, ed. I. Bain (Oxford, 1979), 1601; McInnes, `Leisure Town', 56, 85.
22
Derby Local Studies Library, MS 3464; Coreld, Power, 445; C. Camic, Experience and
Enlightenment (Chicago, 1983), 199201, 2078.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

152

Engines of Growth

attend all the card and dancing assemblies, so as to meet and butter up
clients. Moreover, membership of scientic and similar societies gave
the physician or lawyer a reputation for learning, which helped
massage his professional pretensions. If all else failed, professional
associations could provide members with nancial protection against
a rainy day. 23
The upper classes in later Stuart and Georgian towns also included
contingents of merchants and manufacturers, proting from the
expansion of domestic and overseas trade and rising industrial output.
London alone may have had 4,000 businessmen in the post-Restoration
era, with another 2,000 in provincial centres; these gures multiplied
during the Hanoverian period. In London the big bourgeoisie
overseas merchants, bankers, wholesale tradersenjoyed large wealth
(assets of 20,00030,000 were fairly common), married into gentry
families, and owned suburban property. They sought social recognition, not through migration to a country estate, but through polite
socializing in town, rubbing shoulders with the landed elite at assembly
rooms, coffee-houses, and above all, at clubs and societies. 24 A similar
trend affected traders and manufacturers in country towns. At
Maidstone, leading papermakers remained active in town politics
and fashionable social life through the century, as did Bristol's
merchants. For such folk sociability offered not only elite contacts
and social recognition, but also support systems when they suffered
trade reversesa recurrent problem. Overall, however, merchants and
traders, heavily engaged in their bustling counting houses and with
their own integrated commercial networks of kinsfolk and agents, may
have been less crucial for the growth of socializing and societies than
other elite groups. One of the few organizations where they were
leading gures were those chambers of commerce which developed in
various port towns under George III, to represent and reconcile local
business interests. 25
23

Camic, Experience and Enlightenment, 199206; D. King-Hele (ed.), The Letters of Erasmus
Darwin (Cambridge, 1981), 2067; R. D. Brown, Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information
in Early America, 17001865 (Oxford, 1989), 121.
24
R. Grassby, The Business Community of 17th-century England (Cambridge, 1995), 578;
L. Schwarz, London, ch. 2; P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 17271783
(Oxford, 1989), 62, 64; N. Rogers, `Money, Land and Lineage: The Big Bourgeoisie of
Hanoverian London', in Borsay (ed.), 18th-Century Town, 27290.
25
Clark and Murn, Maidstone, 845, 102, 110; J. Barry, `The Cultural Life of Bristol,
16401775' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1985), 99, 170; D. Hancock,
Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community
(Cambridge, 1995), 834, 90 ff.; see above, pp. 1112.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

153

For all their wealth and inuence, these elite groups remained small in
aggregate. Even in London those paying the top rate of assessed tax in
the 1790s probably comprised only about 3 per cent of the population.
At Edinburgh, gentry and nobles counted only 5 to 6 per cent of
occupiers paying the annuity tax in the 1750s; with merchants and
professionals added, the total was perhaps 12 per cent of taxpayers.
By contrast, urban society saw a large expansion of the middle classes. At
the end of the period Londoners paying modest assessed taxes of 2 to
10 represented just over half of all taxpayers and 1621 per cent of
inhabitants. A substantial proportion of these people were shopkeepers,
reecting the growth of domestic demand and the changes in retailing,
following the decline of old-style markets and fairs. Retailers spread
across the whole country, but the most substantial traders were located
in towns. Foreigners lauded the number and brilliance of London shops
and the afuence of its shopkeepers, but this was not conned to the
metropolis.26 By the 1780s Chester had turned into the leading shopping
centre in its region, with a contingent of wealthy retailers, while at
Gloucester shopkeepers became one of the principal occupational
groups. Even small market towns had a growing number of retail outlets.
Shopkeepers constituted a powerful lobby in many provincial towns, and
probate inventories reveal how their substantial houses were decked out
with clocks, pictures, and other creature comforts. On the other hand,
many shops depended heavily on credit to run the business, and distributive traders formed one of the largest occupational groups ling for
bankruptcy in the eighteenth century, frequently pushed into insolvency
by short-term liquidity problems. Competition between traders was
often so erce that it threatened their economic and social survival.
Taking part in a limited round of sociable activities not only served as
light relief from business, but also was a way of extending one's network
of customers and obtaining aid in time of difculty. Thus, when Joseph
Brasbridge, the London silversmith, ran into nancial problems, he was
soon bailed out by one of his club friends.27
26
L. D. Schwarz, `Conditions of Life and Work in London, c.17701820, With Special
Reference to East London' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1976), 182;
Houston, Social Change, 72 ff.; H.-C. Mui and L. H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in 18th Century
England (London, 1989); J. H. Watmough, `Letters of James H. Watmough to his wife',
Pennsylvania Magazine, 29 (1905), 2989; C. Williams (ed.), Sophie in London (London, 1933),
11112, 1412, 237.
27
I. Mitchell, `The Development of Urban Retailing, 17001815', in Clark (ed.), Transformation, 262, 275; VCH, Gloucs., iv. 1256; Shammas, Pre-Industrial Consumer, 2278; Mui and
Mui, Shops, esp. chs. 46; J. Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English Business 17001800 (Cambridge,
1987), 57 and passim; J. Brasbridge, The Fruits of Experience (London, 1824), 634.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

154

Engines of Growth

Small masters, both in the old crafts and expansive new manufacturing sector, experienced a similar career. Growing numbers enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity for a good part of the late seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, taking advantage of heavy demand at
home, and later abroad, and greater output through technical innovation. Yet the decay of the trade gildsmore or less complete in
England by the early Georgian era, occurring somewhat later in
Scotlanddeprived many small masters of a traditional occupational
focus and structure of support. Towards the end of the period heavy
competition from industrializing regions exerted growing pressure on
producers in more traditional areas, pressures which were exacerbated
by war and trade uctuations. Even in bustling Birmingham, the
opportunities for social mobility were limited and business caution
widespread. Involvement by masters in voluntary associations and
other forms of socializing was not just for entertainment, but, as
among shopkeepers, offered `a prudential code for bourgeois life',
helping to dene and defend their social position in the urban community. Whether shopkeepers and other middling groups joined
societies as an alternative to upper-class patronage and control is
more debatable, but clearly they wanted concrete social and economic
returns, as well as entertainment, for their membership dues. 28
Overlapping with shopkeepers were skilled artisans, sometimes
small masters, more often young journeymen. As noted earlier, wages
for English skilled workers rose signicantly in the century after the
Restoration, as demand for trained labour outpaced supply; in Scotland
this occurred later in the period. In successful trades incomes were
inated not only by higher wages but by more sustained and regular
periods of work. At the same time, skilled workers were vulnerable to
trade recession, sickness (causing unemployment), and other problems
of an increasingly competitive economy. Journeymen, in particular, lost
the protection once offered by the gilds and, following the decline of
living-in service in masters' houses, they had to arrange and pay for
their own lodgings. Their main forum of socializing was the alehouse:
Benjamin Franklin, recalling his time in the capital, pronounced the
London printers `great guzzlers of beer'. They went to victualling
houses not only to drink and enjoy themselves, but to nd jobs
28
J. Barry and C. Brooks (eds.), The Middling Sort of People (London,1994), esp. chs. 5, 7;
M. Berg, `Commerce and Creativity in 18th-Century Birmingham', in id. (ed.), Markets and
Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe (London, 1991), 18598; Barry and Brooks (eds.),
Middling Sort, quote at p. 102.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

155

and a place to stay, to discuss wages, and increasingly, to attend a

multiplicity of social, leisure, improvement, benet, and trade clubs.29
Needless to say, urban demand for sociable activities in British
towns was not conned to men. From the end of the seventeenth
century the majority of town dwellers were usually women, who also
shared in increased conspicuous consumption, propelled by rising
living standards. Thus, gentlewomen who had previously stayed on
their country estates when their husbands were in town, now joined
them in the capital or larger towns for several months or weeks a year,
and devoted much of their time to a relentless whirl of fashionable
socializing. Nor was this sociability limited to the wealthy. Middling
and even some lower-class women may have enjoyed improved
economic and social prospects and opportunities for socializing,
helped by higher wages. But here, as for upper-class women, the
patterns of sociable activity were markedly different than for men,
with women much less involved in voluntary societies. 30
Thus the process of urbanization entailed the growing importance of
new or enlarged social groups and classes in towns, whose prosperity and
collective pursuit of happiness supplied a powerful consumer force for
sociable and associational activity. This is no more than a historical
commonplace. What is much more interesting and relevant here are
the different types of public sociability they supported, and what
precisely they sought from sociable activity, and in these respects the
pattern was highly variegated.

ii
Accelerating urbanization and economic change led to another
development, which had major implications for sociable activities.
The conux of new social groups in town, together with rising disposable incomes for the better-off, created a great deal of social
confusion. Traditional status indictors lost much of their meaning or
became ambiguous. The title of esquire or gentleman, once primarily
the prerogative of landowners, was usurped by the professional, commercial, and middling classes. In consequence, as the metropolitan
29
J. Rule, The Experience of Labour in 18th-century Industry (London, 1981), ch. 2; also E. W.
Gilboy, Wages in 18th Century England (Cambridge, Mass., 1934); L. W. Labaree et al. (eds.), The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1964), 99101; I. J. Prothero, Artisans and
Politics in Early 19th-Century London (Folkestone, 1979), 28 ff.
30
P. Clark and R. Houston, `Culture and Leisure, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge
Urban History; see below, pp. 1901, 198204.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

156

Engines of Growth

Guardian observed in 1713, `we have no adequate idea of what is meant

by ``gentlemanly, gentleman-like, or much of a gentleman'' '. The
situation was hardly better away from the capital. In the Philadelphia
press Franklin ridiculed the new self-styled genteel classes: `rather half
gentleman or mongrel, an unnatural compound of earth and brass like
the feet of Nebuchadnezzar's image.' In India it was said that `esquireship, like death, levels all distinctions'. 31 As for dress, though respectable attire was still essential for participating in public events, even to
get a seat in church, rapidly changing fashions, more general afuence,
the commercialization of production, and the growth of shops selling
the latest London styles meant that what men (and women) wore no
longer gave a sure idea of status. This may have been aggravated by
the decline of occupational dress during the eighteenth century. 32 In
the case of language, it is unclear how far the spread of a polite
standard speech eroded local and regional dialects in Britain. Visitors
to England at this time drew attention to local patterns of speech in
country areas. In towns, however, it is likely that some kind of
controlled, polite speech was increasingly common and expected,
though even this was no reliable sign of social respectability, vulnerable as it was to the whirligig of fashion. Thus, `the practice of talking
loud in public places', we hear in the 1790s, `which has been of late
talked up by the vulgar is now wholly abandoned by the fashionable'.
Traditional forms of gestureto indicate deference and social recognitionwere also in a state of ux after the Civil War, as traditional
hat honour and bowing declined, and the more egalitarian handshake
advanced through the respectable ranks of English society. 33
For many upper- and middle-rank townspeople, the problem of
achieving or maintaining social recognition in such a uid social world
was compounded by the danger of social isolation. The situation was
particularly bad in London, its rapid physical growth spawning great
31
L. Stone, `Social Mobility in England, 15001700', P&P, 33 (1966), 534; A. Chalmers
(ed.), The British Essayists, Vol. XVI (London, 1808), 196; Pennsylvania Gazette, 2330 Aug.
1733; W. S. Seton-Karr (ed.), Selections from the Calcutta Gazette . . . Eighty Years Ago (Calcutta,
18649), ii. 2001.
32
M. L. Webber, `Peter Manigault's Letters', South Carolina Historical Magazine, 31 (1930),
271; H. J. Wale, My Grandfather's Pocket-Book (London, 1883), 171; P. J. Grosley, A Tour to
London (Dublin, 1772), i. 812.
33
H. C. van Schaak, The Life of Peter van Schaak, LL.D. (New York, 1842), 163;
L. Mugglestone, `Talking Proper ': The Rise of Accent as Social Symbol (Oxford, 1995), ch. 1; S. I.
Tucker, Protean Shape: A Study in 18th-Century Vocabulary and Usage (London, 1967); Star, 12 Feb.
1791; J. Bremmer and H. Roodenburg (eds.), A Cultural History of Gesture (Oxford, 1991), 72,
153, 171, 1767.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

157

new suburbs in the East and West End, and later to the north and
across the river on the South Bank. Already by 1640 more than half the
population lived outside the old city limits. By the 1720s Daniel Defoe
could describe the capital as `stretched out in buildings . . . in a most
straggling, confused manner, out of all shape, uncompact and unequal'.
The amiable Mary Delany complained that `above half the day must be
spent in the streets going from one place to another'. It was not just the
size of the capital but the fact that it teemed with throngs of fastmoving people which disconcerted visitors. John Byrom, the Manchester
physician, wrote home to his wife in George II's reign:
Lost in this place of grand resort
Through crowds succeeding crowds I see
Quite from the city to the Court
'Tis all a wilderness to me!

Newly arrived in London, the American John Dickinson echoed this

dismay: `I found myself in a social wilderness . . . as in the strangest
forest . . . I was surrounded with noise, dirt and business . . . [and] the
vast extent of the city.' Attempting to meet people without prior
arrangement was difcult. `How provoking', William Johnstone
Temple moaned, `to take a long walk and then not nd the people
you want . . . Everyone is indifferent to another'. 34
Similar complaints about large busy crowds and isolation were
voiced in Birmingham, Dublin, and Edinburgh, and also later in the
major American port cities, but most British towns were much smaller,
often until the late eighteenth century conned within their medieval
corset of spatial development. Here the main problem was less anomie
than the suffocatingly close nature of social awareness. 35 However,
demographic and industrial expansion in many provincial towns
before 1800 unlocked creeping suburbanization. At Bristol the upper
classes moved to the periphery, up the hill to the handsome terraces of
34

A. L. Beier and R. Finlay (eds.), London, 15001700: The Making of the Metropolis (London,
1986), 45; Defoe, Tour, i. 31415; Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence; First Series, i.
5534; R. Parkinson (ed.), The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, Vol. II(1),
Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 40 (1856), 250; H. T. Colbourn, `A Pennsylvania Farmer at the
Court of King George: John Dickinson's London Letters, 17541756', Pennsylvania Magazine,
86 (1962), 253; L. Bettany (ed.), Diaries of William Johnstone Temple, 17801796 (Oxford, 1929),
412.
35
P. J. Coreld, `Walking the City Streets: The Urban Odyssey in 18th-Century England',
Journal of Urban History, 16 (198990), 1434; Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence;
First Series, iii. 5534; Houston, Social Change, 14951; B. Manzo, `A Virginian in New York',
New York History, 67 (1986), 186.

5.11.99 15:51 05 Chapter 0394

158

Engines of Growth

Clifton, while the central areas were turned into a public arena with wider
streets and classical architecture. Industrial towns like Manchester and
even smaller county towns gained a penumbra of villas for the middle
classes, while suburban developments also affected North American
towns. In general, civic and social institutions were slow to follow the
creation of suburbs. While London saw new churches erected in some
suburban parishes, local administration depended mainly on a few
ad hoc bodies, and the earliest suburban newspapersso vital for local
identityappeared only in the 1820s. In most provincial towns the
suburbs, at least until the Victorian era, lacked any social focus, and
their better-off inhabitants relied heavily on the sociable institutions
and activities of the city or town for social integration. 36
Public sociability in general, and clubs and societies specically,
offered a way of overcoming or ameliorating these growing problems.
Admission to clubs and societies usually involved selection and
screening, in order to keep out the disorderly and socially intrusive.
In the same way, they also presented important opportunities for
developing linkages with social networks across the community.

iii
The majority of townspeople in Georgian Britain were migrants.
Urbanization not only generated new or expanding social groups
and problems of social confusion and isolation, but it was also
associated with high levels of physical mobility. If linked to urbanization, movement of this kind was not dependent on it. In England high
rates of migration dated back to the Middle Ages, and before the Civil
War mobility was widespread across the country, the great majority of
people moving at least once in their lives. At this time, better-off men
moved shorter distances than their poorer counterparts, whilst
respectable betterment movement to towns was underpinned by
apprenticeship and gild connections, and, quite commonly, by
extended families ties. After the Restoration overall mobility remained
at a high level. Not only London but many provincial towns were
dependent on immigration: getting on for two-thirds of English urban
growth in the eighteenth century came from this source. As one York
writer observed, the city `is almost a moving scene', marked by its
36

Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 1467; J. Aikin, A Description of The Country from 30 to 40
miles round Manchester (London, 1795), 205; M. Reed, `The Transformation of Urban Space,
17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

159

constant turnover of people.37 No less signicant were alterations in

the pattern of movement. Upper-class migrants travelled longer
distances than in the past, mainly to town, and we also discover a
growing incidence of professional men, merchants, and traders, often
young men, travelling extensively on business (and pleasure). More
and more skilled artisans journeyed between British towns, following a
circuit of workshops in search of jobs and higher wages. As the empire
expanded there was a surge of travel by merchants, ofcials, and
military men, as well as skilled and poorer folk, particularly to North
America. 38
Migration, particularly to town, was encouraged not only by the
dynamic British economy and the new opportunities it created, but
also by improvements to transport and communications. By the 1720s
there was a ring of turnpiked roads in the Home Counties, with
another network emerging in the Midlands by the 1740s, and a
national pattern established by 1770. From the late seventeenth
century growing numbers of English county towns had coach services
to the capital; by the 1760s virtually all the bigger towns were so
connected. Travel times fell sharply, as did travel costs. Movement to
town was further facilitated by the greater availability of accommodation there. As well as towns having a ready supply of housing for
purchase or rent, enlarged inns and public houses provided rooms for
short-stay visitors, and respectable lodging houses offered sets of
furnished rooms at modest prices for those staying longer. 39
Yet for all this, movement to town was no walkover, even for the
well-to do. `A countryman who comes to live in London, Goldsmith
remarked, `nds nothing more difcult' than to nd a class of
congenial men; and the problems were similar elsewhere. Longerdistance movers often had only tenuous family links in their new
community. Regional links might prove helpful in gaining a foothold
in the community, but other traditional migration pathways were
largely in decay after 1700for instance, gilds and apprenticeship.
37
P. Clark and D. Souden (eds.), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London,
1987), 2933; P. Sharpe, `Population and Society, 17001740', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban
History of Britain; Nottingham University Library, Molyneux MSS, MO 129.
38
Clark and Souden (eds.), Migration, 346, 2245, 2812; R. A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers
(London, 1979), ch. 4; see also below, p. 361; H. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the
British Overseas Empire, 16881775 (London, 1996), 158 ff.
39
E. Pawson, Transport and the Economy: The Turnpike Roads of 18th Century Britain (London,
1977), chs. 6, 11; M. Reed, `London and its Hinterland, 16001800', in Clark and Lepetit
(eds.), Capital Cities, 63, 65; Clark and Souden (eds.), Migration, 284; M. D. George, London Life
in the 18th Century (London, 1926), 341.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

160

Engines of Growth

Too often newcomers were marginalized, one writer complaining

that Londoners `have so many engagements that a stranger or comer
for a short time is hardly thought of '. Worse, at York it was `the way
to look upon a stranger as bad as a mad dog'. For respectable new
arrivals the custom was to carry letters of introduction from a
mutual friend or patron, but the ood of newcomers meant these
might be ignored. The Philadelphia trader James Watmough brought
one such letter to a Liverpool merchant, `but though I waited on
him twice, [and] left a card', he never returned the visit. `Letters of
introduction are often of little service', one disgruntled German
traveller rightly concluded. 40
`In a world in motion,' to quote Cary Carson, `migrants and
travellers needed a standardised system of social communications',
a recognized way of obtaining recognition of their social standing
away from home. For genteel newcomers to town, public social
events, at xed or advertised times, afforded one such entree to
the social scene. When the South Carolina lawyer Peter Manigault
arrived in St Albans in Hertfordshire, he and friends `went to a
morning assembly where we met with several of our acquaintance
who agreed to dine with us'. In North America assemblies were
organized specically `for introducing strangers'. Journeying down
the East Coast, the London merchant Robert Hunter recounts how
he reached New Haven, where `some of the young fellows [of the
town] perceiving I was a stranger politely invited me to the assembly
room . . .'; Hunter `put on a clean pair of silk stockings and shoes
that I had in my pocket and walked into the ballroom'. He was
introduced to various residents and later dossed down for the night
on the assembly-room oor. More commonly, newcomers went rst
to a drinking house to initiate social contacts. As one visitor to
London observed in the 1720s, the coffee-houses were an essential
social rendezvous: `a man is sooner asked about his coffee-house
than his lodging.' Many London coffee-houses and public houses
had regional identities. Northern visitors to the capital congregated
at the Hole in the Wall in Fleet Street, with its Newcastle links and
northern newspapers. American arrivals usually hurried to the
famous New England Coffee-house in Threadneedle Street, or the
40
O. Goldsmith, Essays, 1765 (Menston, 1970), 21; for regional links see pp. 284, 291;
Bettany (ed.), Temple Diaries, 80; Nottingham University Library, Molyneux MSS, MO 121;
Watmough, `Letters', 183; W. H. Quarrell and M. Mare, London in 1710: From the Travels of
Zacharius Conrad von Uffenbach (London, 1934), 127.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

161

Carolina in Birchen Lane.41 From contacts made there a newcomer

might be taken on to a larger social gathering, an assembly or dinner,
and then, in due course, as a visitor to a club or society. As in many
contemporary developing countries, voluntary societies in this period
were a vital assimilating mechanism for newcomers to town. 42 Not
only county or ethnic societies and trade clubs, but many other kinds
of society facilitated the movement and social integration of British
people during the `long' eighteenth century.

iv
Urbanization and new forms of migration fuelled much of the
demand for a great range of public sociable activities, but there
were also fundamental developments on the supply side, which helped
to create the right framework for such activities. The expansion of the
British economy during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
generated a major growth of the tertiary or service sector. Here one of
the most dynamic groups were drink traders, who acted as leading
supporters and sponsors of public socializing, notably voluntary associations. Indeed, they became the veritable patron saints of clubs and
societies in our period.
Inns, taverns, and alehouses were already well established and
numerous before the Civil War, serving as important centres of
informal socializing and fellowship. During the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries urban drinking houses, along with the newstyle coffee-houses, enjoyed a golden age, not just as places of resort
for migrants, but as the hub of a broadening range of economic and
social activities. Numbers of premises continued to rise into the late
seventeenth century, but then tapered off due to enhanced licensing
controls, and fell sharply in real terms during the nal decades of the
41
C. Carson et al. (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the 18th Century
(Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 523, 608 ff.; M. L. Webber, `Peter Manigault's Letters', South
Carolina Historical Magazine, 32 (1931), 54; 33 (1932), 59; J. R. Robertson (ed.), The Diary of Mrs
John Graves Simcoe (Toronto, 1911), 264; also D. H. Kent and M. H. Deardoff, `John Adlum on
the Alleghany . . .', Pennsylvania Magazine, 84 (1960), 2856; L. B. Wright and M. Tinling (eds.),
Quebec to Carolina in 17851786 (San Marino, Calif., 1943), 1446; B. L. de Muralt, Letters
Describing The Character and Customs of the English and French Nations (London, 1726), 82;
Bewick, Memoir, 75; A.Oliver (ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen Loyalist (Cambridge, Mass.,
1972), i. 26.
42
e.g., C. Meillassoux, Urbanization of an African Community (London, 1968), 50 and passim;
P. D. Wheeldon, `The Operation of Voluntary Associations and Personal Networks . . .', in
J. C. Mitchell (ed.), Social Networks in Urban Situations (Manchester, 1969), 13180.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

162

Engines of Growth

eighteenth century, as the moral reform movement and magisterial

regulation took effect. Numbers were only a small part of the story:
most striking was the radical improvement in the social amenities. The
post-Restoration period witnessed a remarkable eforescence of the
urban inn. Premises were massively remodelled and enlargedwith
up to thirty or forty roomsand some acquired assembly rooms.
They became fully fashionable meeting places of the new elite classes,
places to do business, drink, feast, politick, and socialize. In a number
of towns civic government migrated from the town-hall to the back
parlour of the principal inn. As often the largest quasi-public buildings
in country towns, inns were the chief venues for assemblies, balls,
benet concerts, cock-ghts, hunt meets, magic lantern shows, plays,
recitals, scientic lectures, stunts, and exhibitions, as well as all kinds
of associational meeting. Taverns tended to lack the guest-rooms of
inns and were concentrated in the bigger towns, but after the Restoration they often occupied extensive premises. For instance, the HalfMoon tavern in Cheapside, a well known venue for political and
associational meetings, had sixteen rooms, as well as an assembly
room for balls and meetings. 43
By Anne's reign there may have been 2,000 coffee-houses in the
capital, selling a wide range of alcoholic drinks as well as coffee. In the
1730s every part of London was said to have a coffee-house, `which
may be called the school of public spirit'. A Swiss observer noted that
here the English `discourse freely of everything'. Some had specialist
facilities, like the Chapter Coffee-house in London with its own library
and reading society. Bigger provincial towns usually made do with a
handful of important coffee-houses, like Parker's at York, said to be
`the common rendezvous of the political tribe'. Though coffee-houses
were largely an English phenomenon, Dublin and Edinburgh had
several from the late seventeenth century on, and they also appeared
in major colonial cities like Boston. 44
In England from the later Stuart era even popular alehouses had
43
P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 12001830 (London, 1983), 456, 519;
A. Everitt, `The English Urban Inn, 15601760', in id. (ed.), Perspectives in English Urban
History (London, 1973), 1003, 11320; R. Bone, `The Inns of Nottingham, Derby and
Leicester, 17201820' (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Leicester, 1985); I. G.
Doolittle, `The Half Moon Tavern, Cheapside, and City Politics', Trans. of the London and
Middlesex Archaeological Soc., 28 (1977), 32930.
44
A. Ellis, The Penny Universities (London, 1956), p. xiv; Daily Gazetteer, 4 July 1737; Muralt,
Letters, 82; B. Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses (London, 1963), 153; The Northern Atlantis or
York Spy (London, 1713), 33; Houston, Social Change, 195, 2223, 3412; for Boston see below,
p. 395.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

163

increasingly comfortable premises, with several drinking rooms, guestrooms, games and other rooms, cellars, outhouses, and stables. Their
main rooms were often well furnished with clocks, pictures, and tables
and chairs, and divided by partitions to make separate, semi-private,
drinking areas or booths. Following the spread across southern
England of tied houses, owned or controlled by brewers, there was
a growing trend by the late eighteenth century for the erection of
larger, purpose-built premises. In Scotland drinking houses were
slower to improve: as late as 1800 one English visitor to a public
house at New Galloway spoke of it as `the most miserable hut I think I
ever saw'. In Ireland inns were few and were much condemned, while
the lower classes tended to drink whiskey in illicit premises. By the late
eighteenth century, however, a growing number of new-style premises
had opened in the biggest towns. In 1770, for instance, one Dublin
landlord boasted of `making great additions and improvements to his
house in College Green in order to accommodate his club . . . with as
much elegance as any house in these kingdoms'. 45 Drinking houses
were transplanted to British colonies and became a lynchpin of social
and communal life. For, as one Barbados planter observed in 1710,
`upon all the new settlements the Spaniards make, the rst thing they
do is to build a church, the rst thing the Dutch do . . . is to build
them a fort, but the rst thing the English do, be it in the most remote
parts of the world or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up
a tavern or drinking house'. 46
During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drinking
houses consolidated their role as one of the main theatres of male
sociability. A great deal of this continued to be informal neighbourhood conviviality, with heavy boozing de rigueur. The practice of
drinking was increasingly ritualized, with the use of special mugs
and silver tankards, and the drinking of healths to fellow tipplers.
At the end of the seventeenth century we learn that `to drink at table
without drinking to somebody's health, especially among middling
people would be like drinking in a corner, and be reckoned a very
rude action'. Toasting was commonly accompanied by the beating of
drums and a fanfare of music. Such rituals not only articulated
45
Clark, English Alehouse, 184, 1959, 2012, 2636, 2734; I. Donnachie, A History of the
Brewing Industry in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979), 118, 12932; F. Wood and K. Wood, A
Lancashire Gentleman: The Letters and Journals of Richard Hodgkinson, 17631847 (Stroud, 1992),
130; Cullen, Emergence, 179, 187; Dublin Mercury, 57 July 1770.
46
`T. Walduck's Letters from Barbados, 1710', Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical
Soc., 15 (19478), 35; see below, p. 395.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

164

Engines of Growth

mutuality and generosity but also the honour and reputation of the
participants and their public standing in the local community.47
Traditional socializing at the public house was increasingly overlaid
by a host of new, more formalized activities, whether educational,
musical, sporting, or associational. In the case of English clubs and
societies, at least nine out of ten meetings before 1800 occurred in
public drinking houses. This was partly because of the growing
comfort and convenience of their facilities and the ready supply of
alcoholic drinksso important for club conviviality. No less important, drinking houses provided a special kind of controlled space
open in principle to all-comers, but regulated by convention and
etiquette and by the landlord's management; in the late eighteenth
century many had their own club rooms. Club meetings in private
houses, by contrast, often encountered difculties. Even if they
rotated between members' houses, they entailed considerable expense
for the host and disruption of his household. The London Virtuosi of
St Luke began privately, but quickly noted `the inconveniency of so
many persons meeting in a private house (besides the expense) . . .
[and] resolved to meet . . . at a tavern one evening in the week'. 48
Improved public drinking houses were not just passive agents in the
rise of new forms of public sociability. Innkeepers and publicans
promoted horse-races, cock-ghts, cricket matches, and other sporting events; they staged assemblies, plays, and concerts; above all, they
helped to establish, accommodate, and nance societies. In the 1760s
several York publicans set up rival benet societies there and waged a
vigorous publicity campaign for them in the local press. At the small
town of Rugby the school alumni society was created by, and for the
benet of, local publicans, while Birmingham's historian William
Hutton reported that many of the clothes, clock, and other artisanal
clubs in that town were set up by landlords in cahoots with local
tradesmen eager for business. In the case of masonic lodges, victuallers
sometimes paid the cost of getting a warrant from grand lodge and
buying the necessary regalia. A number of London publicans
supported Wilkesite and reformist clubs, selling beer at reduced prices
47
Clark, English Alehouse, 212, 232; for an excellent discussion of the rites of toasting see
P. Thompson, `A Social History of Philadelphia's Taverns' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 47 ff.; also D. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in
British America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), ch. 3.
48
For club rooms in public houses: NNRO, Archdeaconry Inventories, ANW 23/126;
M. Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place (17711854) (Cambridge, 1972), 38; BL,
Additional MS 39,167, fo. 74; see also Rules of the Society of Royal Kentish Bowmen (n.p., 1789), 4.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

165

to attract members. More generally, landlords supplied drink and other

refreshment on extended credit to keep clubs (sometimes three or
four) meeting on their premises. With their inevitable heavy boozing,
club meetings were protable in themselves (the feasts a particular
money-spinner), and brought publicity and therefore wider custom to
the house. The relationship between a club and its landlord was not
always harmonious, but it played a crucial role in the growth of
voluntary associations in the period. 49
However, commercial sponsorship of clubs and societies was not
conned to victuallers. Many professional and other tradesmen in
towns were eager to get onto the bandwagon of sponsoring sociable
activities. Attorneys supported the establishment of prosecution
societies which hired them as agents. Parish organists, their standing
enhanced by the installation of new town organs, frequently promoted
concerts, music festivals, and societies. At Derby, William Denby, the
organist of All Saints church, took the lead in local music-making and
presided over an informal music society at his home. Several professional musicians were prominent in setting up the Aberdeen Musical
Society in 1748. Society concerts not only fostered a musician's local
reputation, but enabled him to organize protable benet concerts
and get a steady ow of fee-paying pupils. 50 Booksellers and printers
similarly promoted book-clubs and music societies, for which they
furnished the latest books and sheet music. There were also more
indirect connections. The London bookseller Jacob Tonson was the
founder and secretary of the Whig Kit-Cat Club, and the subsequent
ow of partisan customers to his shop probably contributed to his
healthy income of 1,500 a year. Booksellers and printers were also
prominent in the Dublin Society of United Irishmen in the 1790s. With
a keen eye for advertising revenue, newspaper proprietors were well
known for founding societies: Benjamin Franklin instituted numerous
49
Clark, English Alehouse, 234; Everitt, `English Urban Inn', 11418; York Courant, 22 Dec.
1767, 23 Feb., 6 Dec. 1768, and passim; Northampton Mercury, 21 May 1781; W. Hutton, An
History of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1795), 209, 211, 212; F. Howkins, The Mount Moriah Lodge
No. 34 (London, 1915), 18, 20; The Life and Political Opinions of the late Sam House (2nd edn.,
London, n.d.), 356; McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb, Birth of a Consumer Society, 2434; see
also pp. 2401.
50
D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 17501850 (Oxford 1989),
1367, 1923; R. P. Sturges, `Harmony and Good Company: The Emergence of Musical
Performance in 18th-century Derby', Music Review, 39 (1978), 17980; H. G. Farmer,
`Concerts in 18th Century Scotland', Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Soc. of Glasgow, 69
(19445), 103; D. Johnson, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the 18th Century (London,
1972), 434.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

166

Engines of Growth

societies in Philadelphia, while, as we saw before, Gloucester's Robert

Raikes launched the Sunday school movement. A powerful commercial
incentive lay behind the rise of many British voluntary associations.51

v
Urban improvement generated further momentum for the growth of
public sociability in the Augustan era. Street cleaning, the widening of
streets and demolition of town walls and gates, the erection of new
public buildings, and the introduction of street lighting fashioned a
new image of the city as open, civilized and urbane, and helped to
create the physical context and space for the enactment of new forms
of fashionable socializing.
Before the Restoration English towns had grown by accretion,
overlaying any original plan with largely uncontrolled private development, the old urban centre often being extended by scrappy, ribbontype, suburban development. Despite repeated injunctions for cleaning
streets, providing lights outside houses, and preventing obstructions
to the highway, these directives had a patchy effect. The situation
was aggravated by confusion between public and private space, and
because of jurisdictional disputes within towns, between parishes
and liberties: contested space was a recurrent problem. After the
Reformation the urban stock of public buildings declined. Numerous
churches, fraternity halls, and religious houses were demolished or
sold into private hands. In provincial towns new civic buildings
were mostly limited to town halls (often doubling as market-houses)
and grammar schools (also with multiple uses). Town halls constructed at this time were often small and cramped, built in a
traditional vernacular style. Even in London, only a handful of
developments, such as the Covent Garden piazza, displayed the
classical inuence of the European Renaissance. This civic parochialism reected the relative poverty of many British towns, the
diversion of investment into private housing, and the decline of
urban sociability before 1640. 52
51
R. P. Sturges, `Context for Library History: Libraries in 18th-Century Derby', Library
History, 4 (1976), 447; Daily Post, 22 Mar. 1736; K. Whelan, `The United Irishmen, the
Enlightenment and Popular Culture', in D. Dickson et al. (eds.), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), 2767; see pp. 1034, 390.
52
M. Reed, `The Urban Landscape, 15401700', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History;
R. Tittler, Architecture and Power: The Town Hall and the English Urban Community c.15001640
(Oxford, 1991); J. Summerson, Georgian London (Harmondsworth, 1962), 2835.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

167

The Great Fire of London in 1665 and the city's rebuilding set in
motion the long march of urban improvement throughout British
towns. One index is provided by the numbers of improvement acts
passed for English provincial towns: thirty-ve between 1690 and
1729, seventy-four between 1730 and 1769, and 145 during the last
three decades of the eighteenth century. Improvement commissions
were involved in the remodelling and enhancement of town streets
scavenging, draining, and paving them, removing obstructions and
shop signs, tearing down houses to widen thoroughfares, and moving
markets to the outskirts. In London by the 1780s we hear that `many
parts of the city especially are made more open by pulling down
houses and all the streets are more airy and wholesome by removing
the signs'. But `elegance, another writer declared about this time, is by
no means conned to the capital. Signs are pulled down, streets paved
and lamps erected to such a degree in all the principal country towns'.
Most places demolished their town gates and walls to allow easier
access and movement for the growing volume of coaches, carts, and
wagons. At Warwick, Blandford Forum, and elsewhere, the process of
improvement was hastened by outbreaks of re. 53
In Scotland, similar piecemeal improvement happened in many
older burghs with the advent of street cleaning and street widening.
Not to be outdone by Edinburgh's creation of its New Town, from
the mid-eighteenth century Glasgow designed a new gridiron street
plan, spreading westward from the old high street. There were also
many new planned settlements, often by local landowners, some of
which became successful small towns. In Ireland, civic improvement
was more selective. The ascent of Dublin as a fashionable, classicalstyle city was conrmed from the 1750s by the regulatory efforts of
the Wide Street Commissioners. But James Watmough, a visitor to
Cork in the 1780s, though impressed by its principal buildings, complained that `all the outskirts of the town are lled with paltry dirty
cabins'. He was also uncomplimentary about Kildare, Cashell, and,
above all, Belfast, `the most lthy dirty place I ever was in', concluding
vehemently `never, never do I desire to put my feet in the disagreeable
lthy place again'; improvement here only made itself felt at the close
of the century. There was some remodelling of Irish country towns,
53
E. L. Jones and M. E. Falkus, `Urban Improvement and the English Economy in the
17th and 18th Centuries', in Borsay (ed.), 18th-Century Town, 12845; P. Clark (ed.), Country
Towns in Pre-Industrial England (Leicester, 1981), 21; George, London Life, 108; Westminster
Journal, 31 Aug.7 Sept. 1771; Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 1819, 46.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

168

Engines of Growth

with wider streets and classical churches and public buildings, but
most urban renewal was modest, except in Ulster.54
In the spread of those new public buildings which graced many
British cities by the late eighteenth century, London as usual led the
way, its landscape transformed by the rebuilding of city churches after
the Great Fire, a wave of new metropolitan churches under Anne, the
competitive display of classical-style dissenting chapels, the Palladian
Mansion House of the 1730s, reconstructed company halls, the Corn
Exchange, the Foundling Hospital and various inrmaries, and a great
wealth of quasi-public assembly rooms, concert halls, and theatres,
along with the public pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and
elsewhere. In the 1780s William Hutton could declare that any
stranger would be `astonished at the improvements which have
been introduced' in the capital in recent decades. London's example
percolated through the urban system, so that by 1800 the streetscape
of even middle-rank county towns like Leicester or Bury St Edmunds
was ornamented by a sequence of new public edices, which might
include assembly rooms, a theatre, public inrmary, town hall, almhouses, churches, market-hall, and public gardens and walks, though
rarely all of them. Improvement was neither universal nor simultaneous. Exeter's narrow, dirty streets and old-style houses came
under re in the 1760s, for `while every city almost of the kingdom
displays a taste of improvement, Exeter alone bears an exception',
discouraging polite society. However, the economic writing was on the
wall: improvement meant greater country patronage and patronage
meant prot. `An improved town', one hears at Derby, `becomes a
kind of metropolis to that and neighbouring counties, as York,
Shrewsbury, Lincoln etc., [since] a conux of wealthy and fashionable
visitors is felt by all trades and professions.' 55
The rage for fashionable improvement caused Horace Walpole to
joke that it was a wonder no one had proposed the `altering and
improving the New Jerusalem in the modern style, upon consideration
that nobody one knows could bear to go into so old-fashioned a
54

C. McWilliam, Scottish Townscape (London, 1975), 7580, 8894; Craig, Dublin, passim;
Watmough, `Letters', 323, 35, 389, 1812; B. J. Graham and L. J. Proudfoot, Urban
Improvement in Provincial Ireland, 17001840 (Athlone, 1994); also A. Simms and J. H. Andrews
(eds.), Irish Country Towns (Dublin, 1994), 29, 37, 41; G. Camblin, The Town in Ulster (Belfast,
1951), chs. 89.
55 Summerson, Georgian London, 59 ff.; Porter, `Enlightenment London', 356; Reed,
`Transformation of the Urban Landscape'; St James Chronicle, 268 Jan. 1769; Derby Local
Studies Library, Broadsides, `Paving and Lighting' ( ?1791).

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

169

town'. The implications for public sociability were complex and profound. In respect to private housing, compact terrace houses with
limited room for large-scale socializing, together with the increasing
feminization of the household, encouraged a good deal of male social
activity to migrate from the domestic to the public arena. Now the
focus was not the old-style public space of the church and the street,
but instead a new `social space', a cultural quartier, usually in the central
area of town, distinguished by paved streets and rebuilt civic buildings,
joined with assembly rooms, coffee-houses and other drinking
premises, and adjacent enclosed walks and private pleasure gardens;
a continuum of premises which enabled the better-off classes to move
easily from one venue, and one entertainment, to another. As well as
creating a more unied social arena, these developments tended to
override older spatial divisions and areas of contested space within
town. 56
Improvement helped to foster urban sociability in other ways.
During the eighteenth century there were spasms of fear among the
better-off class concerning crime and disorder, as, for instance, during
the 1720s, though the incidence of urban crime actually moved in line
with demographic trends, and was not a particularly serious social
problem (except for prostitution). The tightening of police activity in
central districts, through new watch commissions and police courts (in
bigger towns), helped to assuage general elite fears. Foreign visitors to
London thought it much safer than other European cities, and
commentators also praised provincial towns as peaceable and orderly.
By the end of the period the problem of urban crime and disorder, of
the dangerous classes, came to be identied with the growing slum
districts. 57
Also boosting the growth of fashionable socializing in towns was
the spread of street lighting. From the later Stuart era metropolitan
streets began to be lit by oil lamps, and in the years after 1700 street
lighting appeared in regional capitals like Norwich and Bristol; other
county centres and even small towns soon followed their example.
56

W. S. Lewis et al. (eds.), Horace Walpole's Correspondence (New Haven, 193783), xxi. 418;
Reed, `Transformation of the Urban Landscape'; J. Stobart, `Shopping Streets as Social
Space: Consumerism, Improvement and Leisure in an 18th-Century County Town', Urban
History, 25 (1998), 321; Houston, Social Change, 1446.
57
J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 16601800 (Oxford, 1986), 6572, 21332;
Grosley, Tour, i. 67; `Journal of Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks . . . 17789', Historical Collections of
the Essex Institute, 52 (1916), 205; J. Hemming, The History and Chemical Analysis of the Mineral
Water . . . Gloucester (London, 1789), 7; cf. L. Lees, Exiles of Erin (Manchester, 1979), ch. 3.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

170

Engines of Growth

Whereas in rural areas most social activity still tended to occur during
the day, to allow participants to get home safely, urban events were
largely held in the evening or at night. In country towns some societies
continued to hold their meetings at or near the full moon, but in the
big cities, especially London, we often nd an elaborate sequence of
social activities lasting from afternoon through the night into the early
morning, and illuminated by articial lighting. On one of his extended
concert visits to London, Joseph Haydn was dazzled by the 30,000
lamps at Vauxhall gardens and by other brightly lit social gatherings. 58
Sociability increasingly took place in a new, articial world of public
space and public time. In towns there was a greater consciousness of
time due to the spread of chronometers. After the 1740s over a third
of the better-off classes of Bristol had a clock, and a quarter watches.
For those without, a growing number of churches and town halls had
clocks with dials. Elizabeth Drinker of Philadelphia compared the
situation in the countryside, where most noises were made by animals,
to that in the city, where `the hour is often repeated in my ears, by the
two town clocks, our own clock, and the watchman'. Though national
standard time was invented by the Victorians, there was a trend now
for urban economic and social life to be orchestrated by the chronometer: Londoners, for instance, were praised for their punctuality. 59
The growing complexity of urban social time was reected by changes
in mealtimes. Dinner before the Restoration was between noon and 1
p.m.; about 1700 it was about 2 p.m. ; by 1710 Richard Steele observed
that, `in my memory the dinner has crept from 12 o'clock to 3'; by the
1780s it was about 4 p.m., and a decade later had slipped to 5 p.m. or
later. The Earl of Chichester complained in 1793 of `a true London
dinner . . . we sat down at half past six . . . faint for want of food'.
These changes increasingly spread to the main provincial cities, even
across the Atlantic. The contrast with the countryside became marked:
Fanny Boscawen, for instance, described a time-warp experience
familiar to transatlantic travellers when, after dining in the country,
she journeyed to town only to discover that dinner had still to be
served. The later time of dinner accentuated the signicance of
58
`Journal of Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks', 205; M. Falkus, `Lighting in the Dark Ages of
English Economic History', in Coleman and John (eds.), Trade, Government and Economy, 248
70; e.g., Ipswich Journal, 14 June 1755; J. Greig (ed.), The Diaries of a Duchess (London, 1926),
101; H. C. Robbins Landon (ed.), The Collected Correspondence and London Notebooks of Joseph
Haydn (London, 1959), 252, 262.
59
Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 360; Grosley, Tour, i. 44, 115; H. D. Biddle (ed.),
Extracts from the Journal of Elizabeth Drinker (Philadelphia, 1889), 244.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

171

breakfast, helped the slow emergence of luncheon, and pushed supper

back to very late in the evening.60
In town, `the manners, the customs, the hours of eating, and, in
short, the whole face of things is . . . turned topsy-turvy within these
40 years', so one country correspondent declared in the 1790s. In
practice, the extension of the day, increasingly divided by mealtimes
into even parts, enabled a greater segregation of economic and social
activity, giving more opportunity and time for sociability. The
London brewer Mr Thrale `was in his counting house all morning,
at Carlisle House perhaps or the Opera or some public place all
evening'. Upper and middle-class societies met in the late afternoon
or early evening, with participants subsequently moving on to other
social engagementsto assemblies, routs, concerts, or further club
meetings. In London and the bigger cities fashionable balls or routs
began about 9 or 10 p.m., supper came between midnight and 2 a.m.,
followed by renewed dancing, card-playing, and, for the male
company, heavy drinking, with the party-goers staggering out before
or after dawn. No wonder Mrs Carter spoke of `the inversion of night
and day'. The colonization of night was an essential part of the
refashioned world of urban sociability. 61
Not that the social use of urban time was standardized. There are
signs of gender differences and growing class variations. In the latter
case, it is likely that the middling and lower classes may have nished
their socializing somewhat earlier than the upper ranksusually by 10
or 11 p.m. To some extent, this may have been a function of the
intensication of work patterns during the day and of poorer services,
such as lighting, outside elite areas, but it was also inuenced by
ofcial action, for by the later eighteenth century local magistrates
were enforcing the early closing of public houses and suppressing latenight popular entertainments. In general, however, organized sociable
activity, particularly associations, owered against the bright backdrop
of the improved and refurbished Georgian town. 62
60
R. B. Johnson, The Undergraduate (London, 1928), 479; A. Palmer, Movable Feasts (Oxford,
1952), 817; BL, Additional MS 33,629, fo. 21; Marquis de Chastellux, Travels in North America
(London, 1787), i. 178, 197; C. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral's Widow (London, 1942), 74.
61
BL, `Fragmenta', vol. 3 (Call No.: 937 g 3), 21; K. C. Balderston (ed.), Thraliana: The
Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (Oxford, 1942), i. 308; see below, p. 237; E. Anson and
F. Anson (eds.), Mary Hamilton (London, 1925), 269; also Bettany (ed.), Temple Diaries, 77, 79;
Johnson (ed.), Bluestocking Letters, 264. Important research on this subject is being done by
Professor Roger Ekirch and I am grateful for his discussions with me.
62
P. Clark, `Tempo, spazio and dialogo sociale: mutamenti sociali nelle citta britanniche del
XVIII secolo', in C. Olmo and B. Lepetit (eds.), La Citta et le sue Storie (Turin, 1995), 24250.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

172

Engines of Growth

vi
While economic and social change in cities, the inux of outsiders and
public improvement in its many forms were powerful engines for the
growth of new-style public sociability and voluntary associations,
another factor was vital: the helium of publicity produced by the
newspaper press. The collapse of ofcial censorship in England in
1695 was clearly a watershed, ensuring only intermittent and usually
unsuccessful attempts at state control of the British press over the
next century. For a German diplomat in the 1760s, England was
distinctive for its `liberty of thought, tongue and pen . . . newspapers,
magazines, pamphlets, [political] registers . . . turf, cock-pits, [and]
clubs'. De Tocqueville, at the end of the period, underlined the
connection between the press and voluntarism, judging that `hardly
any democratic association can do without newspapers'. 63 Newspapers provided those essential lubricants for public and social
discoursenews and advertisingand it is difcult to imagine the
enormous success of clubs and societies without their copy.
The spread of British newspapers during the eighteenth century
was dramatic. By the 1780s English readers could choose from over a
dozen London papers and fty or so provincial ones; and the numbers
continued to mount. In late Georgian Scotland at least six towns had
newspapers and as many as twenty-six new ones were established. At
rst sight Ireland did even better, with over eighty new papers
appearing in eighteen towns, but Dublin kept the lion's share of
production. The number of American papers rose tenfold in the
late eighteenth century, while the main centres in the East and West
Indies also had a local press. 64 Circulation in Britain rose by leaps and
bounds. In 1739 the Newcastle Journal claimed to have nearly 2,000
regular readers; a Shrewbury paper of the 1770s estimated its readership at 10,000; and Manchester's papers circulated extensively in both
town and region. In the earlier period subscribers tended to be male,
propertied, and well educated, but as the century advanced the
audience became more socially variegated, papers being read and
63
M. Harris and A. Lee (eds.), The Press in English Society from the 17th to 19th Centuries
(London, 1986), 1922 and passim; Middlesex Journal, 31 Aug.2 Sept. 1769; A. de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, ed. H. S. Commager (London, 1946), 383.
64
See above, p. 69; Harris and Lee (eds.), Press, 81; P. J. Korshin (ed.), The Widening Circle
(Philadelphia, 1976), 7; J. P. S. Ferguson, Directory of Scottish Newspapers (Edinburgh, 1984),
13455; J. O'Toole, `Newsplan: Report of the Newsplan Project in Ireland' (National Library
of Ireland, 1992); for American and colonial papers see below, pp. 3945, 41415, 427.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

173

chewed over in popular drinking houses and clubs. In 1705 Sir

Thomas Cave commiserated with Lord Fermanagh, stuck on his
country seat at Claydon in North Buckinghamshire, that `the losing
of the newspapers must be a great disappointment to you, who are so
far from town', but by the last decades of the century the distribution
network permeated most of the country. 65
Newspapers publicized public sociability and societies in a
multitude of ways: through editorials, correspondence sections,
advertisements, notices, and reports of meetings. Societies frequently
launched themselves by advertising initial meetings in the press, and,
once established, promoted their activities there in an aggressive way.
The Society of Ancient Britons announced a preliminary gathering in
the Gazette in February 1715; the election of ofcers was reported
there in April; and its next anniversary was publicized in three journals.
Societies sometimes advertised a meeting three, four, or more times,
and recruitment campaigns were fought out in the local prints. As
societies became larger and more bureaucratic, much information was
transmitted to members via notices in papers. London's Philanthropic
Society declared that `printing is the medium of communication to the
public and almost the only instrument of informing or interesting
them' in our work. Costs were considerable: for example, the Dublin
Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor spent over 40 on
press advertisements in the years 1799 to 1801, more than it spent on
its principal salaried ofcial. 66 As nowadays, successful organizations
did not rely on advertising but manipulated the press through planted
stories and publicity puffs. Between February and April 1734 London
papers carried over forty advertisements and puffs for the freemasons
and Henley's Oratory (an early debating society). Likewise, the fame of
65
R. M. Wiles, `The Relish for Reading in Provincial England Two Centuries Ago', in
Korshin (ed.), Widening Circle, 8890; D. Clare, `The Local Newspaper Press and Local
Politics in Manchester and Liverpool, 17801800', Trans. of the Lancs. and Cheshire Antiquarian
Soc., 734 (19634), 10710; also J. J. Looney, `Cultural Life in the Provinces: Leeds and York,
17201820', in A. L. Beier et al. (eds.), The First Modern Society (Cambridge, 1989), 487; Verney,
Verney Letters, i. 224; G. A. Craneld, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper, 17001760
(Oxford, 1962), ch. 9; see also C. Y. Ferdinand, Benjamin Collins and the Provincial Newspaper
Trade in the 18th Century (Oxford,1997).
66
Sir T. Jones, The Rise and Progress of the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Antient Britons
(London, 1717), 15, 31, 41; First Report of The Philanthropic Society . . . (London, 1789), 56;
Account of the Funds of the Society for Promoting the Comforts of the Poor . . . (Dublin, 1802), 89.
The London General United Society for Supplying British Troops spent nearly 400 on
advertising in 17934: Proceedings of the General United Society . . . (London, 1798), appendix,
p. 12.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

174

Engines of Growth

the Robin Hood debating club was established through extensive, if

critical, reporting in the press. No wonder that newspaper proprietors
sponsored societies. For if newspapers were good for voluntary
associations, the converse was equally true, with papers beneting
from advertising income (a growing element in newspaper prots),
while attracting better-off readers and fostering the right social image.
Not all newspapers offered identical coverage of public sociability.
Those at Leeds, for instance, showed less interest than their York
counterparts, reecting the former's greater commercial and industrial
activity, but also serving to differentiate the social identities of the two
towns. 67
Public socializing was not reliant on newspapers alone for publicity.
New weekly or monthly magazines likewise enhanced public awareness and recognition of societies. As well as the inuential Spectator, the
Gentleman's Magazine (after 1730) carried regular news about social
gatherings. In the 1790s the rst issue of the Sporting Magazine
promised to include reports of racing, cricket, archery, and other clubs
`for the encouragement of sport and enterprise', a promise duly
fullled in subsequent issues. Established the same decade, the
Freemasons' Magazine promoted `fraternal communications and correspondence [between masons] . . . circulating through distant climates'.
Not content with this, many societies also generated their own promotional material. 68
As well as highlighting the fashionability and importance of voluntary associations and other new forms of public sociability, attracting
public interest and support, media publicity helped shape the pattern
of clubs and societies on the ground. Newspapers and magazines were
vital in disseminating news of metropolitan societies, thereby encouraging provincial emulation. They carried reports about societies within
and between regions; between mainland Britain, Ireland, and the
empire. News was transmitted with spatial biases and time-lags: big
67

Grub St Journal, 14 Feb. 1733/4, 16 May 1734, 16 Jan. 1734/5; for attacks on the Robin
Hood Society by Henry Fielding, see H. Fielding, The Covent-Garden Journal, ed. G. E. Jensen
(New Haven, 1915), i. 1815, 18792. J. J. Looney, `Advertising and Society in England,
17201820' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1983), 1725; also id., `Cultural
Life', 4957. There was a political bias in the early Georgian period: Tory papers like The
Country Journal or the Craftsman provided less coverage of sociable activity than their Whiggish
counterparts.
68
E. A. Bloom and L. D. Bloom, Joseph Addison's Sociable Animal (Providence, RI, 1971),
esp. ch. 1; C. L. Carlson, The First Magazine: A History of the Gentleman's Magazine (Providence,
RI, 1938); Sport. Mag., 1 (17923), p. v; The Freemasons' Magazine, 1 (1793), 67; see below,
pp. 2625.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

175

cities, ports, and spa-towns enjoyed the most direct and up-to-date
information ows, helping the early reception of new associational
developments; small country towns had a lower contact level. This
was only one variable, of course, affecting the local conguration of
public socializing. However, the rise of the information industry,
proting from increased levels of literacy among the respectable
classes, contributed heavily to the progress of new forms of sociability,
and to the growing competition between them. 69

vii
The rise of a free and dynamic press owed much to the redenition of
the role of the British state from the later seventeenth century on.
Aside from the development of the `scal-military sector' to wage
foreign war, the government withdrew from many of those areas of
national and local administration which had concerned it before the
Civil War, and which continued to preoccupy many of its continental
counterparts. It was as much a matter of capacity as of policy. The
failure to revive the old prerogative courts in 1660 and the steady
decline of the Privy Council meant that the state was deprived of
many of the levers of power in England and Wales. In Scotland,
Ireland, and the colonies there were sporadic attempts to reassert
royal power, but the authority of Crown representatives (and so of
Whitehall) was heavily circumscribed by their dependence on local
political elites. This declension had a direct effect on the formation of
public sociability in the Augustan period. In contrast to most of
continental Europe, the government and its provincial agents appear
to have exercised limited control over public social activity. In the
1730s one London newspaper bragged about the difference between
`the sentiments of French and English governments, the latter
encouraging what the former with their utmost power resolve to
suppress'. Certainly, the aggressive intervention and hostile ofcial
climate apparent in England before the Civil War never returned after
the Restoration. This is not to say, however, that the British authorities
were indifferent to the issue or strategically tolerant. In 1780 the
Attorney-General protested in Parliament that societies had `a natural
tendency to confusion'. A number of minor panics occurred with
regard to the threat to public order posed by sociable activity: in the
69
A. R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities,
17901840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), chs. 12; Brown, Knowledge, 1279; Coreld, Impact, 142.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

176

Engines of Growth

1670s over political meetings at coffee-houses; in the 1710s and 1720s

over trade and blasphemy clubs; in the 1760s over the Wilkesite clubs;
and during the American war over the Association movement.70
Generally speaking, however, apart from the laws regulating the
theatre and race-meetings, ofcial action in England was sporadic,
short-term, and normally indirect. In about 1780, for instance, one
speaker at the Westminster Forum, a debating club, protested that it `is
the true style and spirit of this ministry . . . to use every means,
concealed or open, to calumniate' societies. It was only during the
1790s, emboldened by upper-class hysteria over the French Revolution and its threat to property, that the state introduced a series of
measures to control public meetings, and in particular the activity of
voluntary societies. Statutory regulation of benet clubs in 1793
stemmed from a complex of factors, including pressure from the
societies themselves, not just ofcial fears; but the proclamation
against seditious meetings in 1792 and subsequent legislation, including the Two Acts of 1796, were openly repressive in aim. A wave of
suspicion affected even scientic, masonic, and improvement
societies. In reality, however, government action was narrow in scope
(most types of society were unaffected) and in its impact. Much of the
attack on radical societies came from Reeves's counter-reformist
associations and their loyalist diatribes, and from pressure by landlords
who refused to accommodate them, under threat from local magistrates and brewers. As we know, public debating societies were rst
intimidated into self-censorship and then into silence. However, once
the French military threat receded, effective controls on societies fell
away. 71
Ofcial reluctance to intervene stemmed, to some extent, from
what Paul Langford has called `a certain ambivalence about the
authority of the state' in Hanoverian Britain. Growing parliamentary
supremacy after 1688 rarely involved independent initiatives in new
70

J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 16881783 (New York,
1989); Parliamentary History, 21 (1814), 107 (I am grateful to Joanna Innes for this reference);
see above, ch. 2; London Gazette, 1115 Feb. 1717/18; R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London
(Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 11923; G. Rude, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, 1962), esp. ch. 8.
71
D. Turner, A Short History of the Westminster Forum (London, 1781), ii. 205; see pp. 96,
11920, 3712; P. Weindling, `Science and Sedition: How Effective Were the Acts Licensing
Lectures and Meetings 17951819?', British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980),
14650; H. Dickinson, `Popular Loyalism in Britain in the 1790s', in E. Hellmuth (ed.), The
Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford, 1990),
505 ff.; M. Philp, `Vulgar Conservatism, 17923', English Historical Review, 90 (1995), 4269;
Clark, English Alehouse, 3245.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

177

areas of responsibility; rather, legislation tended to respond to local

pressures, particularly for the maintenance of property rights. In the
case of voluntary associations, there was another reason for this
benign neglect. Not only were most MPs proud members of one or
more clubs and societies, but such associations, with their commitment to free but disciplined discourse, were increasingly viewed as
both a paradigm and a bulwark of British customs and liberties. At the
Westminster Forum in 1780 one speaker asserted that, while `there is
no law for associations . . . custom is stronger than law'; the president
of another debating club went further, arguing that societies `are the
result of our natural texture and may be traced in the woods of
America as well as among civilised nations'. Here the general perception of clubs and societies, in all their many colours, as basically the
same kind of institution was a signicant constraint on government
action against those types of association it disliked. In 1795 Manchester's
benet societies declared that they `conceive that any [state] interference whatever in the conduction and internal government of such
societies is improper'. 72
Another factor affecting state policy was uncertainty over how best
to regulate associations. In England at least, the traditional device of
incorporation was not only expensive, but was seen in some quarters
as monopolistic and liable to abuse. Finally, in the 1790s Parliament
opted for licensing arrangements for box clubs and masonic societies
similar to those for public houses, a policy which devolved surveillance to local magistrates, with little central control. 73
What is surprising, perhaps, is that there was no extended philosophical justication for the importance and freedom of voluntary
associations in society. John Locke saw the role of associations in
affecting the law of reputation, which men obeyed along with divine
and civil law. The third Earl of Shaftesbury argued that politeness, so
fundamental to civilized society, stemmed in considerable measure
from sociability, the desire to associate together, particularly in clubs;
for in this way `we polish one another and rub off our corners and
rough sides by a sort of amicable collision'. Such views were sharply
criticized, however, by Bernard Mandeville, who proclaimed that
`there is no man that is naturally inclined to be sociable as man'.
Neither David Hume nor Adam Smith presented any case for the
72

P. Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 16891798 (Oxford, 1991), 139;
Turner, Short History, ii. 202; Commons Journals, L, 562.
73
For incorporation see above, pp. 978; for friendly society registration, pp. 3723.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

178

Engines of Growth

role of voluntary associations in society, despite the fact that they (like
Mandeville) were committed clubmen. Notions of the right of
freedom of association seem to be an early nineteenth-century
innovation.74
Before 1800 the case for the public signicance of voluntary
associations and other socializing was left to broadly empirical, functionalist argument. In the 1680s William Payne propounded that, since
men were `made for mutual help, advantage and assistance to each
other . . . [they] therefore naturally fall into societies . . . [for] their
own private and the public good'. For John Houghton sociable gatherings at coffee-houses serve to `improve arts, merchandise and all other
knowledge'. The Spectator stressed the function of clubs as agencies of
improvement and civility. Drawing on earlier gild rhetoric, various
commentators argued for the role of societies in integrating disparate
groups, thereby promoting union and harmony. Typical of this
approach, Peter Collinson saw the new philosophical society at
Philadelphia as `a means of uniting ingenious men of all societies
together and a mutual harmony be got which will be daily producing
acts of love and friendship . . .'. Similar ideas were echoed in association rules and literature, as clubs and societies sought to dene their
own role in British society. 75
To complete the circle, the centrality of associations in social and
cultural life was accentuated by contemporary perceptions of the
incapacity of the state in many areas after 1688. The decline of
government intervention and effectiveness led to growing recognition
that voluntarism provided an alternative mechanism for dealing with
public issues and problems. When Dr Bray failed to get Parliament or
the Crown to establish `public and settled provision' for the Anglican
Church in Maryland, he moved quickly `to form a voluntary society
both to carry on the service already begun for the plantations and to
propagate Christian Knowledge, as well at home and abroad'. Under
74

J. Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975),

353; L. Klein, `Liberty, Manners and Politeness in Early 18th-Century England', HJ, 32
(1989), 586603; M. M. Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benets: Bernard Mandeville's Social and
Political Thought (Cambridge, 1985), 3740; for Benjamin Franklin meeting Mandeville at his
alehouse club: Labaree et al. (eds.), Franklin Autobiography, 97. D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of
Improvement (Pullman, Wash., 1969), 401, 48 ff.
75 W. Payne, Learning and Knowledge Recommended . . . (London, 1682), 2; for a similar stress
see J. Williams, A Sermon Preached at the Northamptonshire Feast (London, 1684), 1; J. Houghton,
Husbandry and Trade Improv'd (London, 1727 edn.), iii. 132; Bloom and Bloom, Addison's Sociable
Animal, 13 ff.; Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Vol. III, New York Historical Soc.
Collections, 52 (1919), 69; see below, p. 195.

5.11.99 15:52 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

179

George II the SPCK took the initiative in lobbying Parliament against

the gin-trade and on other issues. During the last decades of the
century there was a consensus that the surging tide of social problems
was best repulsed not by the state but by philanthropic and social
control associations and the like. Writers claimed that voluntary action
was superior in principle to state intervention: for, as one noted, `such
. . . is the repugnance of our free country to a rigid system of police',
that the protection of property and the suppression of immorality is
frequently `undertaken by local voluntary associations'. On the other
hand, societies failed to win all of the argument: throughout the
period a signicant group of critics questioned their intrusion into
the proper realm of the state. 76
It was not just the weakness of central government that enlarged
the role of voluntary activity. English boroughs during the later Stuart
and early Georgian era experienced a serious decline in traditional
municipal government, as civic elites were riven by party factionalism.
Council meetings became fewer and minutes of business less detailed.
Instead, power was dispersed and devolved: in some towns to private
clubs of grandees closeted at inns and taverns; in other places to
parish vestries; more often to quasi-administrative bodies like
improvement commissions, seconded by a plethora of voluntary
bodies, such as medical, philanthropic, educational, prosecution, and
other societies. Virtually all of these bodies had the advantage of being
exempt from the conformist shackles on membership imposed on
municipal bodies by the Test and Corporation Acts. In county administration too, voluntary associations started to make an impact. During
the 1750s, when the landed classes sought to suppress the custom of
servant vails or tips, collective decisions in the Midlands were taken at
meetings of inrmary and music societies. Vexed by the problems of
rural distress and soaring poor rates, landed gentry from the 1770s
sought to use agricultural and improvement societies to set up spinning
schools and houses of industry to alleviate the situation. 77
The rather ambiguous public position which clubs and societies
came to occupy in the eighteenth century, with strong participation by
76

Publick Spirit Illustrated in the Life and Designs of the Reverend Thomas Bray . . . (London,
1746), 1819; P. Clark, `The ``Mother Gin'' Controversy in the Early 18th Century', TRHS,
5th series, 38 (1988), 747; C. G. Brown, `Religion and the Development of an Urban
Society: Glasgow, 17801914' (unpublished Ph.D.thesis, University of Glasgow, 1981), 243;
for critics of voluntary associations see below, p. 467.
77
J. Innes and N. Rogers, `Politics and Government, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge
Urban History; Langford, Public Life, 757; Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 11 Aug., 22 Sept., 29 Sept.
1766; Lincs. RO, Dixon 7/6/2,3.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

180

Engines of Growth

the elite classes but without developed philosophical justication or

ofcial recognition, was not without its difculties. If there was
general support for societies, it was hardly secure. Not only did
societies assuming public administrative functions suffer an undercurrent of hostility, but the absence of ofcial recognition meant that
they received minimal ofcial funding as compared to continental
bodies. The courts often failed to protect societies from the mismanagement and fraudulent conduct of their ofcers. 78 As we shall
see, these problems affected the stability, achievement, and effectiveness of societies, but without question the more relaxed political
regime from the late seventeenth century on was a vital factor in
the proliferation of associations (and other forms of public sociability).
So was the related growth of party tension.

viii
Party conict between Whigs and Tories severely disrupted national
and civic government in the long eighteenth century and created a
need for a neutral arena: territory where political and social contact
between landed and elite families could be maintained, and where
those necessary functions of provincial society (choosing marriage
partners, enlarging patronage networks, dealing with local disputes)
might be carried on without risk of political acrimony. Up to a point,
the new repertoire of Augustan sociability provided that political oasis,
as race-meetings, plays, and assemblies brought together gentlefolk of
different political persuasions. In practice, however, open sociable
events were difcult to police. In 1737 Mrs Granville complained of
London being `full of discord; we cannot agree even in our diversions'. Party tension in the provinces was equally divisive, and after a
riot on the race-course at Licheld in 1747 Whigs and Tories mounted
separate meetings for the next six years. Political conict during the
American war invaded the theatre at Drury Lane with `a spirit of party
. . . with factions and with patriots'. 79 Voluntary associations usually
afforded a more controlled environment. Some did this by recruiting
from only one party, most obviously the political clubs and some of
78

See below, pp. 243, 368.

J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 16751725 (Oxford, 1967), ch. 5;
W. Speck, Tory and Whig: The Struggle in the Constituencies, 170115 (London, 1970), esp. ch. 8;
N. Rogers, Whigs and Cities (Oxford, 1989); Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 279, 2801;
Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence; First Series, i. 596; St James Chronicle, 268 Dec.
1780.
79

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

181

the provincial social clubs, but the great majority recruited from across
the political spectrum. Here they sometimes sought to prevent disputes informally; a small club at Melksham in Wiltshire, for instance,
`had very little talk of public matters which indeed is purposely
avoided'. Others had explicit rules against political discussion.80 Rules
and regulations were underlined by the general rhetoric of club union
and tolerance, and by specic arguments for the political ecumenicalism of societies.
During the Exclusion Crisis under Charles II it was claimed that
county feast societies had reduced party tensions, while a preacher to a
county society in 1727 proclaimed that such bodies `tend to the
abolition of party'. And up to a point that was true. Erasmus
Mumford mocked White's club in 1750, where `all party quarrels being
laid aside, all state questions dropped, Whigs and Tories, placemen
and patriots, courtiers and countrymen', were all unitedby a shared
addiction to gaming. Benjamin Franklin was more serious when he
noted that `the Royal Society is of all parties, but party is entirely out
of the question in all our proceedings'. Likewise, the book club at
Tiverton was said to be very harmonious, despite having members
from every party and sect. The same effect crossed the Atlantic. The
poet laureate of the Homony Club at Annapolis, the loyalist William
Eddis, avowed:
While faction and party madly prevail,
Infecting each rank and degree,
No system of state shall our councils assail,
Our hearts all unbias'd and free.81

The sound of politics was not so much excluded from these societies
as admitted with the volume control turned down. This did not always
work perfectly, since intense bouts of party conict could rock even
the most stable societies, leading on occasion to their dissolution; but
80

J. A. Neale, Charters and Records of the Neales of Berkeley, Yate and Corshaw (Warrington,
1907), 205; e.g., F. W. M. Draper, `Rules for the ``Esquire Youths'', 166263', Trans. of the
London and Middlesex Arch. Soc., ns, 11 (19514), 244; J. Wickham Legg, English Church Life
from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement (London, 1914), 310; J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes
of the 18th Century (London, 181215), vi. 30; see also p. 382.
81
See p. 285; T. Bisse, Society Recommended: A Sermon Preached before the Society of the Natives of
Herefordshire (London, 1728), 28; E. Mumford, A Letter to the Club at White's (London, 1750),
45; V. W. Crane, `The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty', WMQ, 3rd
series, 23 (1966), 211; M. Dunsford, Historical Memoirs of the Town and Parish of Tiverton (Exeter,
1790), 59 n.; G.H. Williams, `William Eddis: What the Sources Say', Maryland Historical
Magazine, 60 (1965), 125.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

182

Engines of Growth

in general voluntary societies provided an escape from the worst

friction of party politics, something which formally constituted public
bodies like corporations found almost impossible to achieve.
Party conict in this period was often fuelled by religious division,
and here too voluntary associations might offer a meeting ground for
different denominational views. One foreign visitor to London in the
1760s commented that, `in learned or political societies, in clubs and at
public assemblies religion is no way considered: the same bench, the
same row of chairs often unites ve or six different sects'. At one
Cork debating society half the trustees were Catholic and the rest
Protestant. Some clubs and societies forbade anything tending to
religious controversy, but most were more relaxed about allowing an
exchange of religious ideas; thus, the Rambling Club of Ringers, where
Our talk ran more upon religion,
And each spoke freely his opinion,
Some was for this and some for that,
Others for I know not what.

Religious pluralism reected not only the introduction of religious

toleration in 1689, but also the spread of latitudinarian Anglicanism
and the fragmentation of Dissent. However, religious openness was
far from complete: some societies specically excluded Catholics and
Jews. And with the religious revival of the later eighteenth century,
churches increasingly organized their own networks of religious and
charitable bodies to compete with each other and with denominationally open or mixed societies. 82

ix
This takes us to a nal issue. Up to now, our lengthy analysis of the
general forces behind the growth of British voluntary associations has
emphasized both demand and supply factors and the decline of the
state in the domestic arena. However, the growing ascendancy of
clubs and societies in British public life must also be addressed in
terms of their competitive success over other forms of public
sociability.
The slow but steady decline of traditional mechanisms of social
82

Grosley, Tour, ii. 27; Hibernian Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1772; Maryland Historical Soc., MS 767,
p. 5; Guildhall, MS 254, p. 36; for societies excluding Catholics and Jews see pp. 330, 377; see
above, pp. 96, 104 ff.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

183

interaction in the seventeenth century accelerated during the

Augustan period, as older forms, particularly those identied with
the countryside, underwent sustained attack as unfashionable and
passe. Rural society was not only seen as boring, backward, and dirty,
but as populated by crypto-Jacobites pursuing old-fashioned sports.
The Spectator led the way, with its oblique attack on the Tory squire Sir
Roger de Coverley and his passion for hunting, and within a generation the sport was denounced as potentially degrading for a gentleman; those too fond of the chase were liable to be contaminated by
coarse behaviour which `destroys that politeness so necessary in the
society of ladies'. Likewise, bull-baiting and cock-ghts were increasingly condemned as barbarous. Other traditional forms of sociable
activity also suffered criticism. The Fermanaghs of Claydon complained noisily about Christmas and the Whitsun wakes, when local
tenants and villagers came to the great house to be entertained or
rewarded. At her villa near London Mrs Montagu welcomed local
chimney-sweeps on Mayday, according to custom, but kept them in
the garden, while she and her smart company breakfasted comfortably
indoors and enjoyed `the grand spectacle exhibited without'. 83
One problem with the countryside was that it was difcult to
organize newer forms of fashionable sociability there. Apart from
churches, villages had few public facilities (inns or coffee-houses)
for smart social gatherings. When the Leicestershire cleric William
Hanbury tried to organize a music festival at his village of Church
Langton after 1759, the performances were given in the church, the
Duke of Devonshire lodged with a tradesman, and some local gentry
failed to turn up; in 1762 he had to move the event to better-equipped
Leicester. Rural socialites also had to contend with poor byroads,
darkness, robbers, and bad weather. Mrs Montague describes a party
setting off for a country entertainment in ne style, with our `ball airs
and dancing shoes'; but, faced with a ooded stream and never
hearing `of any balls in the Elysian elds', they were forced to turn
back. Unhappily, staying at home meant relative isolation, though this
might vary according to gender, life-cycle, and location. In general,
women received fewer social visitors than men, but older women in
the upland areas of England may have enjoyed more sociable contact
83
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 17 Sept. 1790; Bloom and Bloom, Addison's Sociable
Animal, 34; Lord Chestereld's Letters to His Son and Others, ed. R. K. Root (London, 1929), 97;
Greig (ed.), Diaries of a Duchess, 15960; Devon RO, 346 M/F 24; Verney, Verney Letters, i.
290, 291; ii. 41; Bell's Weekly Messenger, 8 May 1796.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

184

Engines of Growth

with outsiders; in the American colonies, too, rural socializing ourished for much of our period. In many parts of England, however,
gentlewomen increasingly abhorred the social exclusion imposed by
the countryside, leading to a vicious circle of sociable decline in rural
society. The exodus of fashionable families to town left those `tolerably qualied for society . . . often rare and widely scattered in the
country'. 84 Conrming all this, country socializing was heavily
satirized in prints and drawings.
Elite socializing outside town tended to be concentrated into short
bursts of activity, such as hunting, balls, and dinner parties during the
summer months, as the greater gentry and their hangers-on went on a
tour of country houses. Great explosions of old-style hospitality and
festivity still occurred when landed scions reached the age of majority,
as in 1770 when Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn celebrated the event at
Wynnstay with drums, bells, and cannon, and a roasted ox drawn on a
triumphal car with garlands and streamers, the occasion attended by
nearly 20,000 people from the area. In contrast, the fetes-champetres
which came into vogue during the 1770s were essentially versions of
London pleasure gardens transplanted, with their lights, masques, and
music, to the countryside. If country sports, such as hunting and
archery, survived, they were often now run on an associational basis
dressed up with fashionable, urbane accoutrements. 85
Needless to say, urban social patterns did not completely colonize
the countryside. Much traditional rural socializing, including harvest
feasts and other neighbourly events, survived well into the eighteenth
century, but such activity was now left mainly to farmers, craftsmen,
and labourers. Even among middle-rank villagers, the pattern was
increasingly tangled, with traditional activities often (by the late
eighteenth century) only one strand in their socializing, alongside visits
to races, plays, and clubs in local towns or villages. 86
Equally, traditional institutions for social interaction were in decline
in British towns. Earlier we noted the diminution of corporation
84
W. Hanbury, The History of the Rise and Progress of the Charitable Foundations at ChurchLangton (London, 1767), 54 ff., 66, 73, 87, 140; Johnson, Bluestocking Letters, 36; Clark,
`Tempo', 255; A. J. Vickery, `Women of the Local Elite in Lancashire, 1750c.1825' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1991), 6274, 288; Lady Ilchester and Lord
Stavordale (eds.), The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 17451826 (London, 1901), i. 124
and passim; Willis, Journal, 19; P. Thomson, English Country Life (London, 1942), 18.
85 Greig (ed.), Diaries of a Duchess, 1023; Wale, My Grandfather's Pocket-book, 181; Sport.
Mag., 9 (17967), 21719; see above, pp. 1235.
86
C. B. Estabrook, Urbane and Rustic England: Cultural Ties and Social Spheres in the Provinces
(Manchester, 1998); see p. 431.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

185

activity after the Glorious Revolution. Some town councils sought to

maintain their civic image and attract local landowners through
periodic celebrations and banquetsfor instance, at mayoral elections.
However, one's impression is that this kind of civic entertainment was
on the wane. John Palmer of Torrington complained of civic feasts not
being held there in the 1750s and 1760s; even when they were held, as
in 1769, the entertainment was so `very mean and pitiful, [the]
company left the hall where they dined for want of liquor'. In Bury
St Edmunds town feasts came to exclude all the trading part of the
town. In many places civic socializing migrated to private corporation
clubs held at inns and taverns. 87 Those other old centres of urban
socializing, the gilds, were in marked decay after 1700. At Bristol, for
instance, the bakers' company had 194 members in 1679 and thirtythree in 1728, the wiredrawers forty-four members in 1635 but only
seven in the 1750s. Not all individual gilds did so badly, and in a few
towns, such as Chester, gild activity remained quite important into the
late eighteenth century. Even so, where gilds survived, their wider
social function diminished. In London the great companies had
difculty in staging their feasts, due to mounting nancial problems;
in the case of the Haberdashers, cutbacks in entertainment `contributed to the weakening sense of identity of members with the company'.
Bristol's Merchant Venturers maintained their ball and supper for
members and wives up to the 1740s, but thereafter individual members
organized social events as part of the city's assembly season. 88
Other established centres for public socializing and discourse were
also of reduced signicance by the eighteenth century. County quarter
sessions played a declining role in Georgian provincial society (with
poor attendance by county grandees), as it lost administrative work to
petty sessions (though these failed to develop a sociable function):
only towards the end of the period did this trend start to be reversed.
Likewise, in Scotland very few gentry attended traditional kirk
sessions, quarter sessions, and militia meetings before the 1770s. Fairs
and markets were in general decay, slowly but progressively eclipsed
87

P. Borsay, ` ``All the World's a Stage'': Urban Ritual and Ceremony, 16601800', in Clark
(ed.), Transformation, 2302; G. M. Doe, `An Unofcial Municipal Diary, 17511797', Trans. of
the Devon Association, 69 (1937), 3479, 351; J. Fiske (ed.), The Oakes Diaries, Vol. I, Suffolk
Record Soc., 32 (1990), 380; C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, Vol. IV (Cambridge, 1852), 91.
88
Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 164 n., 166; M. J. Walker, `The Extent of the Guild
Control of Trades in England, c.16601820' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
Cambridge, 1985), ch. 4; I am indebted to Philip Knowles for information on Chester.
I. Archer, The History of the Haberdashers' Company (Chichester, 1991), 96 and passim.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

186

Engines of Growth

by the ascendancy of shops and wholesale merchants. At Newport on

the Isle of Wight, the twice-weekly markets continued to attract
farmers' daughters in a high style of beauty and elegance, but this
was exceptional, and most social activity at fairs concentrated on
popular entertainment. At Cambridge and Oxford the Commencement ceremonies, fashionable public events in the Stuart period, lost
some of their appeal in the early eighteenth century, as university
populations declined and as Oxford was contaminated by Jacobitism.
Oxford's Act was replaced by the Encaenia and Cambridge held no
Commencements between 1714 and 1730, though the ceremony may
have revived as a social attraction later in the period. 89
Traditional activity was increasingly tied to the cursus of new-style
sociability. Assize sessions became overshadowed by the constellation
of race-meetings, assemblies, concerts, music festivals, and associational meetings which were organized during assize week. The
Shropshire inrmary society met at the summer assizes in the grand
jury room immediately after the judges' charge to the jury, while the
Chelmsford orists' feast was always held on the rst commission day
of the court. Meetings of county magistrates came to be organized
through clubs and societies. 90
The church remained a vital centre of social interaction in both
town and countryside, signalled by the rebuilding or refurbishment of
many Anglican churches, the appearance of new dissenting chapels,
and the social standing of leading nonconformist ministers. Yet the
rise of new-style secular entertainments posed many challenges.
Among the better-off classes participation in public sociability increasingly eclipsed church attendance in quantitative, if not qualitative,
terms. Thus, the young Ireland Greene from Lancashire, visiting the
capital with her lawyer father in 1748, took part in 149 social engagements over seventy-seven days from February to May; of these only
twelve involved going to church, though the period included Easter.
Similarly, for the American loyalist Samuel Curwen, exiled to London,
89
N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 16791760 (London, 1984), 2615; D. Eastwood,
Governing Rural England (Oxford, 1994), chs. 34; J. Dwyer et al. (eds.), New Perspectives on the
Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1982), 215; Mitchell, `Urban Retailing',
26478; E. J. Climenson (ed.), Passages from the Diaries of Mrs. Philip Lybbe Powys . . . (London,
1899), 264; Johnson, Undergraduate, 281; L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (eds.), The History
of the University of Oxford, Vol. V (Oxford, 1986), 3505.
90
Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 1434; An Account of the Proceedings of the Society for
Establishing a Public Inrmary at Salop . . . (n.p., 1746); A. F. J. Brown, Essex People 17501900
(Chelmsford, 1972), 58; e.g. The Middlesex and Surrey Society, 17801910 (London, 1910), 12, 6.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

187

church attendance was a small fraction of his experience of public

socializing. In Scotland, one writer remarked that assemblies and balls
had taken the place of marriages and other rites of passage as social
occasions. Churches were well aware of the threat. Already in the later
Stuart period Anglicans and dissenters had sought to reinvigorate
church activity through the establishment of religious and charitable
societies; and the religious revival movement of George III's reign
aimed to reassert the social attraction of the urban church in a similar
way, sponsoring various types of public sociability as well as voluntary
associations. The redoubtable Hannah More's recipe for religious
success was a busy programme of tea parties, excursions, dinners,
and women's clubs, a model for successive generations of church
activists. 91
The world of Augustan sociability was highly competitive, not
merely between old and new forms of sociable interaction, but across
the spectrum of new-style activities as well. Mrs Delany in the early
1770s spoke of London being `full of entertainments. Besides the
constant plays, operas and oratorios, assemblies, there are concerts,
balls and masquerades.' In a single week during the season, Mary
Hamilton sighed, `there are ve balls running, each to begin after
great assemblies, Almack's besides'. The Morning Chronicle protested
that `there is nothing so scarce at this season of the year as Time.
Every moment of the night . . . is so occupied that ladies and gentlemen with the best intentions in the world have no leisure to attend to
any earthly thing.' By the 1790s London papers published weekly social
calendars, listing concerts, club and society meetings, assemblies, balls,
and routs, in order to help the well-to-do order their social lives. 92
Attendance at clubs and societies suffered constantly from alternative
diversions. At the Turk's Head Club, Reynolds and Goldsmith `have
got into such a round of pleasures that they have no time' to come to
meetings; Boswell turned up late after coming from a ball; and at least
two members resigned in order to join other clubs. Outside London
91
J. Walsh et al. (eds.), The Church of England, c. 1689c.1833 (Cambridge, 1993), 193203;
W. M. Jacob, Lay People and Religion in the Early 18th Century (Cambridge, 1996); also Clark and
Houston, `Culture and Leisure, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History;
R. Stewart-Brown, Isaac Greene, A Lancashire Lawyer of the 18th Century: With the Diary of Ireland
Greene (Liverpool, 1921), 3346; Selections from the Family Papers preserved at Caldwell: Part I
(Glasgow, 1854), 267; see above, p. 64 ff; R. B. Johnson (ed.), The Letters of Hannah More
(London, 1925), 16373.
92
Lady Llanover (ed.), The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany;
Second Series (London, 1862), i. 496; Anson and Anson, Mary Hamilton, 269; Morning
Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1791; Star, 21, 28 Mar. 1791, and passim.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

188

Engines of Growth

the pressures of fashionable social life were less acute, but in Dublin
we nd clashes between music societies and the playhouse. The
problem in provincial centres was that, while the number of activities
was fewer, the potential clientele was much smaller, so the whirligig of
socializing might seem almost as fast and exhausting. At Monmouth,
Mrs Boscawen was overwhelmed by `the public breakfasts of 400,
races, public dinners, balls at the town-hall; in short, divertimenti sans n
et sans cesse'. 93
Nevertheless, in spite of this high-pressure environment, clubs and
societies steadily consolidated their position at the expense of other
public sociability. How do we explain their success? To some extent it
stemmed from the difculty of organizing many of the new-style
sociable activities, which had to combine commercial success with
the requisite gentility and politeness. One recurrent problem related to
the number of participants. Too few people attending an assembly,
music festival, or horse-meeting spelt fashionable and nancial
disaster; but it was equally difcult to control success. Smart assemblies
or routs were notorious for their crowds and suffocating heat
heightened by the latest extravagance in lighting. To be able to accommodate guests was thought dishonourable: `if they are not squeezed to
death it is a proof [the hostess] is not in fashion.' Dancing on such
occasions tended to be cramped, clumsy, and bad tempered. After
dancing with Lord Petre at one assembly, Sarah Lennox raged `he is a
nasty toad . . . [and I] longed to spit in his face'. Fanny Burney was
scarcely able to move, her feet painful and fatigued to death, after a
night dancing at a ball. 94
With heavy drinking an important part of the proceedings, at least
among the men, there was always a risk of disorder. At a Suffolk
assembly one inebriated gentleman swore so much that his partner
walked off and left him; in Dublin another drunkard attacked the
waiters during an assembly; and at a Philadelphia ball two women
swapped insults and the `scene degenerated into sticuffs'. Theatrical
performances, whether in London or the provinces, were liable to
include rioting among the audience. A public breakfast in Dublin was
pillaged by a `rude mob' of genteel participants, who left food, silver
93
G. B. Hill (ed.), Boswell's Life of Johnson (Oxford, 193440), i. 4789; ii. 274; Ryskamp and
Pottle (eds.), Boswell: Ominous Years, 94; The Political Manager (Dublin, 1749); AspinallOglander, Admiral's Widow, 29.
94
The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke (repr. Bath, 1970), i. 237; Ilchester and
Stavordale (eds.), Life of Lady Lennock, i. 123; L. E. Troide (ed.), The Early Journals and Letters
of Fanny Burney, Vol. I (Oxford, 1988), 11011.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

189

coffee-pots, and teapots strewn around.95 The difculty was to keep

out the socially undesirable, whilst giving access to rising social
groups. Selectivity was made difcult, as noted earlier, by the growing
uidity of social styles and the prosperity of the middling and lesser
orders, enabling them to buy tickets and dress well. Coffee-houses and
other drinking places were wide open to this social invasion, but lesspublic social arenas were equally affected. Mrs Delany recorded the
`bustle and odd mixture of company . . . from the highest to the
lowest' at one Irish social event. The organizers of assemblies at
London's Freemasons' Hall warned subscribers to be sure of the social
standing of their guests, lest exception be taken and the assembly
publicly censured. Outdoors, the situation was even more difcult to
regulate. Attempts to exclude the poorer classes from St James's Park
in London and other promenades failed dismally, and the hoi polloi
broke into country balls and smart public walks. 96 Crowds of spectators at cricket matches, horse-races, and archery contests were large
(often several thousand strong) and socially mixed. Dublin races were
marred by riots and drunkenness. Vauxhall gardens tried to make its
clientele more select by charging higher admission prices, but this
failed to keep out afuent arrivistes.97
One response to these problems involved temporal or spatial
segregation. In the capital's royal parks gentlefolk resorted there mainly
on weekdays, leaving the terrain to the commoner sort on Sundays and
holidays. From the early decades of the eighteenth century the
organizers of race-meetings erected grandstands for the well-to-do,
and during the Blackheath archery tournaments at the end of the period
marquees were reserved for the fashionable classes. By the 1790s it was
said of Bath that `the great vulgar and the little vulgar . . . have begun
95
Ilchester and Stavordale (eds.), Life of Lady Lennock, 124; Freeman's Journal, 1316 Apr.
1771; Moreau de St Mery's American Journey, ed. K. Roberts and A. Roberts (New York, 1947),
333; J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London, 1997), 5489; M. Baer, Theatre and
Disorder in Late Georgian London (Oxford, 1992), 5764; Dublin Mercury, 1013 Mar. 1770;
Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence; First Series, iii. 1819; Dublin Mercury, 225
Apr. 1769.
96
BL, Additional MS 27,951, fos. 4040v; J. L. Clifford (ed.), Dr Campbell's Diary of a Visit
to England in 1775 (Cambridge, 1947), 58; Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence; First
Series, iii. 1819; FMH, Historical Correspondence, 10/A/35; Verney, Verney Letters, i. 51;
Exeter Flying Post, 10 June 1790; J. Throsby, The History and Antiquities of the Antient Town of
Leicester (Leicester, 1791), 3812.
97
J. Sawyer, `Some Extracts from the Journal and Correspondence of Mr John Burgess
. . .', Sussex Archaeological Collections, 40 (1896), 157; J. Macky, A Journey Through England
(London, 1724), i. 1345; Sport. Mag., 2 (1793), 701, 102; Dublin Gazette, 1721 Sept. 1745;
St James Chronicle, 911 May 1769.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

190

Engines of Growth

each to occupy a distinct quarter of amusement', adding that `it is well

that they are separated by place, since modern manners have left
hardly any other mark of distinction'.98 Ultimately, voluntary associations provided the most effective form of segregation, through
membership controls, their growing use of separate club rooms, and
the timing of their meetings.
A major strength of most forms of fashionable sociability was that
they were open to women. Women comprised a substantial portion of
the audience at music concerts and set the polite tone. A Swiss
observer commented that women at concerts `were highly pleased'
with gaining respect through their attendance, while the men were
astonished to be in a place where they could neither game nor drink.
Assemblies and routs also brought together large contingents of
women, particularly the young and unmarried, eagerly vying for social
attention. At Dublin's Rutland Square assemblies during the 1790s the
numbers of male and female subscribers were roughly equal, but
nearly twice as many women as men attended. Women were also
active in that elementary form of polite socializing, visiting other
households, to expand their network of social contacts. Lady Pomfret
on her Midlands estate was lucky to receive two or three fashionable
visits a week; but in London she went on an orgy of visiting from her
Upper Brook Street house: in May 1747 she made or received nearly
ninety visits. Lady Mary Coke did even better, making more than a
hundred visits over three days in May 1767. The diary of young
Gertrude Savile from Nottinghamshire, aficted by `my face', classied her days according to her level of contentment (happy, not
unhappy, not happy, not miserable, unhappy, and so on), and she
seems to have enjoyed the greatest happiness when she was out
socializing in London and Bristol. 99
New-style urban socializing presented women from the better-off
classes with signicant occasions for enhancing their social visibility
and recognition. As one Bath versier proclaimed:
No more exist those opposites to life,
A social husband, and domestic wife.

98
Quarrell and Mare (eds.), London in 1710, 12; Notts. RO, DD E3/3; Sport. Mag., 3 (17934),
48; 2 (1793), 701; Morning Chronicle, 17 Jan. 1791.
99
Muralt, Letters, 33; An Accurate List . . . for the Annual Assemblies at the Public Rooms,
Rutland Square (Dublin, 1792); Leics. RO, DG 7 D2/1, fos. 116 ff.; Letters of Lady Coke, i.
2312; Notts. RO, DD SR212/10/12; 11.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

191

Yet in a world where gender stereotyping remained largely unchanged

into the Victorian era, these advances by women out of the home and
into the arena of public sociability, together with their growing
advocacy of more rened manners, may have been disturbing for
many men. To some extent, the issue was addressed spatially. Women
at concerts might be conned to a gallery; at routs and assemblies they
often stood near the entrance, and later, when the men were boozing
and shouting themselves into their cups, they sat apart playing
cards. 100 Another kind of segregation took the form of men staying
away in droves from mixed events and opting instead for maledominated venues: public drinking houses and clubs and societies.
Throughout our period the vast majority of clubs and societies were
exclusively masculine bodies. It is arguable that voluntary associations
developed as an alternative forum to mixed or female-dominated
sociable events; that at semi-private club meetings men could be
lads and engage in traditional drunken camaraderie, free from the
presence of women. Nevertheless, as we shall discover, gender
segregation was only part of the explanation for the low level of
female participation in British societies. Certainly, clubs and societies
had further attractions for men over other kinds of public sociability,
among the most important being the diverse rules and informal
sanctions against disruptive and disorderly participants. In consequence, voluntary associations shared many of the attractions of
other types of new-style urban sociability, but without the crowds,
irregularity, and female presence characteristic of many of them. At
the end of our period, the organizational attraction of the voluntary
association was further increased by the advent of public subscription
societies and private closed clubs. 101
As voluntary associations staked out their importance in national
society, they annexed various features both of old-style socializing
and of new-fangled Augustan sociability. The early adoption by
societies of gild-type annual feasts and other ceremony was followed
and matched by the use of concerts and music festivals to raise
charitable funds and attract publicity. During the eighteenth century
all sorts of societies sponsored plays and even had them rewritten to
praise their activities. The process of appropriation did not stop
100
Epistle To Mrs. M*ll*r . . . (Bath, 1776), 6; G. J. Barker-Beneld, The Culture of Sensibility:
Sex and Society in 18th-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992); NNRO, MS 434, fos. 1656; Grosley,
Tour, ii. 18; C. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral's Wife (London, 1940), 1623.
101
See below, chs. 67.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

192

Engines of Growth

there; societies increasingly organized assemblies and various sports.

By the end of the eighteenth century several of the principal forms
of Georgian sociabilitypleasure gardens, promenades, assemblies,
masquerades, the theatrewere in retreat as fashionable activities.
This reected wider economic and other changes in urban society, but
it was also a result of the growing hostility, headed by the religious
revival movement, to the perceived frothiness of much sociability, in
contrast to the high seriousness of many voluntary societies.
Admittedly, developments in public socializing must be seen in
context. Throughout the eighteenth century, as in the preceding
period, the greatest volume of social contactwith kin, friends,
neighbours, and strangersoccurred in the private space of the
home. The social function of the household did not remain static,
however, and several of the new kinds of public sociability penetrated
the domestic world. Routs frequently brought a mob of strangers into
the house; formal visitors became such a strain on the home that Mrs
Delany claimed she went to the assembly rooms `for privacy'to
avoid them. The endless dinner parties drove even that inveterate
socialite Mrs Thrale to despair: `here we have dined 30, 40 people
every day for three weeks together, 'tis a ruin'. A correspondent to the
Dublin Mercury made the point more bluntly, protesting that `my house
is as public as any tavern in town', since his wife `has either a drum
[a private assembly], a card party or a rout' there almost every
evening. 102
In response to these overlapping links with public socializing,
family life may have developed greater temporal and gender specialization; dinner, for instance, having a rough balance of the sexes, but
tea more females and supper too (supper outside the home was largely
a male affair). Certainly, it would be simplistic to see domestic socializing, particularly in the urban context, as a female ghetto. One
Edinburgh lady observed that many respectable women went out
socializing in the evenings because there was `little amusement' at
home with their husbands out. 103 In sum, domestic sociability was
part of an intricate tessellation of social activity, complementing the
growing ascendancy of voluntary associations in the public arena.

102
Llanover (ed.), Autobiography and Correspondence; First Series, iii. 464; Balderston (ed.),
Thraliana, ii. 932; Dublin Mercury, 1315 Apr. 1769.
103
Vickery, `Women', 318; Stewart-Brown, Isaac Greene, 3346; Selections from Family Papers
at Caldwell, 272.

5.11.99 15:53 05 Chapter 0394

Engines of Growth

193

xi
This long chapter has looked at the long-term, largely external forces,
heavily linked to urbanization, which powered the growth of public
sociability in general, and voluntary associations in particular. Though
many of these forces had a wider national signicance, it has become
evident, here and in preceding chapters, how their impact and role
varied regionally and locally, weaving a distinctive patchwork-quilt
pattern of voluntary associations on the ground. This was shaped
by economic and social differentiation, information ows, and
competition with other forms of sociability. Nevertheless, such
external factors were only part of the story. The success of British
clubs and societies owed much to their special institutional features;
not just their masculinity, but also their admission strategies and
regulations, their promotional work, and their administrative structures. The next two chapters focus on this internal world of British
clubs and societies.

5.11.99 15:54 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

Joseph Farmer, merchant and member of a Liverpool club in George

III's reign, had `little eyes, one bigger than the other, long nose, thin
lantern jaws, bare upper lips, mouth from ear to ear resembling a
shark's . . . his visage long and narrow'. Most of his colleagues were
little better, one distinguished by a `hottentot complexion', others
`inexpressibly odd and ugly' or with `no upper teeth'; many seem to
have had dental problems. Such were the members of the eponymous
Ugly Face Club, for which the entrance qualication was to be a
bachelor with `something odd, remarkable, droll, or out of the way
in his z'. Apart from this facial eccentricity, however, the membership was fairly typical of many eighteenth-century societies. The club
brought together young unmarried men and older veterans, locals and
outsiders, and representatives of a variety of respectable occupationsmerchants and sea-captains, esquires, doctors, clergy, lawyers,
and architectsall rubbing shoulders at the Exchange Coffee-house
near the harbour. 1
We cannot interrogate these and other club members as to why they
joined. No doubt the reasons were many and varied, reecting the
general determinants discussed in previous chapters, blended by individual personalities and predilections: whether a desire for recognition, to enjoy male fellowship and heavy drinking, to make friends and
have something to do, to escape from an uncongenial home or work
environment, or to pick up business contacts, to insure against a rainy
day, acquire new skills and manners, take part in politics, music, and
sporting activity, or support some kind of public improvement. The
lugubrious Dr Johnson told how he resorted to the Ivy Lane club, `and
with a disposition to please and be pleased would pass those hours in a
free and unrestrained interchange of sentiments, which otherwise had
been spent at home in painful reection'. Probably almost every club
member would give a different explanation. The president of a
Scottish literary society contended that all the reasons for joining
1

E. Howell (ed.), The Ugly Face Clubb Leverpoole (Liverpool, 1912), esp. 26, 32 ff.

5.11.99 15:54 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

195

could be reduced to three kinds, `a love of fame, a view of serving

some selsh end, or a desire of doing some good', but even he
admitted there may be `some degree of difculty to investigate which
of them inuenced us'.2
We will return to this issue later in the chapter, but certainly the
diversity of motivation, combined with the many permutations of
occupation, age, residence, and marital status among members, was
one of the distinctive features of British associational life. In the
process, it underlined the public arguments for the value of voluntary
associations, as places where diversity was transformed into harmony
and friendship. The same sentiments were echoed in much of the
rhetoric of society sermons, tracts, and constitutions. Such societies,
one preacher declared to the assembled members, were a `means of
conciliating friendship among persons that must, otherwise, have
remained at perpetual distance'. Other associations proclaimed that
they were not `conned to the views and interests of particular
persons'. Having joined, members belonged to a world `where all
are equal and on the same level [and] no member shall assume a
superiority over another', for freedom to discuss `tends to banish this
narrow and unsocial spirit out of the world [and] must be allowed
greatly benecial'. Even rivalry and ambition could be given `full
scope, full force', so as to be productive. 3 Almost always diversity
was viewed within the framework of fellowship and unity. This can be
seen from the names adopted by a growing number of English
masonic lodges from the 1760s. Of the rhetorical titlesthe largest
categorythe most common was Union or Unity, followed by
Friendship and Harmony, with Concord and Peace further behind.
A few more `progressive' names occurred before 1800, incorporating
words such as Industry or Liberty, and patriotic titles also increased
from the 1780s, but the rhetoric for most societies remained traditional until the end of the period. 4
This concern for diversity, equality, and unity was not only inspired
by ideological views of the integrating function of public sociability in
2

S. Johnson, Diaries, Prayers and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam et al. (New Haven, 1958), 42;
D. McElroy, `The Literary Clubs and Societies of 18th Century Scotland' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1952), 655.
3
J. Price, The Advantages of Unity considered . . . (Bristol, 1748), 3, 8; For the more effectual
security of this Town . . . (Manchester, 1772); Devon RO, 337B/76/98; The Cause of Liberty and
Free Enquiry Asserted . . . (London, 1750), 15; McElroy, `Literary Clubs', 660.
4
Based on the names of warranted Modern and Ancient lodges 17661800 in J. Lane,
Masonic Records, 17171894 (London, 1895), 145255.

5.11.99 15:54 06 Chapter 0394

196

Membership

general, and clubs especially. It also derived from an awareness that for
a voluntary association to thrive in the highly competitive cultural
environment of Georgian towns and cities, it needed to attract new
membersbottoms on seatsfrom rising social groups, from outsiders and migrants, and from young people, all with disparate backgrounds and motivations. The problem was how to transmute
diversity into an acceptable level of harmony and union. The danger
was that mixed aims, conjoined with social accessibility, might lead to
confusion and disorder, as in other forms of Augustan public socializing. If clubs and societies were to achieve and maintain a reputation
for order and diversity, they had to ensure a controlled context for
social interaction and co-operation: this was a constant preoccupation.

i
One obvious solution was to regulate the size of the membership, and
the great majority of associations, both formal and informal, had a
restriction of this kind. Generally speaking, the less formal the society,
the smaller the size of its membership. As a young man, Dudley
Ryder, the future attorney-general, admired a small London club of
nine lawyers which debated cases and issues on a weekly basis, but had
to admit that its size meant that he was unlikely to gain admission.
Joseph Farington and his artistic friends meeting at the London tavern
agreed to form a dining club with a maximum of nine or twelve
members and no visitors. One person attending a small literary club
complained that at one meeting `we had fteen, much too numerous
to be pleasant'. In more formal societies the original membership
ceiling was often about twenty. 5 The number normally reected an
expectation of likely demand, though for benet societies actuarial
concerns were a factor, and in other cases the membership gure
might be politically symbolic. Numerous societies were established in
London and the provinces with forty-ve members to celebrate John
Wilkes's notorious forty-fth issue of the North Briton, which triggered
his prosecution and transmogrication into a national radical hero. In
1790 Shefeld's Rodney Club limited its numbers to that of the age of
the naval victor Admiral Rodney, born in 1719. In general, however,
5
W. Matthews (ed.), Diary of Dudley Ryder, 171516 (London, 1939), 3634; K. Garlick et al.
(eds.), The Diary of Joseph Farington (London, 197884), iii. 1016; Bodl., MS English Letters
c 15, fo. 64; M. E. G. Duff, The Club, 17641905 (London, 1905), 4; NLW, MS 8913 (Old Social
Club, Aberystwyth).

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

197

management was the overriding concern; as Jonas Hanway noted, it

was best to avoid the `indiscriminate reception of a multitude', in
order to put the company at ease.6
When societies proved successful, strong pressure came to expand
the membership and earlier limits were raised or forgotten. The
Rambling Club of Ringers started with seven and ended with fortytwo members; the October Club had twenty members at its beginning,
but the number rose to over 160 later. Dr Johnson's club was launched
at the Turk's Head in the early 1760s with nine or ten members, and
increased to twelve in 1768 and thirty in 1777. The number of dining
members of the Dolphin Club at Bristol rose sevenfold over the
second half of the century. Fashionable bodies like the Society of
Arts, which had only a handful of members in 1755, gained several
thousand within a few years. Acquiring a reputation for smartness
towards the end of the period, the Society of Antiquaries saw its
fellowship limit raised from 100 in 1720, to 180 in 1755, and to 376
members by 1784, the gure soaring to over 800 at the start of the
nineteenth century. 7
Large societies became increasingly common in the late eighteenth
century, a growing number having no ofcial ceiling. Thus the Society
for the Relief of Families of Seamen (1793) had over 4,000 subscribers,
and the Society for the Suppression of Vice attracted 1,200 before
1804. This escalation in size was not limited to London-based societies.
The Dublin United Charitable Society for the Relief of Indigent
Room-keepers had nearly 1,500 members by 1796, while the Royal
Company of Archers in Scotland recorded a thousand members in the
same decade. 8 The development reects both a changing attitude
towards social fashionability, with less identication of selectivity
6
J. Brewer, `The Number 45: A Wilkite Political Symbol', in S. Baxter (ed.), England's Rise
to Greatness, 16601763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), 350 ff.; Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 18
Aug. 1790; J. Hanway, Thoughts on the Use and Advantages of Music, and other amusements (London,
1765), 967.
7
Guildhall, MS 254, p. 52; J. Bayliss, `The October Club, 17101714: A Study in Political
Organization' (unpublished M.Litt. thesis, University of Bristol, 1973), 179, 183; G. B. Hill
(ed.), Boswell's Life of Johnson (Oxford, 193440), i. 4778, 479; iii. 106; Bodl., J. Johnson
Collection, Charitable Societies, Box 3 (Dolphin Soc.); D. Hudson and K. W. Luckhurst, The
Royal Society of Arts (London, 1954), 57, 11; J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries
(Oxford, 1956), 69, 116, 187, 201.
8
A List of Subscribers to the United Society, for the relief of Widows and Children of Seamen . . .
(London, 1794), 355; M. J. D. Roberts, `The Society for the Suppression of Vice and its
Early Critics, 18021812', HJ, 26 (1983), 163; R. Graves, A Sermon in aid of the United Charitable
Society for the Relief of Indigent Room-keepers (Dublin, 1796), 34; E. Hargrove, Anecdotes of Archery
(York, 1792), 68.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

198

Membership

with small numbers, and also changing organizational arrangements in

societies. By the 1790s many of these large societies were public
subscription associations. Here a substantial portion of the members
resided in the provinces and had only limited occasions to meet
together, while management was vested in a powerful oligarchic
committee structure. In some ways this was the logical solution to
the contradiction of accessibility and good order in societies.

ii
While British voluntary associations embraced many different social
groups, there was, as we know, one obvious exception: women. For
most of our period women can be found in only a tiny minority of
associations, including mixed bodies like social, music, and debating
societies, and separate bodies like female benet or box clubs. In
18034 only 5 per cent of English benet societies were listed as
female clubs. 9
Even where women were admitted on a signicant scale as
members, power usually rested with men. This can be illustrated
from the records of one of the best-known mixed social clubs, the
so-called Female or Coterie Society established in London about 1770.
The club was kept rst in a tavern but soon moved to Almack's
Rooms and, nally, in 1775 purchased Sir George Colebrook's house
in Arlington Street; the club closed in December 1777. A glittering
array of social activities was offered to members, including dinners,
suppers, concerts, and balls. The premises in Arlington Street were
splendidly furnished, with separate dining, parlour and card rooms,
together with bed-chambers and a grand entrance lobby. Management
was in the hands of the contractor, Robert Sutton, and later James
Cullen. A number of fashionable ladies were involved in the club's
establishment and remained on the committee. In February 1776, for
instance, a meeting of managers included Lady Melbourne, Mrs
Fitzroy, Miss Lloyd, and Lady Pembroke, together with Earls
Egremont and Sefton, the Marquis of Lothian, and Lords Bentinck
and Melbourne. The subscription list in 1775 gave the woman's name
rst when married couples gured. Although some functions, such as
supper, were male-dominated, attendance at club events was fairly well
balanced, with 269 women and 295 men. But in reality men had the
upper hand in running the club. There were only fty-three female
9

See below, p. 364.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

199

subscribers in 1775 compared to 178 men. Ladies balloted for men

and vice versa, but if a married woman were elected, her husband
became a member automatically; this was not the case when men were
elected. Because of the lack of female standing at law, when the club
was reorganized in 1775 the agreement with Cullen, the contractor,
was made by Lord Melbourne and other male managers. The same
men bore the brunt of Cullen's protracted litigation against the club
after its closure. 10
Music and debating societies coped with female membership in
other ways. Northern singing societies seem to have admitted women
as full members, perhaps due to their links with chapel congregations
and their greater recognition of female status; but women formed only
a small minority of members. Elsewhere, they occupied mostly a
secondary position. At the well-known Castle tavern music society
in the capital, male members had to obtain concert tickets for ladies,
who were conned to the gallery and box; men were forbidden to
remain in the gallery or talk with ladies in the box during performances. At Norwich's Maidshead musical society women sat separately in a gallery. In America, 250 women regularly attended concerts
of Charleston's St Cecila Society, and, according to one report, were a
model of `taciturnity during the performances'. This was not always
so. In Calcutta the mixed Harmonic Society was allegedly disturbed by
the `rattling chatter and noise' of the female participants, and the men
seceded to form their own Catch Club, which was subsequently
lampooned by the women as the `He Harmonic Society'. 11
Women are not referred to as attending early debating club meetings, but by George III's reign they start to appear, at rst, it would
seem, on sufferance. At Birmingham's Robin Hood Society women
were initially allowed in just `to hear the debates', being admitted gratis
on application to the president; some time later it was agreed that they
could speak to the question. At the Wolverhampton society women
were admitted after the third meeting, and, `consisting of those of
rank and distinction . . . [they] have made a brilliant appearance'.
Several Irish debating societies appear to have admitted women after
about 1770. Competition was crucial. In the commercial contest
10

PRO, C 104/146, parts 1 and 2.

B. W. Pritchard, `The Music Festival and the Choral Society in England in the 18th and
19th Centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1968), 1434; The
Bylaws of the Musical Society at the Castle-Tavern, in Pater-Noster-Row (London,1731), 13; NNRO,
MS 434, fos. 1656; E. S. Quincy (ed.), The Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy Junior (Boston,
Mass., 1875), p. 74; A. Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey (London, n.d.), ii. 162, 163.
11

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

200

Membership

between debating societies the participation of women became a

major attraction. Usually women sat in a separate area of the room,
sometimes railed off, or in a gallery. At the Coachmakers Hall debating
society in Cheapside they took their places at the upper end of the hall
near the president; at Cork they sat in the orchestra of the assembly
room. 12 In London after 1780 women were regular speakers, special
nights being set aside for ladies' debates. Some societies began to
promote debates on `female' issues, such as women's work and
marriage, to attract a large audience. In 1780 the Oratorical Hall
Society in Spring Gardens, London, voted against male usurpation
of female trades, and agreed to petition Parliament `to regulate and
remove this obvious cause of female misery'. In provincial centres,
however, women had a muted voice in proceedings. At the Free
Debating Society in Cork ladies communicated their views in debates
via the president; at the Norwich Tusculan society in the 1790s the
four females present at one debate, though asked, `declined giving
their opinion'. So far as one can judge, all these societies were run by
men. 13
Men were also key players in the female benet clubs which had
emerged by George II's reign, serving in the ofce of clerk. Female
members may not have attended some clubs, and there are signs that
their husbands were the prime beneciaries. Towards the end of the
century, however, the numbers of female societies increased, particularly in the industrializing regions, and there may have been
stronger female interest. Also at this time, upper-class women
were involved in setting up a number of philanthropic societies
for poor women, and they were conspicuous in the new archery
clubs and a growing number of public subscription associations.
Only in a few cases, however, did they exercise a leading role.
The idea of the General United Society for Supplying British Troops
with Clothing originated `with some distinguished female characters
of the present age', who put a preliminary notice in a London
newspaper, but they soon turned to the banker and MP, William
Devaynes, to organize the society. In some societies, such as the
12
J. Jones, Remarks on the English Language . . . (Birmingham, 1774), 234, 25, 50, 60;
Hibernian Chronicle, 26 Dec. 1771, 23 Jan. 1772; Freeman's Journal, 203 July 1771; BL, Lysons
Collectanea, vol. 3, fos. 115v, 116v, 121.
13
BL, Lysons Collectanea, vol. 3, fos. 116, 116v, 119, 124; Hibernian Chronicle, 10 Feb.
1772; NNRO, Norwich and Norfolk Arch. Soc. MSS, G 2, p. 106; D. Andrew, `Popular
Culture and Public Debate: London 1780', HJ, 39 (1996), 410 ff.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

201

Dalkeith library society in Scotland, women were specically

prohibited from ofce-holding.14
In many classes of society, however, women were excluded, not just
from membership but also from attendance. Male benet societies
were most explicit about the exclusion of women. One Herefordshire
club ned members for allowing their wives to enter the clubhouse on
meeting nights, while another club in Northumberland allowed wives
to bring their husband's money, but they then had to depart at once. 15
Other kinds of society were rarely so explicit, though the outcome was
almost invariably the same: the near total exclusion of women.
Admittedly, women might be associated with societies in an
honorary capacity. Ladies were frequently lauded and toasted as
club patronesses, but in absentia. One Cheshire gentlewoman had the
double distinction of being chosen patroness of a book society and a
hunt club on the same day. At archery clubs the lady patroness, like a
medieval princess, might donate a prize arrow for competition. Other
female involvement was equally decorative. Many societies had special
balls or dinners for the wives of members, following the tradition of
gild feasts. An early example was the Christ's Hospital friendly society,
which held its summer feast outside the city and agreed in 1695 `to
permit the women [wives and friends of members] . . . to take the
benet of the air'. 16 After attacks on the sexual deviance of freemasons in the 1730s, lodges made great play of inviting women to
special events: at a London celebration for the Duke of Lorraine every
brother was `to introduce two sisters to their grand feast to convince
the public that they are no enemies to the fair sex', while at a
sponsored performance of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Ofcer at
a London playhouse, a specially written Epilogue was declaimed by
Mrs Younger, before an audience of masons and their female guests:
What monstrous horrid lies do some folks tell us,
Why masons, ladies! are quite clever fellows;
They are lovers of our sex, as I can witness . . .
14
See pp. 108, 364, 380; F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in 19th-Century England
(Oxford, 1980), 23, 24; Proceedings of the General United Society for Supplying the British Troops upon
the Continent with Extra Cloathing (London, 1798), pp. i, vi; Rules for the Regulation of the Dalkeith
Subscription Library (Edinburgh, 1798), 4.
15
NLW, Glansevern MS 1171; Northumbria RO, ZAN M20/5.
16
Read's Weekly Journal, 2 Sept. 1738; Warrington Public Library, MS 13; J. Nichols, Literary
Anecdotes of the 18th Century (London, 181215), viii. 365 (bis); Rules and Orders of the Society of
John of Gaunt's Bowmen (n.p., 1791), 34, 7, 13; H. A. Roberts (ed.), The Records of the Amicable
Society of Blues and its Predecessors (Cambridge, 1924), 8.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

202

Membership
If any of you doubt it, try the masons,
They'll not deceive your largest expectations . . .17

But if a urry of feminine visibility had its publicity value for societies,
in general such activity, distanced from the sanctum of the clubhouse
and normal meeting time, was exceptional and tokenistic, and so
conrmed the essential masculinity of associational life.
How do we explain the marginality of women in most associations?
As already suggested, it was partly a matter of choice: women created
their own sociable space in assemblies, concerts, kin and neighbourly
circles, and the like, and left men to the club, meeting in that traditional male venue the public house, from which women were customarily excluded. Signicantly, many of the openly mixed debating
societies did not meet in drinking houses but in assembly rooms or
halls; the mixed archery clubs had their own premises; some female
clubs met in private rooms. 18 However, this is only part of the story,
for numerous North American societies met away from drinking
houses, and still the incidence of female participation was no greater
there.
Another reason was the inferior legal status of women, which
undermined their position in clubs and societies, as we saw in regard
to the Coterie Society. As voluntary associations became increasingly
institutionalized and bureaucratic, the inability of married women to
sign legal documents in their own right or to be held responsible for
nancial accounts was a major obstacle to their participation in associations. Sir Frederick Eden noted that this was a serious problem for
female benet societies. No less important, club membership was a
relatively expensive form of public socializing, entailing regular payments. Not only did married women lack legal control over their
nances but, as James Cowe pointed out, their `earnings are in general
. . . small', with the result that many from the less afuent classes
could not afford to join a society. 19
Equally critical for the low participation of women in British
associations was the antipathy of men, illustrated by the numerous
satirical attacks on those societies in which women were active. A
squib against the Coterie Society in 1770 insinuated that all the female
17

Bodl., Rawlinson MS, C 136, fos. 123, 145, also 123v; Read's Weekly Journal, 20 Mar. 1736.
See pp. 1901; BL, Lysons Collectanea, vol. 3, fos. 116v ff.; Regulations for the UnionSociety (London, 1792), 3, 67; Farley's Bristol Journal, 4 Aug. 1787; J. Cowe, Religious and
Philanthropic Tracts (London, 1797), 878.
19
F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, 1797 (repr. London, 1966), i. 630; Cowe, Tracts, 88.
18

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

203

members would soon become enceinte. Female benet clubs were

burlesqued in tedious pamphlet exposes, while ctitious female
societies became a vehicle for hostile gender comment. Even the
usually sensible William Hutton of Birmingham ridiculed female
box clubs, `without a leader, every one speaking at the same time
. . . not one knowing how to write their name, scarcely to sign a cross'.
Among artisans, the hostility to female participation in clubs may have
reected an underlying anxiety to protect skilled trades and their maledominated structures from the threat of cheaper female labour.
Clearly there was, also, a desire to maintain clubs and societies as a
forum for masculine fellowship, though whether one accepts the
suggestion that the homosociality of clubs helped men `in nding
the female in themselves' through rituals of humiliation and rebirth, is
more questionable. Occasional homoerotic resonances surface in club
activities and rites, but the essence of club fellowship was in most
cases uncomplicated and conventional, marked out by convivial rites
of heavy drinking and drunkenness, swearing and obscene songs,
activities which men felt increasingly uncomfortable about in the
presence of women. Here clubs served as bastions of traditional
male perceptions of sociable behaviour, against new, more rened
notions of manners favoured by women and increasingly coloured
by the culture of sensibility. 20
It was not just male reactions to female perceptions of respectable
behaviour which were crucial. Conventional stereotyping of women as
vain and silly meant that they were widely seen as unable to take part
in that informal intellectual conversation which was regarded as the
essence of club activity. Thus, the head of a Scottish society rejoiced
that their serious debates had `not been burdened with the whimsical
remonstrances or partial interference of female associates'. Worse,
members had the fear, ventilated by the Annapolis Tuesday Club,
that `if ever they [women] are admitted . . . they will certainly excite
a fermentation and combustion, and everything will be topsy-turvy'. 21
20
Dublin Mercury, 68 Nov. 1770; The New Art and Mystery . . . of all the Women's Clubs in and
about the City and Suburbs of London (London, ?1760); Brice's Weekly Journal [Exeter], 19 July
1728; W. Hutton, Courts of Requests (Birmingham, 1787), 263; A. Clark, The Struggle for the
Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995), 32, 120 ff.; M. M.
Roberts, `Pleasures Engendered by Gender: Homosociality and the Club', in R. Porter and
M. M. Roberts (eds.), Pleasure in the 18th Century (London, 1996), 75; see below, p. 223; G. J.
Barker-Beneld, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992).
21
McElroy, `Literary Clubs', 656; R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the Ancient and Honorable
Tuesday Club by Dr. Alexander Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990), ii. 383.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

204

Membership

On the other hand, there was an awareness on both sides of the

gender divide that women had established a strong inuence in a
number of other areas of public socializing. As in the economic
sphere, a degree of gender specialization was taking place, with clubs
and societies largely accepted as a male province. Female complaints
about their exclusion were rare.
Whatever the reason, women clearly had only a limited role in
voluntary associations for most of our period. By and large, male
members saw this as a major reason for the social cohesion of such
organizations, helping to avoid the confusion and tension in other
elds of public sociability. The main advance in female participation in
voluntary societies came after 1800, following the upsurge of public
subscription associations, whose highly structured organizations could
accommodate considerable numbers of women, particularly in dependent auxiliary or branch societies. 22

iii
By comparison with women, young men were highly visible among
the joiners of British clubs, testimony to their importance among the
rising social groups in Georgian towns and, also, among the relentless tide of urban immigrants. As apprentices, living-in servants, and
journeymen, as well as young unmarried (and newly married)
artisans, shopkeepers, and gentlemen, they formed a major demographic and economic cohort in urban communities. At Licheld in
1695 bachelors aged between 15 and 30 comprised just over 30 per
cent of the male population above the age of 15 years; adding in those
who were married and under 30, the gure reached 39 per cent. This
compares with under a quarter for that age group (men and women)
in the total population. Representation of young men in urban voluntary associations was high from the start. During the early Stuart
period ringing bands called themselves societies of youths, and a later
body of Gloucestershire ringers was styled `the beardless club'. At the
Restoration the preacher Henry Newcome complained of combinations and informal clubs of young men with their feasts and meetings
`all that are out of their time and unmarried'. Newcome feared their
meetings, would descend into debauchery, but within a few years the
London religious societies were attracting large numbers of young
22

Prochaska, Women, 23, 24, 29.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

205

unmarried men for religious exercises and conversation.23 Detailed

lists for these societies in 1694 distinguish between masters, journeymen, and apprentices, and the greater part of the membership
frequently comprised the last two groups. Upper-class societies were
likewise lled with young men. The Whig Green Ribbon Club under
Charles II was charged with seeking `to make proselytes, especially of
the raw estated youth newly come to town', but Tory political clubs
were no less dependent on their quotas of young men. A majority of
the original members of the fashionable Dilettanti Society were aged
between 20 and 30, while in 1721 all but six of the London Botanical
Society members were under 25. Young men crowded into masonic
lodges, just as Scottish literary societies were said to consist of `young
men eager in their cultivation of knowledge'. 24
New members were sometimes in their teens. A benet society at
Snettisham, Norfolk, in about 1800 had several aged only 15, and a
tract on benet societies a few years later suggested a minimum of 16
years. Most societies, however, preferred a higher threshold of 18 or
21 years. In some cases, associations permitted teenagers to come to
meetings and hear papers before they could join. We also know of a
few special juvenile societies. However, most young members were in
their twenties, increasingly independent (if journeymen or servants)
from their masters and parents. Frequently they were bachelors, like
the members of an Edinburgh club in 1712, `within some months of
either side of 21, unmarried and resolved not inconsiderately to rush
into a state of life [which] even the wisest cannot foresee whether it
shall be more happy or miserable, without making the trial'. 25
The sizeable presence of young men in all types of voluntary
association was not simply a function of their demographic importance in early modern towns, but also an indication of rising urban
23
D. V. Glass, `Two Papers on Gregory King', in D .V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley (eds.),
Population in History (London, 1965), 181, 212; see above, p. 48; Gloucester Journal, 3 Apr. 1733;
T. Heywood (ed.), Diary of the Rev. Henry Newcome, Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 18, (1849),
148 n.
24
Bodl., Rawlinson MS, D 132; R. North, Examen (London, 1740), 572; Bayliss, `October
Club', 3557; L. Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), 7, 239 ff.; D. E. Allen,
The Naturalist in Britain (London, 1976), 13; see below, p. 346; Aberdeen Magazine, 1 (1796), 74.
25
NNRO, SO 62/8; The Form of the Rules and Orders, Recommended to be adopted by the Benet
Societies (Leeds, 1793); Plan of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne
(Newcastle, 1793), 16; G. P. G. Hills, `Sidelights on Freemasonry', AQC, 29 (1916), 3567;
`Diary of George Sandy, Apprentice W.S.', Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, 24 (1942), 23; I. K.
Ben-Amos, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (London, 1994), chs. 79; HMC,
Laing MSS, II, 163.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

206

Membership

incomes at this level, and the transitional position of young men in

urban communities. Up to a point, they had always had this status, of
course; in the decades before the Civil War the authorities were
constantly exercised by the problem of unmarried youths and their
potential threat to social order. Although such fears may have abated
as poverty and other social problems eased in the late seventeenthcentury, young people, like artisans in general, found themselves
increasingly without an institutional focus, affected by the decline of
the gilds and the disappearance in most urban areas of the practice of
living-in service for apprentices and journeymen. In consequence,
they were often left to shift for themselves, living in lodging houses
and public houses. As in the past, the social world of the drinking
house provided some help for young people in socializing; but it lacked
structured opportunities for mutual support, self-improvement, and
social mobility. 26
Those opportunities were more often provided by voluntary associations. In later Stuart London religious societies, as well as discussing
scripture, purveyed `advice for advancing trade, getting a maintenance,
helping the sick of their society'pressing concerns of the `apprentices
of divers trades' and other young members. Numerous debating
societies addressed themselves directly to the improvement of young
men in oratory, knowledge, and manners. Dudley Ryder knew no `set of
young men' that act `in a more improving manner' than his colleagues at
a London club, while the Aberdeen Medical Society was regarded by its
young members `as one of the principal means of improvement in their
studies'. Parents encouraged their children to join, seeing them as places
where their sons might gain `an early introduction into the conversation
of sober, learned and ingenious men', even if their offspring were
captivated by `that sort of mirth which is apt to delight and iname
the minds of young men'. Masters sent their servants to clubs to pick up
business, but they were also places where youngsters might obtain trade
and patronage on their own account, as they steadily emancipated
themselves from their masters' control. Given their high mobility, young
people further beneted from the support that artisan and other
societies gave to migrants, through certicates and support on arrival
in a strange town.27
26
P. Grifths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England, 15601640 (Oxford,
1996); P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 12001830 (London, 1983), 311.
27 A. G. Craig, `The Movement for the Reformation of Manners, 16881715' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1980), 7981; Jones, Remarks, 278; Freeman's

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

207

The gains were not entirely in one direction. Societies depended on

a steady inux of young people to replace those departing due to lifecycle trends, and to maintain the actuarial balance on charity funds.
This is not to overstate the position of young members. Many left a
club or society after a short time, changing jobs and houses, and,
where evidence survives, it indicates that established societies usually
had a fairly balanced age structure. Even when societies imposed a
maximum age for admission, often 35 or 40, there was an inevitable
age drift. The more formal the society, the higher the median age: at
the Royal Academy it was a crusty 54 years by the 1790s. 28
Participation by older men may have been encouraged by signicant
levels of celibacy in the urban population, with marriage at a late age
or not all, particularly among migrants. Clubs and societies not only
had a sizeable cadre of older members, but because of seniority they
often controlled the running of a society. Thus, Josiah Woodward
denied the suggestion that later Stuart religious societies were
`managed by young persons. That important province', he declared,
`is governed by persons of considerable quality, age and experience.'
Understandably, age differences could cause internal friction. This was
especially true of benet societies, where the advancing age of veteran
members imposed serious nancial burdens on younger colleagues.
There might also be policy differences. `A house divided against itself
cannot stand', the clerk of the Norwich Society of Ringers lamented in
1750: various of its young men had ignored the advice of the `elder
sort of people' over the wisdom of reducing ringing charges, and this
had led to friction. Sometimes younger members broke away and set
up their own societies; conversely, the occasional society was formed
specically for older people. 29 In general, however, tensions with
older members faded through natural wastage, whilst integration
Journal, 1820 Apr. 1771; Matthews (ed.), Diary of Dudley Ryder, 1201; Aberdeen Magazine, 1
(1796) 74; South Carolina Historical Soc., MS 11/151/4; J. Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica
Britannica, Vol. III(2) (London, 1790), 56; A Letter to a Member of the Club in Albemarle-Street
(London, 1764), 67; J. Harman, The Crooked Disciples' Remarks on the Blind Guide (London,
1761), 36; Ben-Amos, Adolescence, ch. 9; see below, pp. 3312, 361.
28

Bayliss, `October Club', 3557; S. C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy, 1768
1968 (London, 1968), 21428.
29
P. Sharpe, `Population and Society, 17001840', in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban
History of Britain, Vol. II (Cambridge, forthcoming); J. Woodward, An Account of the Religious
Societies in the City of London etc. (4th edn., London, 1712, repr. Liverpool, 1935), 29; see
p. 365; NNRO, SO 78/2; J. Acland, A Plan for Rendering the Poor independent on Public
Contribution (Exeter, 1786), 2930; H. J. Wale, My Grandfather's Pocket-Book (London, 1883),
252; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 Dec. 1758.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

208

Membership

and harmony were fostered by society procedures to screen and

control newcomers.

iv
Of young men joining societies, a substantial proportion were recent
arrivals in town, but immigration was only one part of the complex
spatial pattern of recruitment. Neighbourly and local participation also
need to be considered. Here societies may have appropriated at least
some of the functions of traditional street socializing. The several
parish feast societies in late Stuart London were followed after 1700 by
numerous street and parochial clubs, many of which were little more
than formalized versions of neighbourly drinking circles. Staying in
Chelsea during the 1730s, Hunter Morris went drinking with his father
`next door to a club that is every night at that house'. When the
Quaker John Eliot had his household utensils distrained in the 1750s,
he discovered that they were being used at a nearby alehouse where
`some of the neighbours . . . hold a club'. Even in more formal
societies with a wider clientele, strong clusters came from the same
neighbourhood. Mapping the membership pattern of the Tyrian lodge
of Modern masons shows strong concentrations of support in nearby
Parliament Street, Bridge Street, Charles Street and King Street, after
it moved to Westminster about 1792. Membership of the Glee Club at
the Crown and Anchor in the Strand at around the same time included
groups from Doctors' Commons and Throgmorton Street. 30
In the capital, however, it is clear that the catchment area of many
societies was not limited to the locality. The Tyrian lodge, despite its
Westminster venue, also drew members from Soho, Pimlico, the
Strand, the City, and across the Thames from Lambeth and the South
Bank. While attracting the bulk of its brethren from the City, the
Amicable Society at the Rose in Cheapside had signicant numbers of
East-Enders and smaller inows from the West End and Southwark.
The bigger the society, or the higher its social status (or both), the
greater its social hinterland. Thus, the fashionable London Humane
Society recruited from all the main districts of the capital. This was
partly because of the dispersal of the afuent classes across the
30
B. Mcanear, `An American in London, 17356', Pennsylvania Magazine, 64 (1940), 190;
E. Howard (ed.), Eliot Papers (London, 1895), part i, p. 59; J. W. S. Godding, A History of the
Westminster and Keystone Lodge . . . No. 10 (Plymouth, 1907), 389, 768 (I am grateful to
Matthew Clark for mapping the lodge membership); Glee Club, Crown and Anchor Tavern,
Strand (London, 1797).

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

209

metropolis, with only limited spatial segregation. While many betteroff folk still lived in older areas of the capital, the relentless, sprawling
growth of the metropolis meant that the well-to-do in the new
suburbs often felt the need to join central London societies to avoid
social isolation. Certainly, there can be no doubt of the important role
of societies in helping to underpin pan-urban social networks, beyond
the neighbourhood. The limited nature of neighbourly identication
was manifested in the way that many upper-class societies regularly
relocated their meeting places in different parts of the capital. 31
For all the contribution of urban members, the impact of migrants
on voluntary associations is undeniable. In fact, a sizeable share of the
London `residents' we have just been discussing were probably mediumterm visitors to town, up for the season, or earlier immigrants: Hunter
Morris and his father, who went to the neighbourhood club in
Chelsea, had come over from Pennsylvania. Immigrants gure prominently in the membership of all kinds of societies, both in the capital
and the provinces. Regional and ethnic societies were particularly
important in serving their needs, but masonic lodges likewise attracted
large numbers of local and longer-distance movers. In provincial
towns club members often came in for a day or two from the local
hinterland, rather as parish fraternities had recruited in the Middle
Ages, and so helped consolidate relationships between town and
countryside. 32 For newcomers, societies offered access to social networks, business and patronage, and, above all, an entree into the local
community.33
How did societies cope with this inux of migrants? In many
bodies they were treated in the same way as other members, with
regard to admission and so on. In a minority of cases, however, there
were different levels of status for outsiders, particularly short-stay
visitors to town. At the Royal Society there appears to have been an
informal ranking of country members, apart from those residing in the
capital. John Byrom from Lancashire commented that `I never so
much as put the FRS to my name, living in the country and being
only now and then a sojourner amongst them'. Dublin's Corsican
society, which supported that island's struggle for freedom, had a
separate category for non-resident members, while the Benevolent
31
Articles and Orders Agreed upon by the Amicable Society At the Rose in Cheapside, London
(London, 1757), 18 ff.; J. Swain, A Sermon Preached at St Martin's in the Fields . . . (London,
1783), 26 ff.; e.g., Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, ii. 31415; see also below, pp. 2412.
32
Bodl., MS, English Misc. e 122, fos. 67.
33
See below, pp. 4478.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

210

Membership

Society for the Improvement of Chyrurgery (1704) distinguished

between residing and travelling members, as well as having a class
of corresponding members. The SPCK in 1712 had eighty residing
members, paying up to 10 a year, and 370 corresponding members
(subscribing between 1 and 3 guineas), who were mostly drawn from
other parts of the country. Increasingly, however, corresponding
members were located abroad, in the colonies or on the continent.
Often their main purpose was to give international credibility to the
association, particularly if they had a high scientic or social status.
Some corresponding members were signed up to provide material or
information, like Richard Norcliffe in Norway, who sent minerals and
fossils to the Gentlemen's Society at Spalding. 34
Associations often coped with the demand for participation from
outsiders, particularly short-stay migrants, by accepting them as
visitors, under more or less tight controls. On the cautious side, the
Bath Agricultural Society only admitted visitors with the consent of
the meeting. The religious society at St Giles Cripplegate in London
insisted that intending visitors give prior notice and be approved by
the stewards. Generally, visitors were welcomed for contributing to
club costs without threatening the fellowship of the members. Of
those dining at the Royal Society Club in 1750, nearly a quarter were
visitors; in the late eighteenth century the more exotic included
eskimos and a chief from the South Seas. As in modern senior
common rooms, visitors were made to sense they were on the
periphery, thereby underscoring membership solidarity. Invited to
the Royal Society Club in the 1780s, John Playfair, a Scottish geologist,
complained that `there was little pains taken to make the company
very agreeable to a stranger; and I had occasion to pity two or three
foreigners that I saw there'. Not all visitors were so neglected: some
came to be looked over as the rst step in the extended admission
process for new members. 35
Towards the end of the century the growth of provincial prosperity,
34
R. Parkinson (ed.), The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, Vol. II(1),
Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 40 (1856), 308; Dublin Mercury, 810 June 1769; Constitutions of the
Benevolent Society for the Improvement of Chyrurgery, etc. (London,1704); W. K. L.Clarke, The History
of the S.P.C.K. (London, 1959), 889; J. E. McClellan, Science Reorganized: Scientic Societies in the
18th Century (New York, 1985), 178 ff.; Nicholls, Literary Anecdotes, vi.1023.
35
Rules and Orders of the Society Instituted at Bath...(Bath, 1777), 13; J. Wickham Legg,
`London Church Services In and About the Reign of Queen Anne', Trans. of St Paul's
Ecclesiological Soc., 6 (190610), 33; A. Geikie, Annals of the Royal Society Club (London,
1917), 37, 94, 121, 124, 159.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

211

and mounting commercial, professional, and social mobility, meant

that voluntary associations, particularly in London, faced intense
pressure from outsiders to join, creating major problems of screening
and assimilation. Once again, the evolution of public subscription
societies helped to relieve this pressure. Many of those bodies took
a large proportion of their members from the provinces or regions.
Membership duties were restricted to attendance at a few meetings a
year; and management was in the hands of a caucus of largely resident
members. On the other hand, provincial subscribers acquired the
standing of membership in a public way through the appearance of
their names in society publications. 36

v
The problem of reconciling the formal openness of societies with the
concern for creating social coherence and stability was not limited to
age groups and outsiders. The issue was central to the social composition of British associations in the early modern period. Generally
speaking, societies did not exclude specic social or occupational
groups from membership: the only kind of society which did this as
a rule were benet or box clubs. In practice, however, most societies
were socially selective. On occasions, there was token representation
by people from well outside the main social orbit of members. In the
metropolis during the 1720s, John Byrom went to a learned club at the
Sun tavern near the Exchange and was urged by another member to
`talk of metaphysics in order to get Lane to talk, who was a country
boy and held the plough but had taught himself metaphysics'. At the
other social extreme, one nds scions of the nobility being recruited
as patrons or honorary members to bring fashionable kudos to a
respectable society, with an eye to bolstering recruitment. Royal
princes were in heavy demand. 37
Broadly speaking, however, despite the rhetoric of openness and
the diversity of new or expanding social groups in towns, most
36

For associations of this kind see: An Account of the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge
among the Poor (London, 1763); An Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Society for the
Discharge and Relief of Persons imprisoned for Small Debts (London, 1777); The Philanthropic Society,
Instituted September 1788 (London, 1794); A List of Subscribers to the United Society for the Relief of
Widows and Children of Seamen . . . (London, 1794).
37
See below, pp. 3767; R. Parkinson (ed.), The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John
Byrom, Vol. I(1), Chetham Soc. Remains, os, 32 (1854), 173; NLW, Noyadd Trefawr MS 1678;
see p. 328.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

212

Membership

associations seem to have recruited largely from distinct social

bands, reecting the broad patterning of British society in the
long eighteenth century. Any attempt at the social analysis of
membership in this period is hampered by the growing social and
occupational uidity and confusion mentioned earlier. In such a
rapidly expanding and specializing economy, it is very difcult to
interpret the social and economic status of occupations, a difculty
compounded by differences between London and the provinces, and
by regional variations. As for voluntary associations, evidence of the
occupations or status of members survives for only a small number
of societies, with the exception of the English Modern freemasons.
Allowing for these reservations, extant membership lists suggest
that, although there was social selectivity, social exclusivity was not
widespread, either in London or provincial towns. Even with the
heavy landed participation in public sociability, narrow gentry or
aristocratic societies were few. Rather, we see the formation of
societies enjoying a wider tranche of upper-class support, from
professional men and some merchants as well as landowners. One
such society covering a broad church of interests was the artistic
Virtuosi of St Luke, whose members, it was said, comprised `gentlemen, painters, sculptors, architects. etc.'. The list of stewards (the
ofce rotated among all the members) conrms the social complexion of the society. Predictably, a sizeable number of stewards were
artists: engravers, enamellers, carvers (including Grinling Gibbons),
and painters (landscape, historical, and portrait); in all, about 38 per
cent of the total. Gentlemen and esquires constituted another 26
per cent, professional men (architects, booksellers, doctors) about
20 per cent, and merchants and bankers (such as Sir Robert Child) a
notably smaller 7 per cent. That other early artistic society, the
Dilettanti, had a more elitist orientation, just under half the members
in 1736 being drawn from aristocratic and gentry families, but with a
quarter professional men (including clergy, government servants, and
military men), and just under a tenth merchants and the like. Dr
Johnson's club at the Turk's Head shows a more balanced composition. A large group were politiciansMPs and ministers (18 per
cent), and another 16 per cent were government ofcials. Overlapping with this group was a contingent of landowners (15 per
cent); about a quarter were professional menlawyers, doctors, and
the like; and there were a number of authors ( Johnson, Goldsmith)
and actors (famously David Garrick). Landowners remained prominent in London societies until the close of our period, comprising,

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

213

for example, almost half of the rst proprietors of the Royal

Institution.38
In other big cities the same broad pattern can be observed, taking in
a range of upper-class groups. In Edinburgh, the Honourable Society
of Improvers under George II had three dukes, twenty-one earls,
twenty-three lords and forty-ve knights, in company with numerous
lawyers and professors. The Scottish Society for Propagating Christian
Knowledge, based in the same city, had about 113 members in 1740:
19 per cent were landowners (including a big clutch of nobles), 27 per
cent were associated with the law, another 30 per cent belonged to
other professions (academics, medical men, clergy), and a smaller
cluster had a mainly mercantile background. From the spiritual to the
sporting: Edinburgh's Skating Club recruited a large group of professionals, but also numbers of landowners and merchants. Into the early
nineteenth century Edinburgh philanthropic societies attracted wealthy
property-owners, together with lawyers and merchants (though the
permutations varied among societies). 39
In Dublin, the original members of the Royal Irish Academy during
the 1780s embraced peers, knights, and esquires (over a quarter), and
an even bigger concentration of clergy, doctors, and lawyers (nearly
two-thirds). At the spa town of Bath the landed classes were prominent in the Harmonic Society, but with a sizeable minority of military
ofcers, and most of the rest assorted professionals. 40 The absence of
businessmentraders, merchantsis striking at Dublin and Bath;
and they also seem to be under-represented in other membership
lists. This may be because they had less leisure time than their landed
and professional colleagues, as well as being able to call on their own
commercial networks of clients and contacts.
In smaller towns gentry representation was less notable. At early
Georgian Stamford the learned Brasenose Society, established by
William Stukeley, assembled substantial numbers of professional
men (especially doctors and clergy) and local ofcials (including the
38
BL, Additional MS 39,167, fos. 756; Cust, Dilettanti, appendix; Duff, The Club, 3761;
M. Berman, Social Change and Scientic Organisation: The Royal Institution, 17991844 (London,
1978), 41 n.
39 D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman, Wash., 1969), 8; State of the Society in
Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge . . . (Edinburgh, 1741), 40 ff.; NLS, MS 24643, fos.
141 ff.; A. J. Dalgleish, `Voluntary Associations and the Middle Class in Edinburgh, 1780
1820' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1991), 23140.
40
T. O. Raifeartaigh (ed.), The Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 1985), 1112; A Selection of
Favourite Catches, Glees etc. as sung at the Bath Harmonic Society . . . (Bath, 1798), 5, 11 ff.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

214

Membership

clerk of the peace), but only a handful of landowners. In the Channel

Islands, the upper-class `club ou societe de la chambre' at St Peter Port
contained mainly professional men and merchants, but virtually no
island landowners. Clearly, the precise social and occupational
amalgam might vary between towns, depending on their size and
other characteristics, and there were also differences between individual associations; but the general coalition of landed, professional,
and, to a lesser extent, commercial groups in the membership prole
of many fashionable societies is striking. At the same time, there were
virtually no exclusively elitist types of society. Take bell-ringing for
instance. The early London Society of College Youths seems to have
recruited mostly from the upper classesthe nobility, gentry, clergy,
and lawyers; whereas the Cambridge Society of Ringers was a body of
artisans and shopkeepers, albeit with a clutch of dons, professional
men, and other afuent folk. Similar variations are observable among
prosecution societies, moral reform societies, and, as we shall see, the
freemasons. 41
Although our evidence is more patchy, it is clear that some associations had distinctively middle-rank proles. Of those joining lateseventeenth-century religious societies in the capital the largest
proportion were middling craftsmen and retailers. Most numerous
were master tailors and weavers (together comprising 17 per cent of
the membership), with building masters (8 per cent) a secondary
cluster; more-prosperous traders like grocers and ironmongers also
gured, if on a lesser scale. Here again variations emerged between
societies: several were dominated by weavers, and another had a high
concentration of goldsmiths. In other words, within broad recruitment parameters there was a span of membership up or down the
social scale, reecting both the social hinterland of the organization
(as we have seen, not necessarily limited to the immediate neighbourhood), and the recruitment policies of its leaders. Other evidence is
more fragmentary, but points to a similar picture. Half the membership of the Spitalelds Mathematical Society during the 1740s consisted of weavers, but there were also brewers, bakers, and braziers. In
the Grand Antiquity Society of Glasgow the majority of those paying
their dues were weavers and manufacturers, though the rest included
41
Bodl., MS Engl. Misc. e 22, fos. 67; St Peter Port, Guernsey, Greffe Library, De
Sausmarez Collection (I am indebted for this information to Dr Gregory Stevens-Cox); BL,
Additional MS 19,370, fo. 3v; Rules and Regulations of the Society of Ringers denominated `The
Cambridge Youths' (Cambridge, 1857), 9 ff.; Notts. RO, DD T ll, 4,5; Craig, `Reformation of
Manners', 345; see below, p. 320 ff.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

215

sizeable numbers of merchants, traders, and professional men.

Professional men seem to have been active in other broadly middlerank societies as well. Of those on the books of the Liverpool Ugly
Face Club, about 14 per cent were doctors and clergy, plus the
occasional lawyer and architect; the so-called Doctors Club at York
had a similar proportion. In the local committees of the Anti-Slavery
Society we meet coalitions of shopkeepers, merchants, and manufacturers together with a key group of professionals. 42 As we know, the
considerable presence of professionals was, in part, a function of their
powerful and pervasive role in British society, and, in part, due to their
strong commercial interest in socializing. They also had an important
value for societies: they served as cultural brokers, and helped to
bridge social differences among members. Professional men not
only joined British associations in droves but also took a leading
role in running them.
Finally, a third pattern of social recruitment can be identied,
mainly drawing on the ranks of small masters, artisans, and the like.
The evidence here is limited but suggestive. In the case of friendly
societies, all the indications are that very few of the urban societies
admitted the labouring or poorer classes. Only in the countryside do
signicant numbers of labourers join benet societies, often probably
at the behest of local landowners concerned to reduce the poor rate.
Box clubs in town frequently banned a long list of inferior social and
occupational groups from enrolment. Here artisanal societies appear
to have been more crudely discriminatory than upper- and middleclass associations; perhaps because they could raise fewer informal
barriers to entry. 43
It would be foolhardy to be dogmatic about these apparent patterns
of social recruitment based on a small assortment of societies.
Considerable variation probably existed not only between towns but
between regions, whilst social alignments, fairly open from our picture,
may have become more selective over time. Such issues need to be
addressed (and claried) when we examine (in Chapter 9) the extensive
membership data available for the Modern freemasons. 44
Two nal points should be made here. First, just as types of society
lacked a uniform membership pattern, so individual societies were not
42
Bodl., Rawlinson MS, D 1312; H. H. Cawthorne, `The Spitalelds Mathematical Society
(17171845)', Journal of Adult Education, 3 (19289), 156; Strathclyde Regional Archives, T-TH
21.1.2 (unfoliated); Howell (ed.), Ugly Face Clubb, 32 ff.; York Minister Library, Additional MS
129; J. R. Oldeld, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (Manchester, 1995), 1302.
44
43
See below, ch. 10.
See below, pp. 3205.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

216

Membership

necessarily locked into a particular social prole. Over its lifespan the
changing pattern of demand and the attitudes and policies of leading
members could reposition a society in the social pecking order.
Associations moved up and down the social scale. Secondly, the
evolution of larger-scale public subscription associations in the late
eighteenth century allowed some of the conventional parameters of
admission and recruitment to be relaxed. Thus, the moral reformist
Proclamation Society of 1787 was an old-style upper-class society of
politicians, landowners, higher clergy, and professional men, which
remained fairly small. The later Society against Vice was in the new
public association mode. It had several thousand members and
recruited from a more extensive social spectrum, embracing not
only the landed and professional classes, but also merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, and masters. 45 In public subscription associations greater social access was acceptable, because ordinary members
met together only one or twice a year, thereby alleviating the risk of
social confusion.

vi
Up to a point, then, British associations justied the claims of commentators and their own propagandists that they were open to a
plurality of groupsyoung people as well as older folk, outsiders in
addition to local residents, and most levels of the established social
order; only women were largely excluded. But, as we have seen, club
doors were hardly wide open. Young people might be welcome, but
they were kept in their place; outsiders often had a secondary status;
societies usually observed some kind of occupational or status parameters in terms of recruitment. These arrangements were not necessarily out of line with what prospective members sought or expected.
In a traditionally gerontocratic society, many young men were inured
to subordination to their elders; short-stay migrants to town may well
not have wanted all the trouble and cost of being a full member; many
ordinary shopkeepers would have felt uncomfortable sharing a table
with gentry, and surely vice versa.
Overall, the pattern of admission to societies was shaped by two
45
J. Innes, `Politics and Morals: The Reformation of Manners Movement in Later 18thCentury England', in E. Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and
Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford, 1990), 7987; Roberts, `Society for the Suppression
of Vice', 1603.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

217

overriding and opposing strategies: to ensure nancial success by

recruiting sufcient members for a viable association, and to avoid
the risk of social confusion through effective control. That control
was exercised both through informal processes and by formal regulations concerning admission.
Many societies began with friends and kinsfolk, and in smaller
bodies these sometimes continued to form an important core of
members, providing a focus of loyalty. In London, the Sons of the
Clergy was said to have begun as a `voluntary communication of
friends'; the founders of the SPCK in the 1690s comprised friends
of Thomas Bray; and the Saturday Club developed out of a meeting of
four or ve of Robert Harley's `most intimate friends'. The Edinburgh
Philosophical Society originated in the 1730s in a circle of landowners,
lawyers, medical men, and others, who were friendly with Colin
MacLaurin. 46 In a similar way, the Exeter Literary Society started in
the 1790s, `united by private friendship'. The Frenchman Pierre-Jean
Grosley remarked in 1765 how clubs were held amongst friends `who,
having contracted an intimacy in their early days and experienced each
other's delity, are united by a conformity of tastes, schemes of life,
and way of thinking'. Small wonder that John Elves, doubly blessed by
great wealth and a large corpus of friends from his Westminster
School days, found himself introduced `into whatever society he
best liked'. 47
Kinship was less crucial, but small knots of relations can be found
in numerous societies. John Byrom's shorthand club in London had
three from the same family among the dozen or so participants, while
seventeen members of the Philosophical Society at Edinburgh
boasted relatives there. The rules of the Philo-Musicae Society in
the 1720s ensured that any relation of the original directors would
be admitted free, just as the `proprietors' of the Royal Institution had
hereditary membership rights. But few societies (other than patronymic ones) could surpass the Harford Medical Society in Maryland,
where virtually all the members belonged to the Archer family. 48
46

T. Bisse, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral Church of Hereford . . . (London, 1729), 17;
Clarke, S.P.C.K., 7; Bayliss, `October Club', 13; R. L. Emerson, `The Philosophical Society of
Edinburgh, 17371747', British Journal for the History of Science, 12 (1979), 1601.
47
Essays By a Society of Gent., at Exeter (Exeter, 1796), preface; P. J. Grosley, A Tour to
London (Dublin, 1772), i. 160; Sport. Mag., 2 (1793), 41.
48
Parkinson, Byrom Journal, i(1), 196; Emerson, `Edinburgh Philosophical Society, 1737
1747', 172; BL, Additional MS 23, 202, fo. 14; Berman, Social Change, 15; Maryland Historical
Soc., MS 1897, part i, p. v.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

218

Membership

Kinsfolk may well have encouraged young men to join societies and
prepared them for membership. Behind Erasmus Darwin, that prolic
progenitor of Midland societies in the late eighteenth century, stood
his father Robert Darwin, who had belonged to the Spalding Gentlemen's Society earlier in the period. The Aurelian Society's secretary in
the 1760s had his interest in insects whetted by his uncle, member of a
previous society of Aurelians at the Swan tavern. 49
If friends or family did not open the door to a particular society, then
an indirect, stepping-stones approach might offer the best alternative: in
other words, joining one or more other clubs whose members overlapped with the target body. Club members frequently belonged to
several societies. The artist Arthur Pond attended four clubs regularly
in George II's reign, and probably used connections there to secure his
election to the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal
Society Club. The Manchester physician John Byrom was involved in a
bevy of London associations in the 1720s (including the Royal Society
and his own short-hand club), while John Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of
the Eighteenth Century (1812), which provides a potted guide to the
Georgian literati, often lists the three or four clubs to which each
belonged. Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, was
probably the king of late Georgian associations, serving as a member
or ofcer of a dozen or more.50 In the earlier period multiple membership in the provinces may have been constrained by the restricted range
of societies, but by the later eighteenth century it was increasingly
common. Around the turn of the century Thomas Ward at Shefeld
subscribed to as many as eight societies, including book, improvement,
philanthropic, and learned organizations. Of course, we need to distinguish between activists, often founders or leaders of societies, and the
general run of more or less passive members. In the case of the new
public subscription associations the membership was often engaged in
only a limited way. At the lower level, benet clubs frequently banned
members from belonging to more than one such body, though this did
not stop them joining leisure clubs and the like.51 In general, three or
49

D. King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution: The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin (London, 1977),
21; M. Harris, The Aurelian: or, Natural History of English Insects . . . (London, 1766), sig. B1.
50
L. Lippincott, Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond (London, 1983),
1819; Parkinson (ed.), Byrom Journal, i(1), 103, 121, 156, 1856; e.g.., Nichols, Literary
Anecdotes, ii. 6389; v. 517 ff.; J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment
(Cambridge, 1994), 70.
51
I. Inkster, `The Development of a Scientic Community in Shefeld', Trans. of the
Hunter Archaeological Soc., 10 (19717), 10911; see below, p. 365.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

219

four clubs or societies was probably close to the maximum for most
people, given the constraints of time and money.
Multiple membership might cause problems for societies, but in
terms of the admissions game it was obviously advantageous, enabling
the prospective member to pick up supporters from his existing clubs
to vote for him when he applied. Conversely, the target body could vet
the applicant in advance. Prior to his admission to the Council of
Trent Club in the 1790s, Joseph Farington discussed its attractions and
requirements with a number of Council members at a gathering of the
Royal Academy Club, and heard how `several of the members of [the
Council of Trent] are also members of the Eumelian Society and of
the Athenian Club, but they say this [former] society is more agreeable
than either' of the others. 52
However, the main control on the composition of societies came
from their admission procedures. In some instances these were highly
elaborate, in others more direct, though not necessarily less discriminatory or selective. The procedure often involved some or all of the
following stages: application or nomination of the candidate, usually
supported by one or more current members; the payment of the entry
ne as a deposit; the public posting of the applicant's name; an inquiry
into his background by the ofcers; the election, sometimes by a
simple majority, more often with one or more blackballs being decisive; the initiation ritual for new entrants; and payment of society
dues.
Quite often, as we have noted, the formal application would be
preceded by informal soundings on both sides. This did not always go
well. When Ralph Grifth, the editor of the Monthly Review and a
member of the Athenian Club, supported John Taylor as a member
he quickly discovered that Taylor would fail in the ballot, and had to
back out. At the Council of Trent Club the custom was always `to
sound out the members before anyone was proposed to prevent
disappointment'. 53 This was only the rst stage. At the Society for
the Improvement of Naval Architecture candidates were sponsored by
three members, and their names hung up in the society room for
two meetings. Manchester's Literary and Philosophical Society posted
names at four successive meetings. Applicants to the London
Cymmrodorion Society had to give their occupation, abode, and place
of birth to help investigation by the committee. Associations with a
52
53

Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, ii. 425; also iv. 1125.
Ibid., i. 277; also ii. 378.

5.11.99 15:55 06 Chapter 0394

220

Membership

ceiling on membership size, like the Toxophilite Society, deferred

elections until a vacancy occurred. At the Cambridgeshire County
Club candidates languished on the waiting list for two years before
their names were balloted.54
Would-be members of the Newcastle Liberal Society of Tradesmen
had to appear in the club room prior to balloting. In upper-class
societies campaigning for candidates might lead to the whipping of
supporters on election day. Under Banks the Royal Society was well
known for its contentious elections, while the election of the architect
James Wyatt to the Society of Antiquaries was bitterly disputed after
complaints about his work. At the June meeting in 1797 Wyatt was
blackballed, but his supporters fought back, and in December he was
chosen by 143 votes to 20. 55
On top of these vetting procedures, a number of societies had
explicit qualications for membership. A few imposed a wealth
qualication. The Royal Kentish Bowmen required that county
members have a freehold of 10 a year, a leasehold of 20 per annum,
or an ofcial residence in the shire. In Dublin it was proposed that no
one should be admitted to the Society of Attorneys without an estate
of 40 a year or over 500 in money. In the 1790s the middle-rank
Loyal Georgean Society of Halifax required applicants to earn more
than 40 a year or be masters, but other societies were more proscriptive. At Newcastle, the Society of Liberal Tradesmen prohibited
journeymen and menial servants from membership, and insisted that
entry be limited to `a principal or master in his respective profession'. 56 Dedicated to improving the professional standing of medical
practitioners, the Medical Society of London debarred the `proprietor
of any empirical nostrum', as did the Society for the Relief of Widows
and Orphans of Medical Men. Bankrupts were excluded from
middling societies in order to maintain the nancial credibility of
the membership. Less obviously, the Castle Tavern Musical Society
refused to admit vintners, victuallers, coffee-housekeepers, tailors,
54
Rules and Orders, of the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture (n.d., 1791), 9; Rules
established for the Government of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester (Manchester,
1782), 3; Constitutions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in London (London, 1755), 16;
Sport. Mag., 3 (17934), 208; Wale, Grandfather's Pocket-Book, 227.
55
Articles, Rules and Regulations for . . . the Liberal Society of Tradesmen (Newcastle, 1793), 6;
see p. 234; Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, iii. 860, 919, 934, 9357.
56
Rules of the Society of Royal Kentish Bowmen (n.p., 1789), 234; Some Advice to the Gentlemen
Members of the late Instituted Society of Attorneys from One of their Members (Dublin, 1755), 7;
Calderdale District Archives, Halifax, LG 22/1; Articles [of] the Liberal Society of Tradesmen, 4, 6.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

221

peruke-makers, barbers, apprentices, and journeymen, perhaps to

prevent them from touting for trade during concerts.57
Only a minority of voluntary associations had explicit or detailed
regulations of this type, however. More common as a deterrent to
the socially unsuitable was the panoply of fees and charges levied.
The Kentish Bowmen in the 1780s had a relatively modest property
qualication, but it was backed up by a heavy admission ne of 12
guineas (plus annual charges of over 5 guineas). This was towards the
top of the range, as betted a highly fashionable society. For the
majority of upper-class societies in the later eighteenth century
admission dues of 3, 4, or 5 guineas were the norm, with annual
subscriptions of 1 or 2 guineas. Occasionally we hear of graduated
scales according to wealth. One projected society (in 1758) wanted to
charge up to 1 10s 6d per 100 of income. The Stafford Benevolent
Society had several classes of membership, its subscription rates
ranging from 2 guineas a year for the well off, to half a guinea for
tradesmen and the like. One Exeter masonic lodge levied 2 guineas
for ordinary members but up to 5 guineas for noblemen. 58
Middle-class societies usually had admission nes of 1 or 2 guineas
up to the 1790s, but rates jumped during that decade. The Newcastle
Liberal Society of Tradesmen, for instance, levied 2 guineas (paid by
instalments) in 1792, but had raised this to 5 guineas seven years later.
Benevolent societies (with benet rights) appear to have been more
expensive than other types of society. Artisan and lower-rank societies
were considerably less burdensome for members. Late-eighteenthcentury box clubs charged on average about 3s 4d for admission
and 17s in annual dues, albeit with marked regional and local
variations. 59
Membership dues were rarely set in stone. Clubs retained a good
deal of discretion in this, as in other aspects of the admission procedure. As Pierre Bourdieu remarks, it is unclear whether formal rules
of societies were intended to disguise the arbitrariness of elections or
vice versa. One London masonic lodge had a discount rate for those
57

Regulations of the Medical Society of London (London, ?1775), 12; The Medical Diary for the
Year 1799 (London, 1799), 27; Guildhall, MS 554, fo. 2; The Laws of the Musical Society at the
Castle-Tavern in Pater-noster-Row (London, 1751), 9.
58
Rules of Royal Kentish Bowmen, 12; J. Burton, Monasticon Eboracense (York, 1758), 426; An
Abstract of the Deed of Settlement of the Benevolent Society at Stafford . . . (Wolverhampton, 1770),
34, 78; R. Chudley, The History of St George's Lodge No. 112 (Exeter, 1986), 4.
59 Newcastle Public Library, Articles [of] the Liberal Society of Tradesmen, 10 and MS notes at
end ; see below, pp. 3778.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

222

Membership

whose conversation proved `very acceptable' to the members. On

other occasions, the selection and the charges levied probably
depended on whether a newcomer's face tted. If a society turned
out to be successful and attracted a ood of applications, charges
might be racked up to moderate demand, raise extra income, and
enhance the body's social reputation. Thus, entrance nes at the
Amicable and Fraternal Society of Bishopsgate soared from 1 guinea
to 8 between 1754 and 1760. Conversely, societies affected by poor
membership or attendance gures might hold down charges to attract
newcomers. 60 Even so, competition between societies in the same
bracket of the market doubtless encouraged a degree of convergence
in costs.
In this context, it is surprising that the differential in membership
charges between upper- and middle-rank societies was not greater, at
least in terms of admission and annual dues. But this was deceptive.
Total costs of belonging to upper-class societies were much heavier
because of the incidental and supplementary expenses. The society
feast, often paid for by the stewardsusually the members in
rotationcould be horribly expensive. In the early eighteenth century,
for instance, the Society of Finsbury Archers complained that,
although several `persons of quality' were chosen as stewards of the
feast, `the charge and expense thereof by degrees arose to that height
that it became difcult for any to hold' the ofce. In addition, there
were heavy outlays for dinners, open-ended drinking, gifts, servants,
regalia, charitable donations, and so on. Multiple membership could
prove particularly burdensome. The well known engraver George
Vertue, who belonged to several smart societies including the Virtuosi
of St Luke, protested at `the costs or expenses to get into companies,
conversations, clubs . . . a continual expense'. Lord Grimston was
spending up to 25 guineas a year on a small number of London and
provincial clubs during the 1770s and 1780s. 61
Against this, additional costs for middle- and lower-class societies
were fairly modest: the feasts were on a smaller scale, and other
charges mostly limited to payments for drinks, and contributions to
the stipend and expenses of ofcers. For an artisan the cost of
belonging to a benet society might represent 5 per cent of his weekly
60
P. Bourdieu, Distinction, trans. R. Nice (London, 1984), 1623; A. F. Calvert, History of
the Old King's Arms No. 28 (London, 1899), 11; Amicable and Fraternal Society: Summary of its
History (n.p., 1890), 8.
61
Guildhall, MS 193/1; Vertue Note Books, Vol. III, Walpole Soc., 22, (1934), 120; HMC,
Verulam MSS, 21621.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

223

salary: not massive, but sufcient to deter poorer folk from applying,
and act as a disincentive to multiple membership.62
Once admitted, the new member faced a steeplechase of secondary
hurdles before full incorporation into the body of the society. In many
instances there was an initiation ritual. Probably the masonic ceremony
was the most elaborate, but most other societies had them as well. At
the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks the new member was brought in
blindfold, along with the club's Bishop (wearing his mitre and carrying
the book of rules), and escorted by the Halberdiers in special uniform;
the Recorder gave the charge to the member, dwelling on his solemn
duties, and the entrant was duly sworn. Often such ceremonies were of
the mock-heroic kind, embroidered with hilarity and sometimes
obscenity. The Oxford Free Cynics required newcomers to learn `a
set of symbolical words and grimaces'. At Philadelphia in the 1730s
masonic rites were parodied by a group who enticed a young apprentice to swear `vile and stupid and profane' oaths, and to take part in
ritual tomfoolery which included kissing the `bare posteriors' of one of
the company. Initiation rituals of the Scottish Order of the Beggars
Bennisona drinking clubmay have entailed masturbation by the
new member. In other cases the ritual was low key, the newcomer
taking an oath, followed by the collective drinking of his health. Some
societies had a special handshake of welcome. Through such acts of
`social magic', boundaries of identity were created and members
endowed with a sense of united purpose, however supercial. 63
Oaths and rules in some societies adjured members to keep its
affairs secretfollowing the custom of the gilds. In practice, this was
of little signicance since club meetings were usually held in public
places and their activities publicized in the press, but the notion of
secrecy encouraged club solidarity and may have stoked up outside
interest in society activities. Ceremonies played a similar role, and were
clearly popular with members. Indeed, in some instances they may
have been an important reason for joining. 64
62

See below, pp. 3778.

See p. 334; W. Arnold, The Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks (London,
1871), 9; R. B. Johnson, The Undergraduate (London, 1928), 1734; Read's Weekly Journal, 6 May
1738; L. C. Jones, The Clubs of the Georgian Rakes (New York, 1942), 185, 2312; Fraternal and
Philanthropic Policy, or Articles of the the British Fraternal and Philanthropic Community United against
Monopoly and Extortion . . . (London, 1796), 6; W. T. Hastings, Phi Beta Kappa as a Secret
Society (Washington, D.C., 1965), 91. P. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Oxford, 1992),
11921.
64
R. Brooke, Liverpool as it was during the Last Quarter of the 18th Century, 1775 to 1800
(Liverpool, 1853), 515; Laws and Regulations of the Chirurgo-Physical Society (Edinburgh, 1791), 17.
63

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

224

Membership

For many noviciates, admission was followed by a probationary

period. The benevolent society associated with the United Friars at
Norwich had a qualifying period of ve years, and for benet clubs it
could be two or three years before a new member was entitled to all
the privileges, though in certain instances the time was as little as three
months. Some associations had a special status for new members: in
the Board of Loyal Brotherhood they were `adopted nephews'; in the
London Medical Society those waiting for fellowships were classed as
candidate members; White's gaming club had a probationary club for
newcomers. 65
Once over these formal hurdles, how far were new members able to
enjoy the full liberties of associational life, as adumbrated in society
constitutions and tracts? In small clubs and societies the ideal of open
mixing, integration, and social equality may have been achieved, but in
other cases it proved more elusive. Earlier, we noted how political
and religious diversity might be tolerated or more often ignored in
societies, but this did not always mean that people of sharply differing
views were in close contact. In his history of clubs, Ned Ward
described how at the meeting of a orist society those of the same
religious persuasion ended up sitting together in separate groups: so
much for religious pluralism. Nor was social mixing much easier to
realize. While the use of club nicknames may have been a way of
eliding status differences, there was probably some truth in Oliver
Goldsmith's account of the arrival of two titled members at a convivial
club gathering: `adieu now all condence: every creature strove who
should most recommend himself to our members of distinction', as
friendship turned into rivalry. 66
New members quickly encountered the inner circles within a
society, some shaped by social, political, and other divisions, others
by institutional factors. Brooks's had an internal Whig club, and the
Sons of the Clergy had associated societies of stewards and of the
festival. In some societies one nds an explicit hierarchy of membership. The British freemasons had three ranks of membership, as did
the Dublin Medical Society and the Lyceum Medical Society in
65
Proposals for Establishing a Society for the Benet of Widows and Orphans (Norwich, 1789),
6 ff.; see below, pp. 3789; BL, Additional MS 49,360, fo. 5v; The committee appointed by the
Medical Society of London . . . (London, 1775) 8; R. J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London
(Cambridge, Mass., 1933), 147.
66
E. Ward, A Compleat and Humorous Acccount of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the
Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1756), 18, 834, 252; CUL, Additional MS 5340
(Zodiac Club); O. Goldsmith, Essays, 1765 (Menston, 1970), 312.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

225

London; the Northern Association of Protestant Schoolmasters had

four classes. Differentiation within societies might be linked to graduated scales of payment, and clubs were also affected by an increasingly elaborate and formalized cursus honorum, everything being run by
oligarchic committees. 67 Even in less hierarchic societies, there might
be an informal division between an inner core of members, often
linked to the ofcers, and a more peripheral, less active group. Writing
in the 1740s, Maurice Johnson commented that in `societies well
stored and frequented by members of greatest abilities . . . how few
there are who would give themselves any trouble to promote them any
other way than by their conversation' when there, and by the payment
of subscriptions. 68
Joining a society involved a protracted and complex process of
screening, of passing through all kinds of gateways, before integration
into the membership. Even then integration was often incomplete,
tensions arising among the membership and challenging the rhetoric
of harmony.

vii
So unity and cohesion had to be promoted in other ways: through
efforts to instil a collective ethos and identity. From the seventeenth
century solidarity was honed by focusing on the specialist interests of
the better-off, leading to an extraordinary profusion of interest-group
societies. There were other strategies too, not least the incorporation
into club life of many of the ingredients of traditional socializing,
including drinking, feasting, singing, and gambling. Food and drink
were fundamental to most club meetings until the end of the eighteenth century, assiduously promoted by that leading patron of
societies, the drink interest. The feast song of the Ipswich Monday
Night Club proclaimed `no club can exist without eating and drinking',
a sentiment shared by a Dorset social club which had `for a fundamental principle, [to] eat, drink, and be merry'. Alcoholic intake was
staggeringly high. At sessions of the Zodiac Club in Cambridge in the
1720s the eight or nine members usually imbibed over four bottles of
67
W. S. Lewis et al. (eds.), Horace Walpole's Correspondence (London, 1937 83), xxix. 335 n.;
N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . . 16551978
(Oxford, 1978), 813; see below, p. 334; Laws of the Dublin Medical Society (Dublin, 1789), 33;
Wellcome Institute Library, WMS/MS 140A; Rules of the Association of Protestant Schoolmasters in
the North of England (Newcastle, 1807), 89.
68
J. Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, Vol. III(2) (London, 1790), 402.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

226

Membership

wine apiece. The St Alban's medical club in London preferred a

cocktail of claret, port, sherry, fruit brandy, and strong beer. The
Amicable Club of Warrington spent a major part of the cost of its
dinners on alcohol, while in upper New York state, members of
an Albany social club drank liquor through funnels to accelerate
consumption. 69
Drinking (and feasting) was important not only for the sake of
traditional fellowship and intoxication, and of keeping the landlord
happy, but also because it encouraged social openness among
members and a new sociable order based less on wealth, status, or
seniority than on an ability to hold one's liquor. When Alexander
Hamilton visited the fashionable Hungarian Club at New York in
the 1740s he found that the members believed `that a man could
not have a more sociable quality or enduement [endowment] than to
be able to pour down seas of liquor and remain unconquered while
others sank under the table'. At meetings of the Brilliants, a London
debating club, `the principal orators towards midnight, through reiterated potation, generally became speechless'. William Dyott took
great pleasure in recording how, at a grand society feast at Halifax,
Nova Scotia, the governor and military commander got `so drunk they
could scarce stand'. In this way the social world was turned upside
down in more ways than one. Society drinking was closely linked to
the important ritual of toasting and its emphasis on the mutuality and
solidarity of members. At a club dinner attended by `Mr Fitz Adam',
`we were no sooner sat down than everybody . . . drank every body's
health, which made a tumultuous kind of noise'. Though toasting
featured in most public drinking by the eighteenth century, it was
integrated into club activities through the use of special club drinking
vessels and rites, members both severally drinking to one another and
collectively celebrating en famille patrons, patronesses, and common
causes through the downing of a succession of bumpers. 70
Society dinners and feasts not only involved heavy drinking and
toasting but expressed solidarity through commensality. Society
69

The Suffolk Garland (Ipswich, 1818), 182; Sherborne Mercury, 9 Dec. 1754; CUL, Additional
MS 5340, fos. 16 ff.; Wellcome Institute Library, MS 6216, fos. 3v ff.; Warrington Public
Library, MS 13 (unfoliated); S. E. Baldwin, `Young Man's Journal of a Hundred Years Ago',
New Haven Colony Historical Soc. Papers, 4 (1888), 199.
70
C. Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr Alexander Hamilton, 1744
(London, n.d.), 423; T. Maurice, Memoirs of the Author of Indian Antiquities (London, 181922),
part 3, p. 4; R. W. Jeffery (ed.), Dyott's Diary (London, 1907), 456; Dublin Mercury, 1821 Feb.
1769; Gentleman's Magazine, 24 (1754), 449; for toasting in general see above, pp. 1634.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

227

dinners involved rules and rhythms, the sequence of dishes being

interleaved with pauses (often for toasts), and the correct manners
of consumption. Club plate and dinnerware were usually on display;
traditional repasts were servedthe Royal Society Club had plum
pudding, and the Glasgow Sons of the Clergy feasted on haggis,
sheep's head, tripe, and black puddings; and members frequently sat
together in a special order. Nothing was truer than Addison's remark
that `our modern celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and
drinking', although not all of them enjoyed the prandial entertainment of the Annapolis Tuesday Club, where it was said of the
president's arrangements that `had he gone no further than rack
punch, iced cake, plum pudding, custard, syllabub, apple pie,
partridge pie . . . fricasees, hashes and venison pasties, things might
have gone tolerably well . . .' 71
Other activities reinforced fraternal solidarity. As we shall see, feast
days usually involved members going together in procession to
church, where the preacher lauded the club and its members. There
was a stress on the traditional language of fellowship. At the
Gloucestershire Society feast in Bristol, it was noted that `we call
each other brother and neighbour on this day'. Feast days and other
public occasions usually involved the ofcers and ordinary members
wearing regalia and special uniforms to emphasize corporate unity. 72
Music was another pillar of club collegiality. Meetings and feasts
usually concluded in boisterous singing, solos invariably followed by
catches or choruses for the ensemble. At Edward Cave's literary club,
`we sang extempore songs, every rst and third line riming, to the tune
of Children in the Wood, Black Joe etc.'. Traditional boozing songs
were popular, particularly saucy or smutty ones, and by the later
eighteenth century patriotic ditties were in vogue, but most societies
had their own songs (quite often published in collections). Although
the masons, Bucks, and other well-known societies dominated the
output, we nd songs for such diverse bodies as the United Friars of
Norwich, the Uttoxeter Anacreontic Society, and the Hambledon
cricket club, which had one, written by a Mr Cotton, framed and
hung on its wall. Some societies added concerts and recitals to their
71
Bourdieu, Distinction, 196; Geikie, Royal Society Club, 22; J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs
(Glasgow, 1864), 191 n.; D. F. Bond (ed.), The Spectator, Vol. I (Oxford, 1965), 42; Micklus
(ed.), Tuesday Club, i. 190.
72 See below, pp. 2659; A. Bedford, Unity, Love and Peace Recommended . . . (Bristol, 1714),
1; A. F. Calvert, St Alban's Lodge No. 29, 17281928 (London, 1928), 234; Rules and Orders of the
Society of Archers named Robin Hood's Bowmen (London, 1790), 67.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

228

Membership

entertainments. The Gentlemen's Society at Spalding had instrumental

and choral concerts performed by the local music society, while at
Annapolis the Tuesday Club listened to specially composed works. 73
As with public socializing in general, gaming and gambling were
widespread, spreading far beyond the connes of specialist gaming
clubs like Brooks's or the more common card clubs. `The itch for
gaming', William Hutton observed, `is predominant in every rank.'
Virtually no type of society was exempt, whether they were social
clubs, neighbourhood societies, orists' feasts, medical societies (like
the Edinburgh Aesculapian Society), bell-ringing clubs, or music
societies. 74 Clubs kept wager books for members to record their
bets on political news, military or diplomatic events, personal incidents, and almost anything else.75 Despite its potential for causing
individual disputes, ideally gaming reinforced links between members
and served to redistribute modest sums of wealth in a random way,
underlining equality and unity.
Club fraternalism was further encouraged by rituals borrowed from
or modelled on domestic and neighbourhood customs. Marriages and
the birth of children (or grandchildren) were marked by drinkings and
the payment of special nes. Economic and social successelevation
to public ofce, or the award of a titlewas honoured and shared by
the membership. Solidarity was sustained, enhanced even, by death.
The most important activity of many societies was their involvement
in the obsequies of a membera function inherited from the
medieval fraternities and gilds. Collective memories of societies
were also preserved through portraits of members in club-rooms,
club toasts, and the use of plate or other items bequeathed in their
wills. 76
73
C. L. Carlson, `Edward Cave's Club and its Project for a Literary Review', Philological
Quarterly, 17 (1938), 116; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, i. 127; for masonic songs see pp. 3267;
[P.D.], A Candid Enquiry into the Principles and Practices of the most Ancient and Honourable Society of
Bucks . . . (London, 1770 edn.), 95 ff.; CUL, Call No.: MR 290 b. 75. 103; The Loyal Miscellany.
A Choice Collection of Constitutional Songs sung at the Anacreontic Society Uttoxeter . . . (Uttoxeter,
1793); Hants. RO, 4 M/85/1 (unfoliated.); Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vi. 1112; J. B. Talley,
Secular Music in Colonial Annapolis: The Tuesday Club, 174556 (Urbana, Ill., 1988). I am grateful
to Dr Talley for playing for me some of the club's music on my visit to Annapolis in 1988.
74
Greater London RO, Acc. 2371; Hints for a Reform, particularly in the Gambling Clubs
(London, 1784); Strathclyde Regional Archives, Minute Book of the Board of Greencloth (Glasgow,
1891); Warrington Public Library, MS 14 (Eagle and Child Card Club); Hutton, Courts of
Requests, 187; Guildhall, MS 2841(1).
75
Guildhall, MS 20,748, 44 and passim; Strang, Glasgow, 217.
76
Howell, Ugly Face Clubb, p. 48; Guildhall, MSS: 3406; 544(1), fos. 8 and passim; 2841(1);
see below, pp. 2478.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

229

Yet what was central to the life of many of our clubs, uniting their
membership, was not drinking per se, nor feasting, singing, or the
various ceremonies, but conversation. This was not limited to social
clubs: at learned societies discussion frequently strayed into conversation about hunting, women, and the like. The art of conservation was
ruled by a set of manuals, which stressed co-operation and the equality
of speaker rights, informality and spontaneity, and the avoidance of
business talk; how far the membership obeyed these rules no doubt
determined the character and attraction of a particular society. Boswell
recorded a meeting of the Club of Honest Whigs in 1769, where `we
have wine and punch . . . some of us smoke a pipe, conversation goes
on pretty formally, sometimes sensibly, and sometimes furiously'. 77
Not all of the conversation was inspired: at one club `it ran chiey into
narrative and grew duller and duller with every bottle'; Goldsmith
sniped at the `pert simper, fat and profound stupidity' which passed
for smart discourse; and others noted the prolonged silences. At an
east London masonic lodge, Brother Hayes was `ned for falling into
sleep' during one of the meetings.
Jests and conundrums, riddles, rebuses and anagrams, even, in
some circles, puns, were an important part of the repartee. If club
reports are any guide, much of this would seem to us lame, ribald, and
facetious, but it may have served as a kind of neutral language, free
from political, religious, or class inection. 78 Newsfrom newspapers, magazines, and gossipwas another vital staple of conversation, whether about public affairs, fashion, or personalities. At John
Shaw's club in Manchester all `the news of the town is generally
known'. There was a premium on a merry-go-round of matters. A
French visitor noted that `the conversation at these meetings turns
upon a variety of topics each of which continues as long as the
company have anything to say upon it'. During one fairly typical
evening in 1725, members of John Byrom's club in St Paul's churchyard `talked about Figg's [boxing arena in Oxford St], freemasons,
numbers', and shorthand. William Wyndham was thought not a good
77

N. Scarfe (ed.), A Frenchman's Year in Suffolk, Suffolk Record Soc., 30 (1988), 189;
P. Burke, The Art of Conversation (Oxford, 1993), 901, 110, 112, 117; V. W. Crane, `The Club
of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty', WMQ, 3rd series, 23 (1966), 229.
78
Gentleman's Magazine, 24, pp. 4501; Goldsmith, Essays, 23; F. Howkins, The Mount
Moriah Lodge, No. 34 (London, 1915), 31; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, i. 351 and passim; D. S.
Shields, `Anglo-American Clubs: Their Wit, Their Heterodoxy, Their Sedition', WMQ, 3rd
series, 51 (1994), 293304; also id., Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill,
NC, 1997), ch. 6.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

230

Membership

clubbing man, because `he is too fastidious to admit that varied

intercourse which gives such associations peculiar value'.79
Through conviviality and free-wheeling conversation, societies
sought to promote not just club solidarity but also the pursuit of
happiness. The Spectator proclaimed the ideal: in clubs men are `knit
together by a love of society [and] . . . for their own improvement, or
for the good of others, or at least to relax themselves from the
business of the day'. North American societies likewise aimed at
`the advantage and the happiness of men, to soften their cares . . .
and to render life more pleasing and happy'. And the ambition was
realized, at least in part. At a celebratory evening at a Winchester
social club we hear that `good humour and fun was preserved in
masterly fashion'. With commercial pressures ever more intense,
Hugh Potts of Philadelphia wrote that, by attending the Junto club,
he found `some relaxation from the anxiety which attends business'.
In similar fashion, members of a West London pigeon-shooting club
`experienced a condescending relaxation from the fatigues of ofcial
city dignity and never enjoyed greater festivity [or] witnessed more
exhilarating conviviality'. In a club at its best, `time seemed short: not
a moment's boredom'. In addition to formal sessions, clubs fostered
private socializing and informal meetings amongst groups of
members. 80
Personal enjoyment was heightened by the opportunities for social
and economic advancement. With their free and easy discussions and
more formal debates, society meetings helped members to rene their
manners, their dress sense, conversational and debating skills, as well
as genteel speech and gestures. 81 Acquiring the trappings of genteel
respectability, members won access to a wider social universe. As
Abraham Tucker remarked, a club member `may hope for benets
. . . that he could never have acquired by the ordinary methods of
industry'. Societies were important places, not just to talk about
business, but also to get employment and commissions, in turn opening the door to wider patronage networks. Jeremiah Davidson met the
Duke of Atholl at a masonic lodge and painted his portrait, which led
to a series of commissions from the duke's friends and relations. The
79
F. S. Stancliffe, John Shaw's 17381938 (n.p., 1938), 62; Grosley, Tour, i. 1623; Parkinson
(ed.), Byrom Journal, i(1), 121; Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, ii. 478.
80
Bond (ed.), Spectator, i. 42; The Birmingham Register (Birmingham, 17645), 55; Hants. RO,
18/M 84 W/1 (unfoliated); `Selections from the Correspondence between Hugh Roberts
and Benjamin Franklin', Pennsylvania Magazine, 38 (1914), 292; Sport. Mag., 1 (17923), 252;
81
Jones, Remarks, 20.
Scarfe (ed.), Frenchman's Year, 189; see below, p. 430.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

231

artist Arthur Pond, who joined several interlocking societies in the

early Hanoverian period, clearly used them to acquire patrons and
make social contacts.82 More typically, the Sussex glover John Burgess
did a good trade selling gloves to fellow members at a Lindeld
friendly society. Scottish masonic lodges launched Robert Burns's
career as a poet by providing subscriptions for his early books of
verse, while Cambridge's Zodiac Club recorded a series of chairs,
livings, and fellowships obtained by members through its support
and lobbying. Some box clubs had explicit rules for members to assist
one another in business. 83
That vital convergence of individual self-interest and club solidarity
can be seen in other areas. Associations were places to try to resolve
professional issues, and some societies, like that at the Rose tavern in
Bristol, had a rule for arbitration among members before litigation.
Members' purses might also benet from the public functions of an
association. Employers subscribing to the Middlesex Society for
Educating Poor Children in the Christian Religion were reminded
that, once the young pauper boys had been trained, they would be
ready to work `in your manufactories by land or on board your
commercial vessels by sea'. Earlier charity schools made the same
point. 84
Mutual help was also crucial when members became sick, elderly, or
fell into nancial difculty. Most societiesnot just benet or benevolent clubshad a charitable function. In some cases there were
separate funds (as with the masons); in other instances, help was given
on a personal basis. When club members are distressed `the purse of
every individual of the society is immediately opened to them'. All
kinds of society gave sums to the poor and former members, and a
body which was stingy in this respect was liable to public ridicule.
Members in nancial trouble might be bailed out by fellow members,
just as a number of clubs aided members through loans. Becoming ill,
Bowman Brown, one of the Amicable and Brotherly Society in
82
A. Tucker, The Country Gentleman's Advice to His Son . . . (London, 1761), 43; Vertue Note
Books, iii. 129; Lippincott, Selling Art, 19, 30, 42, 457.
83
D. F. Burgess (ed.), No Continuing City: The Diary and Letters of John Burgess . . . (Redhill,
1989), 44, 48; M. Roberts, `Burns and the Masonic Enlightenment', in J. J. Carter and J. H.
Pittock (eds.), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987), 3337; CUL, MS 5340, fos.
6566v; Rules and Orders for the Purse Club at Skeyton . . . (Norwich, 1792); for masonic aid to
brethren see p. 328 ff.
84
Bristol Central Library, Bristol Collection, Item no. 26064, p. 38; S. Addington, The
Divine Architect. A Sermon . . . (London, 1785), 21; W. Sutton, The Charitable Education of Poor
Children, Recommended (London, 1722), 1820.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

232

Membership

London, required out-patient treatment at St Bartholomew's Hospital

through the intervention of a fellow member.85 Mutual support,
formal and informal, was a key unifying function of most societies,
and a major reason why people joined them.
Finally, members were increasingly united and sustained by the public
status and reputation societies afforded them in the wider world. Club
membership gave a man the kind of social credibility and standing that
led people to do business with him or employ him `without further
enquiry into his character'. Here, refusal of membership could be a
disaster. In Maryland, Anthony Stewart, a married man `verging towards
the age of 40 years', was promised founding membership of the
Homony Club at Annapolis, and when this did not happen, complained
that he had suffered `many jeers and outs . . . [and] malicious insinuations against his . . . character, whereby he . . . is likely to suffer greatly
in his worldly affairs by being deemed unworthy of the countenance and
protection of his friends'. Men beneted not just from the standing and
credibility of membership, but from the strong action societies took to
defend the reputation of individual members. Richard Rich thanked the
London Catch Club for having publicly repudiated the `infamous libel
against me by Giardini', and for having expressed their `just indignation'
at the offence. The Trim Independent Club went further, and published
several notices denouncing a Dublin paper for an attack on one of its
members that was `totally false . . . [for] the conduct of that member
demands our highest approbation'. Increasingly, societies bolstered their
communal standing through a commitment to public works and public
improvement and their efforts to create, via the media and other means,
public images of themselves and their membership. Indeed, clubs and
societies can be seen as a massive collective investment in image-making
for the better-off and respectable classes. An established society which
failed to maintain its reputation risked causing serious embarrassment to
members. As Thomas Bisse warned the Three Choirs music society at
Hereford in 1726, having `been approved of and encouraged by the
world . . . [we may not] dissolve without giving an offence to religion,
society, brotherhood, harmony, and to all mankind'.86
85
An Apology for the Robin-Hood Society (London, 1751), 48; Grosley, Tour, i. 160; Garlick
et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, iii. 983; Strathclyde Regional Archives: AGN 466; TD 200.7;
Guildhall, MS 9383/1.
86
Tucker, Country Gentleman's Advice, 434; Maryland Historical Soc., MS 2081, pp. 1213;
BL, Music Dept., H 2788 rr, p. 4; Dublin Evening Post, 14 Jan. 1790; see also a New England
example: W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD., Vol. II (Salem, Mass., 1907), 249; Bisse,
Sermon Preach'd in the Cathedral Church of Hereford, 47.

5.11.99 15:56 06 Chapter 0394

Membership

233

viii
Joining clubs and societies, for whatever reason, became an increasingly common social practice, almost a way of life, among townsmen
in the Georgian period, affecting most respectable social groups,
migrants, young men, and others. Given the broad and volatile social
demand for membership, admission processes were understandably
selective and complex, helping to winnow out the undesirable,
attempting to channel would-be members into the appropriate bodies.
The integration of members was also promoted by the stress on
specialist interests, by traditional rites and more fully fashionable
practices of fellowship, and, last but not least, by appeals to the
collectivity of personal enjoyment and self-interest. However, despite
these efforts, assimilation was often only partially effective, the ideal
of unity and harmony hard to achieve. The next chapter examines the
reasons for this, and the ways in which societies and their leaders
sought to organize greater internal order and coherence, and, in the
process, ensure associational success.
m

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

7
Organization

Riven by disputes, the Royal Society erupted in 1783, complaints

against the president, Sir Joseph Banks, being `stopped by a clamour
more worthy of a Covent Garden rabble than the fellows of a learned
society'. A decade later An Authentic Narrative of the Dissensions and
Debates in the Royal Society recorded renewed faction ghting over
admissions and elections. 1 Despite all the rhetoric of associational
solidarity and the mechanisms for controlling admission and enhancing cohesion, societies often experienced internal conict. The Royal
Academy of Arts was set up in 1768 following a schism within the
Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain, but the Academy
proved equally prone to division. At the close of the century the
professor of painting, James Barry, launched a noisy attack on the
president, Benjamin West, and other members of the Council, making
allegations of nancial abuse. Nor were smaller societies immune.
Exeter's Literary Society suffered acrimonious exchanges in the
1790s, while Tiverton's corporation club descended to family feuds
and personal invective. 2 The New England minister William Bentley
remarked on the `many mortications in such associations', which led
to animosities and division. On occasion, disputes might turn violent.
In the 1730s we hear of an East Anglian ringing club, split over sharing
the prots from ringing the peals at a wedding, where the members
`fought till one died on the spot and another was desperately
wounded'. 3
Internal disputes were not the only problem undermining the
1
An History of the Instances of Exclusion from the Royal Society (London, 1784), 12; An
Authentic Narrative of the Dissensions and Debates in the Royal Society . . . (London, 1794); for a
more optimistic gloss see J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment (Cambridge,
1994), 10, 1113.
2
S. C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy, 17681968 (London, 1968), 39 ff.;
J. Barry, A Letter to the Dilettanti Society (London, 1799); R. Polwhele, Traditions and Recollections
(London, 1826), ii. 3623; J. Bourne (ed.), Georgian Tiverton: The Political Memoranda of Beavis
Wood, 176898, Devon and Cornwall Record Soc., ns, 29 (1986), p. xxiii.
3
W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD, Vol. II (Salem, Mass., 1907), 76; Read's
Weekly Journal, 3 July 1731.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

235

cohesion and viability of societies. They also suffered from poor

attendance, unsatisfactory accommodation, and nancial instability.
In response, clubs and societies developed complex administrative
regulations and organizational structures. They also took steps to
promote themselves in a range of ways. For all the problems, the
organizational achievement of many societies was increasingly
impressive, setting them apart from other types of public sociability.

i
In the rst place, however, we need to investigate the reasons for the
internal conict in societies. As well as personal animosity, perhaps
aggravated (as at Tiverton) by family disputes, there were other causes
of friction. In spite of the elaborate admission procedures to screen
out the undesirable or unacceptable, this process was never completely
successful. As the Roman Catholic Society of Warrington noted, the
incautious choice of members was responsible for the `too frequent
feuds and dissensions' of many societies. It was difcult to square the
circle of creating unity and cohesion out of disparate social, political,
religious, and other groups. One New Englander observed of the
typical society that, although `we weekly meet in a room, we are no
more united than oil, water and spirit in a glass'. Social tension was a
recurrent motif, no doubt. At a Halifax music club in the 1760s, class
enmity ared between the local cleric and his Cambridge-educated
sons, and the mainly artisan members. Banks at the Royal Society was
accused of encouraging `every titled man, foreigner or English', to
apply, while excluding professional men; there and elsewhere, religious
differences were also implicated. 4 Pace the stress of many societies on
political neutrality and religious tolerance, partisan rivalries persisted
sub rosa, and boiled over from time to time. In a few cases they
precipitated the club's collapse.5
Intellectual and professional differences also served as a focus of
controversy. The agitation over Wyatt's election to the Society of
Antiquaries was caused by hostility among a number of conservative
members to his neo-Gothic restoration of Salisbury and Durham
4
Warrington Public Library, P1265, Rules and Orders for the Government of the Roman Catholic
Society in Warrington (Warrington, 1823), p. iv; The Massachusetts Magazine, 1 (1789), 221; A Plain
and True Narrative of the Differences . . . [at] the Musical-Club, Holden at the Old-Cock in Halifax
. . . (Halifax, 1767); History of the Instances of Exclusion, 7, 1011.
5
e.g. at Dublin and Norwich: E. B. Day, Mr Justice Day of Kerry, 17451841 (Exeter, 1938),
767; NNRO, MS 502 (unpaginated).

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

236

Organization

cathedrals. Feuding in the Royal Society was exacerbated by rivalry

between mathematicians and those engaged in natural history. Commercial rivalry might also intrude, not least in professional bodies: the
Academy of Ancient Music was `a natural seed-bed for jealousy and
conict' among London performers, while members of the Architects
Club were frequently at crossed swords. Bad business advice was
another cause of strife. In one case, Colonel Smith advised a fellow
member of a gaming club at the Mount Street coffee-house in London
to use a certain stockbroker; when a dispute occurred with the broker,
the other member, a gentleman of fortune, challenged Smith to a duel.
Smith asked the club to settle the dispute, but his opponent attacked
and injured him; Smith sued the man in King's Bench and won
handsome damages. 6
Heavy drinking, so vital for traditional club conviviality, inamed
tempers and triggered many of the quarrels. Thomas Hill condemned clubs which, `by a dozen of half pints . . . convert fools
into mad men', and Alexander Hamilton described how `when the
empty bottles are piled up by dozens, then . . . [club members]
gradually go into disputes, brawls, scufes . . . and thence ensue
broken heads'. At other times, organizational factors were inuential.
Controversies in the Royal Society were linked to the domineering
attitude of the president, who was accused of making himself
`monarch of the society'. 7 The trend towards oligarchic control,
combined with the increased size of many societies, probably helps
to explain the apparent bunching of disputes towards the end of the
period. In addition, particular types of society had their own administrative problems, as we shall nd in the case of the freemasons and
benet clubs.
Expulsion or exclusion was a common outcome to disputes: for
example, Barry at the Royal Academy was not only expelled but
deprived of his professorship. On other occasions aggrieved members
resigned in a huff. In 1795 the Council of Trent Club was thrown in
great disarray when ve members withdrew after the chairman,
George Smith, made a political toast; Smith was forced to resign
6
J. Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 20710; Sir J. Barrow,
Sketches of the Royal Society Club (London, 1971), 34; W. Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in
Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992), 5960; K. Garlick et al. (eds.), The Diary of Joseph
Farington (London, 197884), i. 275 and passim; Sport. Mag., 13 (17989), 2824.
7
Shropshire RO, Attingham Papers, Temp. Ref. 21.167; R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the
Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club by Dr. Alexander Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990), i. 36;
History of the Instances of Exclusion, 3.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

237

before the others would return.8 In the worst-case scenario, divisions

might lead to secession and the formation of a rival body, as happened
to the Incorporated Society of Artists.

ii
No less serious was the endemic problem of low attendance. Early
minutes of the Smeatonian Society complained that meetings `have
been unduly and irregularly attended'; on one evening in 1778, the
vice-president and secretary waited alone and wretched, and at 10 p.m.,
`being clear and full of fear that no more members would appear', they
abandoned the meeting. Some years later, the secretary of the
Linnaean Society declared that he was `completely tired of attending
there by myself ', with no other ofcers and `frequently . . . not
members enough to make a society'. Poor turnouts assailed all types
and level of society, from artisanal benet clubs, local masonic
lodges, and prosecution societies, to grander bodies, such as the
Society for the Encouragement of Learning and the Society of
Antiquaries. 9
One factor was the cost of attendance, particularly the drinking and
dinners, which could become a heavy burden in times of economic
difculty. In 1796, for instance, the Royal Academy Club had to
reduce the number of its meetings because high prices had forced
up the cost of dinners from 3s 6d to 4s a head. Another problem
(already noted) was competition from a host of other entertainments,
not least other societies. Here the precise timing of meetings was
crucial, to achieve the largest turnout. Most clubs in bigger towns had
agreed fairly standard starting times by the mid-eighteenth century
(6 p.m. in winter and 7 p.m. in summer); but in country towns, where
participants came from further aeld, evening meetings were more
problematical. The Culloden Club met in the afternoon at Kelso in
Scotland; many of the members had left by 4 p.m. or 5 p.m.,
presumably to get home in the light, though the company did not
formally break up until 7 p.m. Similarly, meeting days had to avoid
clashing with the competition and t the work and social timetables of
different membership groups. The London Catch Club changed its
8
Hutchison, Royal Academy, 7980; Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, ii. 4256, 432;
J. Barrington, Personal Sketches of his Own Times (London, 1827), i. 249 ff.
9
BL, Ac. 4314/2 (unpaginated); A. T. Gage and W. T. Stearn, A Bicentenary History of the
Linnean Society of London (London, 1988), 17; C. Atto, `The Society for the Encouragement of
Learning', The Library, 4th series, 19 (19389), 264, 270, 276, 284; Evans, Antiquaries, 923.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

238

Organization

meeting day because of a clash with the opera, whilst freemasons,

worried at the problem of competing lodge nights, published days and
times of meetings in advance in Bell's Weekly Messenger. For respectable
societies, the main meeting days in London bunched around the
middle of the week, probably because many better-off Londoners
took a long weekend away from the hurly-burly of the Great Wen,
in the leafy villages and new villas on the outskirts. London's lowerclass benet clubs, by contrast, focused their meetings during the early
part of the week, around St Monday and Tuesday, the usual time of
rest and relaxation. 10
Virtually every permutation of periodicity appears. In some informal
social clubs, gatherings might take place nightly, but most society
meetings were less frequenttwice-weekly, weekly, every ten days,
fortnightly, every three weeks, monthly, at the full moon, every six
weeks, quarterly, four-monthly, twice-yearly, or annually. A number
had different types of meeting. Private meetings, closed except to
members, might alternate with others open to visitors. Usually, however, the preference was for a single cycle of fortnightly or monthly
meetings, climaxing with the annual feast.
The timing of feast days was equally crucial for mobilizing the
membership. For upper-class societies this had to t in with the
London `season'. By the late-seventeenth-century it usually began in
October and November at the opening of Parliament and lasted until
the late spring, as landed families ed the dirt and darkness of the
countryside in winter and the pollution and disease of the metropolitan high summer. Under George II the London season (following
the later start of the parliamentary session) opened after Christmas,
did not reach its climax until March or April, and nished in June.
Reecting these changes, in the mid-seventeenth century the main
London feasts were held in June and July, but by the end of the
century they had moved to November and December. During the
Georgian period fashionable feast days shifted forward into March
and April. For middle- and lesser-rank Londoners, the summer, rather
than the winter or spring, saw the peak of their social activity. More
than eight in ten of all Middlesex benet clubs held their anniversaries
10
Garlick et al. (eds.), Farington Diary, iii. 671; J. B. Paul (ed.), The Diary of George Ridpath,
Scottish Historical Soc., 3rd series, 2 (1922), 133, 244; BL, Music Dept., H 2788 rr, p. 43; Bell's
Weekly Messenger, 11, 18 Sept. 1796, and passim. For a more detailed discussion of time and
sociability see P. Clark, `Tempo, spazio and dialogo sociale: mutamenti sociali nelle citta
britanniche del XVIII secolo', in C. Olmo and B. Lepetit (eds.), La Citta et le sue Storie (Turin,
1995), 24250.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

239

during June or July. As with meeting days, the calendar of anniversaries displayed important local and regional variations, affected by
economic and cultural rhythms on the ground.11
Seasonality affected not just the feast days, but the annual schedule
of meetings. Elite societies in the capital found it difcult to hold
meetings outside the `season'a dead, empty time, when `coffeehouse boys drink their own coffee grounds and sell the newspapers
to make paper kites'. On a trip to London in 1712, the German
Conrad von Uffenbach found that the Royal Society `does not meet
during the whole of the summer and very little from Michaelmas
onwards'. Its associated body, the Royal Society Club, did dine out
of season, but in 1753, for example, the average attendance between
July and November was only two-thirds that at the height of the
season. 12 The Virtuosi of St Luke tried to get over the difculty by
having weekly sessions in the winter and monthly ones during the
summer. Other bodies did their best to muster members in summertime by organizing attractive country excursions and feasts. But most
upper-class associations and some middle-rank ones cut their losses
and followed the Royal Society's example. The Board of Loyal Brotherhood usually held its last meetings of the season in June or July and
reassembled in December. The Catch Club met from November until
June, though by the 1790s attendance before Christmas was so poor
that the start of meetings was eventually changed to after the New
Year. 13
Long summer breaks could threaten societies with lost momentum
and a permanent loss of membership. Criticizing the practice of
London's learned societies, Maurice Johnson stressed how their
Spalding and Peterborough counterparts functioned throughout the
year. Country towns were less affected by fears of high mortality and
pollution in the summer months, and may even have beneted from
the metropolitan exodus at that time. The largest provincial cities
increasingly imitated the metropolitan pattern, however. Already in
1686, members of the Dublin philosophical society were `so much
employed about their own private business that our meetings have
been for the whole summer very thin . . . and many days for want of
11
P. Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 16891798 (Oxford, 1991), 1412;
see below, p. 381.
12
SRO (GRH), GD 18/5023/1; W. H. Quarrell and M. Mare (eds.), London in 1710: From
the Travels of Zacharius Conrad von Uffenbach (London, 1934), 99; A. Geikie, Annals of the Royal
Society Club (London, 1917), 46; see also Gloucs. RO, S.O. 3(1), p. 14.
13
BL, Additional MSS: 39,167, fo. 74; 49,360, fos. 6v ff.; Music Dept., H 2788 (unfoliated).

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

240

Organization

company we were forced to adjourn'. Edinburgh's Dialectic Society

similarly recognized the force majeure of a summer adjournment.14
As well as eroding an association's solidarity, self-image, and ability
to recruit members, poor attendance at meetings could cripple its
nances. Societies fought back by threatening defaulting members
with nesoften the equivalent of one or two nights' duesbut if
this failed, they usually resorted to exclusion. The greater a society's
prestige and standing, the tougher the policy. The fashionable Board
of Loyal Brotherhood ordained that any member absent for three
meetings without excuse would be expelled; other bodies waited for
up to six meetings before waving the big stick. Where expulsion was in
prospect, delinquent members often preferred to resign. Because of
low attendance and other factors, the turnover of members was
correspondingly high. One can see this at the Neptune masonic lodge
in Deptford. In 1758 three of the thirteen members resigned and one
died. They were replaced by four new members, but over the next
four years a further sixteen resignations occurred, and, though seven
new members were recruited, the lodge was still down to seven
members in 1762. The Fellowship Society at Charleston fared no
better. Of the thirty-three members in 1762, 60 per cent had left or
been excluded within ve years. 15

iii
Low attendance was frequently linked with problems of the venue.
Whilst there were many advantages in meeting at victualling houses,
there were drawbacks too. A perennial complaint against all victuallers
in the early modern period was short measure. Club members were
vociferous about the quantity and quality of the drink provided, and
societies sometimes stipulated the supply of good liquor in their
rules. Disputes over liquor were not the only cause of friction, for
Hanoverian victuallers, increasingly afuent and socially successful,
were not always as deferential as snooty club members expected. In
Anne's reign, for instance, the Board of Loyal Brotherhood took
umbrage when the landlord of the George in Pall Mall behaved
14
J. Nichols, Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, Vol. III(2) (London, 1790), 404; R. T.
Gunther (ed.), Early Science in Oxford, Vol. XII (Oxford, 1939), 191; EUL, Sp. Collections,
Da 67/2.
15
BL: Additional MS 49,360, fo. 7; Sloane MS 3463, fo. 8v; F. W. Golby, History of the
Neptune Lodge . . . No. 22, 17571909 (London, 1910), 201; South Carolina Historical Soc.,
Charleston, Fellowship Society Deposit, Rules.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

241

impertinently to the Duke of Beaufort and other Tory grandees, and

moved to another house.16
The accommodation itself might prove inadequate, particularly if a
society had an expanding membership. Within a year of moving to the
Red Lion in Clement's Lane, London, the Candlewick Ward club was
protesting at the great inconvenience of the house and looking to go
elsewhere. On occasion, society meetings had to be cancelled because
the house was packed with ordinary customers or rooms were doublebooked by other clubs. Relations with the landlord could suffer
because the club's membership included rival victuallers touting for
business. Publicans regularly offered blandishmentssuch as loans or
an agreement to pay off a club's debtsto encourage it to change
premises. 17
Societies lurched about the capital like drunken sailors. The Board
of Loyal Brotherhood, established in 1709, moved in July from the
George in Pall Mall to the Queen's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard; by
the following February it was meeting at Pontack's in the city, but
shifted back that month to the Queen's Arms, though it later returned
to Pontack's. Under George II, the Society of Dilettanti gathered at
the Bedford Head in Covent Garden until 1739, when it moved to the
Fountain in the Strand; from 1743 it was at the Star and Garter in Pall
Mall; after 1749 at the King's Arms, Pall Mall; from 1757 at the Star
and Garter again; and afterwards at Almack's in King's Street. Masonic
lodges were no more sedentary. Those Modern lodges founded in
London between 1717 and 1730 had resided (on average) at four
different public houses before 1740, with seven lodges holding meetings in up to nine premises seriatim. Provincial towns had a more
restricted range of suitable premises, but even so, masonic lodges still
often trailed from one public house to another. 18
Migration between premises had a disruptive effect on the membership.
16
P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 12001830 (London, 1983), 66, 1045;
Mist's Weekly Journal, 11 Dec. 1725; Dublin Mercury, 202 Nov. 1770; Norwich Central Library,
Rules and Orders to be observed and kept by the Benet Society, held at Setche (Lynn, 1797); BL,
Additional MS 49,630, fo. 4. Other grievances included detaining society funds and property:
e.g. W. Hutton, Courts of Requests (Birmingham, 1787), 260; Read's Weekly Journal, 12 June 1736.
17
Guildhall, MS 2841 (1) (unfoliated); By-Laws and Regulations of the Lodge of Love and
Honour No. 75 . . . Falmouth (Falmouth, 1932), 29; E. Oakley, A Speech Deliver'd to the Worshipful
Society of Free and Accepted Masons . . . (London, 1731), 323; H. T. Perkins, Brief Survey of the
Records of the Lodge of Felicity No. 58, 17371937 (Wisbech, n.d.), 32.
18
J. Bayliss, `The October Club, 17101714: A Study in Political Organization' (unpublished M.Litt. thesis, University of Bristol, 1973), 13; L. Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti
(London, 1914), 223; J. Lane, Masonic Records, 17171894 (London, 1895), 3484.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

242

Organization

Clubs could split up over a controversial removal. More commonly,

members became confused over the club's location, as when James
Brydges went off to the Thatched House in London for his Sunday
night club, `but they being removed, I came home'. Again, movement
to a different district made it difcult for some existing members to
travel there, triggering absenteeism and (unless new people joined) a
spiral of decline. 19

iv
Absenteeism, and the inevitable arrears of dues, contributed heavily to
the nancial problems of voluntary associations. Difculties of this
nature were most acute with friendly societies, which, as Hutton
remarked, `consist of those who are willing to receive, but unwilling
to pay'. However, arrears menaced the survival of many kinds of body.
At London's Gloucestershire Society, outstanding membership dues
rose from about 35 in 1773 (71 per cent of annual income), to over
322 in 1788, a catastrophic 283 per cent of income. The smart
Coterie Society had 311 subscribers on its books in the 1770s, but
no more than 229 made any payment, and only a minority of these
paid all their dues. In 1802 the arrears at the Royal Irish Academy had
reached a colossal 1,300. 20 As well as threatening expulsion, societies
used public embarrassment to try to recover debts. At the Toxophilite
Society the names of defaulters were `hung up and exposed in
Toxophilite Hall', prior to exclusion, whilst the Chirurgo-Physical
Society of Edinburgh decreed the ejection of anyone owing more
than 6s, and for him to `have his name inserted in the printed editions
of the laws with the word expelled' against it. 21
Membership arrears were not the only nancial problem, however.
Mismanagement by society ofcers was common. The failure of
Edinburgh's Pantheon Society was blamed on its debts and the treasurer's perdy, while John Walker, the treasurer of Northwood's building society at Birmingham, was accused of failing to settle accounts
and of misinvesting several hundred pounds. The president of the
Bristol Loyal Society was charged with starving the members at
19
Huntington Library, San Marino, Stowe MS 26 (1) (unfoliated); A. Spencer (ed.),
Memoirs of William Hickey (London, n.d.), ii. 31415; Golby, Neptune Lodge, 336.
20
Hutton, Courts of Requests, 161; Gloucs. RO, S.O. 3(1), p. 4; PRO, C 104/146 (part 1);
T. O'Raifeartaigh (ed.), The Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 1985), 22.
21
BL, Additional MS 28,801, fo. 160; Laws and Regulations of the Chirurgo-Physical Society
(Edinburgh, 1791), 19.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

243

dinner, refusing to pay the cook, and pocketing the proceeds. Sometimes it was a case of malfeasance, more often of simple incompetence and lack of experience. Mixing up personal and club funds
meant that, when ofcers died, their executors might refuse to repay
society money from the estate, precipitating a nancial crisis. 22
Nor were ofcers the sole offenders. There are numerous references to members (and landlords) purloining club funds and property.
Here the difculty was that voluntary associations had little redress at
law when nancial matters went wrong. The absence of government
regulation (until the 1790s) had as its downside a lack of legal protection, with the Westminster courts refusing to adjudicate in internal
disputes. At Birmingham, the court of requests heard cases concerning members of benet societies, but it is not clear whether other local
courts did the same. In the mid-eighteenth century a small number of
societies sought to secure protection from the Westminster courts by
registering their rules and agreements in King's Bench and Exchequer,
but this was quite expensive. Other bodies tried to establish trusts,
and required ofcers to give personal bonds against default, albeit
with limited success. As we know, only a fairly small group of societies
could afford the security of incorporation, at least in the British
Isles. 23

v
Conict, secession, poor attendance, and nancial difculty imposed
great strains on many societies and contributed to their limited lifespan. Archery and bell-ringing clubs were notable for their short lives,
as were masonic lodges. A young diarist noted that `never was a
[learned] society . . . subsisted long in Hull', and some associations
survived for only a few months. 24 However, internal factors were not
22
I. S. Lustig and F. A. Pottle (eds.), Boswell: The Applause of the Jury (London, 1982), 62 n.;
Birmingham Central Library, Archives Dept., 260742; also N&Q, 201 (1956), 404; A few short
and true reasons why a late member was expell'd the Loyal Society (Bristol, 1714); St James Chronicle,
1820 Nov. 1790.
23
Kentish Post, 12 May 1750; Read's Weekly Journal, 12 June 1736; Hutton, Courts of Requests,
161 and passim; Aris' Birmingham Gazette, 9 July 1770; for friendly society registration in the
courts and trusts see pp. 3689.
24
E. Hargrove, Anecdotes of Archery (York, 1792), 8891; BL, Additional MS 19,370, fo. 32;
E. Morris, The History and Art of Change Ringing (London, 1931), 138 and passim; see below,
p. 309; G. Jackson, Hull in the 18th Century (Oxford, 1972), 278; S. Rothblatt, `The Student
Sub-Culture and the Examination System in Early 19th-Century Oxbridge', in L. Stone
(ed.), The University in Society, Vol. I (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 254; NLS, Acc. 9653.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

244

Organization

the only cause of this low survival rate: changing fashions took their
toll, along with competition from other clubs and types of public
socializing. In smaller provincial towns the limited size of the social
clientele was a threat to associational stability, particularly during the
earlier period. At Spalding, Maurice Johnson bemoaned the fact that
there were relatively few people there who could be induced to attend
a learned society. In Pembrokeshire, it was said that the whole county
`will hardly afford two [religious] societies'. This did not mean that
clubs and societies were doomed to early failure and dissolution.
Societies in difculty sometimes found salvation through mergers.
Masonic lodges were particularly adept at combining with other
branches to revamp and revitalize their membership and activities. 25
More crucial, however, was the adoption by societies of long-term
organizational strategies, both to overcome the varied threats to their
survival and to boost their reputation and recruitment.
Administrative regulation was increasingly seen as the best defence
against the dangerous tide of internal division and instability. For the
Ancient Society of York Florists, `Happiness being the ultimate end
proposed by the society, it is necessary that all proper lawful and
effectual means' be employed to procure it. While owers `never fail
to inspire with a certain joy', binding members together, nevertheless
`in all companies that have been formed to encourage any art or
science it has been found absolutely necessary' to devise regulations
`for the better conducting thereof and also for the preventing of
disputes'. When the Speculative Society was re-established at
Cambridge in 1793 (after an earlier collapse), its rst act was to
commission two members to draw up a comprehensive set of rules
to ensure its future stability. The disintegration of informal societies
without rules was widely noted. 26
As we know, there was a general trend towards more complex
institutional arrangements. A number of societies developed afliative
or federal structures. The most advanced type of federal organization
was the masonic orders, but other, more or less formal, networks of
linked societies included the quasi-masonic orders (including the
25
Nichols, Bibliotheca, iii(2). 390; M. Clement (ed.), Correspondence and Minutes of the S.P.C.K.
Relating to Wales, 16991740 (Cardiff, 1952), 10; also W. C. Lukis (ed.), The Family Memoirs of the
Rev. William Stukeley Vol. I, Surtees Soc., 73 (1880), 109; Vol. II, Surtees Soc., 76 (1883), 340;
see p. 319.
26
York City Reference Library, MS Ancient Society of York Florists, vol. 1 (unfoliated);
BL, Additional MS 19,716, fos. 2534; Grub St Journal, 20 Feb. 1734/5; NLW, Bronwydd MS
2144.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

245

Cincinnati), those associated with the SPCK, trade clubs, American

fraternity clubs, various philanthropic or improvement bodies, and
later political societies. Usually, mutual recognition of members
occurred, and linked or corresponding societies helped each other
with fund-raising, although only the masonic grand lodges appear to
have run central funds with levies on local bodies. Many individual
associations followed the pattern of greater formality, with a rash of
elaborate rules and complex constitutions by the close of the eighteenth century. Some of the early society rules were probably inuenced by gild regulations, but later societies copied one another. The
Universal Society of London modelled at least some of its regulations
on those of the Society of Arts; political bodies like the Constitutional
Information societies agreed almost identical rules; and the London
Corresponding Society recommended that local societies should copy
its own provisions. 27 Printed society rules were cannibalized by
draughtsmen producing schemes for their own organizations. On
occasion, a lawyer was called in to help with the drafting, particularly
after the restrictive legislation of the 1790s. Originality was not completely absent, however: the London ringing club, the Esquire Youths,
peppered its rules with grand, if largely inaccurate, quotations from
Greek and Latin authors. 28 Rules were displayed in the club room,
Ned Ward mocking these `formal orders exemplied at large by some
scrivener's apprentice and ostentatiously hung up in lacquered frames
as the laws of the society'.29 By the late eighteenth century many
societies gave a printed copy to new members.
Numbers varied a good deal between societies. Ten or a dozen rules
were quite normal, but twenty or thirty increasingly common. The
Spalding Gentlemen's Society bragged that `we go on gloriously
making our regulations stricter'. In 1712 it made do with four basic
rules; by 1725 twenty more had been added, with another half-dozen
in 1745. Expanding rule-books were linked to the growth of formalization, but too many changes of this kind risked causing confusion, as
27
Form and Foundation, Views and Laws . . . of an Universal Society (?London, ?1790), 13; cf.
Coventry Society for Constitutional Information (Coventry, 1793) and Birmingham Society for Constitutional Information (?Birmingham, 1792); J. G. Jones, Sketch of a Political Tour through Rochester,
Chatham, Maidstone, Gravesend, etc. (London, 1796), 106.
28
Bodl., GA Oxon a. 101 (12); Birmingham Central Library, 72293; 72292; F. W. M.
Draper, `Rules for the ``Esquire Youths'', 166263', Trans. of the London and Middlesex Arch.
Soc., ns, 11 (19514), 2415.
29
E. Ward, A Compleat and Humorous Acccount of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the
Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1756), 2.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

246

Organization

the Hill Society of Edinburgh recognized, for `nothing is more prejudicial to the interest of [a] society than frequent changes of the rules
. . . laid down by the founders'.30 In general, however, the rise of
regulation, progressively encyclopaedic in detail, contributed to
greater institutional stability, and claried key issues, such as the
objective of the society, admissions, venue and meeting arrangements,
the role of the ofcers, and, not least, nance.

vi
In the preamble or preface to its rules, a club or society customarily
spelt out its aims, often making some rhetorical obeisance to the idea
of man as a sociable animal and of societies as uniting a diversity of
members, as well as giving a specic justication of its own activities.
The York orist society lauded the `pleasure that the cultivation of
owers affords . . . being the taste of the curious, [of ] all ages and
countries'. The Benevolent Society at Stafford pledged to prevent the
way `whole families [are] involved in the most calamitous circumstances, solely occasioned by the death of an industrious husband'.
Edinburgh's Loving and Friendly Society aspired `to perpetuate the
memory of the founders' through the mutual relief of those enfeebled
by disease. 31
Rules regarding admission tended to be more uniform, and focused
on the background of applicants, nomination, election, and accession
of new members. In broad terms, the process became more elaborate
during the period, though by the last decades of the eighteenth
century the advent of the public subscription association, whose large
numbers of members came together rarely or infrequently, meant that,
in many instances, the crucial concern now was with the payment of
membership dues rather than qualications for admission.
Society rules generally nominated the meeting place, usually a club
room at a victualling house. To try to prevent difculties, there were
often strict instructions to the landlord on his duties. As for the venue,
committees of members went out to vet the options, as when senior
members of the London Catch Club `examined all the different
taverns in the proper part of town', before deciding to meet at the
30
Lukis (ed.), Stukeley Memoirs, ii. 265; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, vi. 28 ff.; SRO (WRH),
FS 3/16.
31
York City Reference Library, MS Ancient Society of York Florists, vol. 1 (unfoliated);
An Abstract of the Deed of Settlement of the Benevolent Society at Stafford . . . (Wolverhampton, 1770),
12; SRO (WRH), FS 3/54.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

247

St Alban's tavern. In 1784 the Royal Society Club made an agreement

with the Crown and Anchor tavern to `x on a comfortable room that
the club may have every Thursday and not be moved about from
room to room on frivolous pretences'. Some clubs made do with a
select table in a public room. 32
The advantage of a dedicated room was that it allowed the safe
storage of club furniture and other artefacts. One bird-fancying club
had only `an odd mixture of little forms, crickets, buffet-stools and
runlets' for seats, but more respectable societies owned a handsome
range of furnishings and equipment. Most important was the presiding ofcer's chair, which in most public societies stood at the upper
end of the table, `somewhat more elevated than those of the members,
[and] . . . adorned with some embossed gure' symbolic of the association (see plate 2). In the 1730s the Dilettanti Society spent the large
sum of 4 10s on a mahogany compass-seat elbow-chair with crimson
velvet (and a pedestal) for its president. The constitutions of the
Cymmrodorion Society proposed buying a great chair properly ornamented for its president, the society's arms hanging above it, and a
table standing in front. 33 Other society furnishings regularly included
candlesticks or candelabra, bookcases, a balloting box (see plate 14)
and, almost universally, a box with special locks for club funds (see
plate 15). Masonic lodges usually displayed a panoply of symbolic and
other furnishings. The Old Dundee lodge at Wapping had three chairs
for the master and wardens adorned with the carved gilt emblems of
masonry, together with a special nest of boxes to hold lodge aprons;
the Maid's Head lodge at Norwich possessed `a handsome mahogany
pedestal and balloting box', and `a Lewis [a lifting device] of curious
marble and workmanship'. The order of Bucks garlanded their lodge
rooms with bucks' heads and antlers, while a Jacobite club in Cheshire
had its chairs covered with remnants of the cloak that Charles I wore
at his execution, together with the Stuart coats of arms on the walls. 34
Many established societies kept paintings of past and present
32
BL, Music Dept., H 2788rr, p. 79; Geikie, Royal Society Club, 163; Cust, Dilettanti, 623;
Ward, Clubs, 79.
33
Ward, Clubs, 119; P. J. Grosley, A Tour to London (Dublin, 1772), i. 161; Cust, Dilettanti,
27; Constitutions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in London (London, 1755), 20.
34
The History of the Robinhood Society (London, 1764), 1178; BL, Additional MS 23,202,
fo. 28; Articles, Rules and Regulations for . . . the Liberal Society of Tradesmen (Newcastle, 1793), 32;
A. Heiron, Ancient Freemasonry and The Old Dundee Lodge (London, 1921), 23 ff.; H. le Strange,
History of Freemasonry in Norfolk 1724 to 1895 (Norwich, 1896), 18; N&Q, 6th series, 8 (1883),
363; P. K. Monod, Jacobitism and the English People (Cambridge, 1989), 289.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

248

Organization

members or patrons in their rooms. The Kit-Cat Club may have been
one of the rst to commission such works, but from the 1730s the
Dilettanti Society had individual portraits by George Knapton and
later group portraits by Joshua Reynolds (see plate 8). Ensemble
portraits were increasingly popular. The Virtuosi of St Luke had
one (by Smibert) in the 1720s, and another by Gawen Hamilton about
1735 (See plate 6). Smaller clubs had their collective portraits too, like
Thomas Hudson's painting of a London aldermanic club in 1752 (see
plate 7). 35 After his painting of the former grand master Lord Petre,
the Modern grand lodge appointed William Peters as grand portrait
painter, and looked forward to `having its [new] hall ornamented with
the successive portraits of the grand masters in future', the cost being
recouped by the sale of cheap prints to the masonic rank and le. 36
Less famous societies were equally active collectors or sponsors of
paintings, among them the London Court of Equity Club, the Royston
Club, the Ipswich Monday Night Club, John Freeth's radical club at
Birmingham (see plate 10), various sporting clubs, and the Symposium
Club at Edinburgh University, which commissioned portraits of its
principals that still hang in the Old College. Whether of individual
members or the collectivity, paintings emphasized not only the club's
solidarity but also its institutional heritage and permanence. Especially
splendid was Barry's set of paintings for the Society of Arts, `The
Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture', which celebrated the
society's work and membership and earned wide public acclaim (see
plate 11). 37
The increase of associational furniture and regalia compounded the
long-running difculties of meeting in public houses. There was a
growing trend by 1800 towards the use of private, often purpose-built
space, a process also inuenced by emerging upper- and middle-class
concern about public drinking and the declining fashionability of inns
and taverns. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
the occupation of private accommodation was largely conned, in
35
S. West, `Libertinism and the Ideology of Male Friendship in the Portraits of the
Society of Dilettanti', Eighteenth Century Life, 16(2) (1992), 801; Vertue Note Books, Vol. III,
Walpole Soc., 22 (1934), 24, 71; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Acc. No.: BAC
B1981. 25. 354.
36 FMH, `Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of England, 17701813' (unpaginated: Nov.
1785).
37 Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Acc. No. 1958420; Gentleman's Magazine, 53 (1783),
814; NNRO, MS 447, p. 32; D. B. Smith, Curling: An Illustrated History (Edinburgh, 1981),
16 ff.; EUL, Special Collections, Dc 2.75, pp. 367, 4850, 66, 767; D. G. C. Allan and J. L.
Abbott (eds.), The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences (London, 1992), 33658.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

249

Britain, to the bigger London associations: thus, the Royal Society

(Gresham College, Crane Court), the SPCK (Bartlet's Buildings,
Hatton Garden), and the Society for the Encouragement of Learning
(St Martin's Lane). In the provinces, one of the few examples was the
Spalding Gentlemen's Society, whose own premises included a concert
room, museum, and administrative ofces. 38 In the colonies, the more
limited range of tavern accommodation may have encouraged the
earlier use of private premises, but in the later half of the eighteenth
century the practice was increasingly favoured in mainland Britain as
well. In 1753 the Society of Antiquaries, after years of difculty at the
Mitre tavern, purchased the lease of a house in Chancery Lane,
subsequently joining the Royal Society and Royal Academy (1780) in
the grand ofcial complex at Somerset House on the Strand. Soon
after its inception, the Society of Arts began to rent private rooms,
and by the 1770s had moved to specially built premises at the Adelphi.
The Modern grand lodge inaugurated Freemasons' Hall near Covent
Garden in 1776, and by the end of our period a good number of local
lodges had followed suit. Concerned with acoustics, music societies
were among the early investors in property: the Oxford Music Society
had its own music room (still standing) after 1748; the Edinburgh
Musical Society occupied its St Cecilia's Hall from 1762. 39
One of the major deterrents to the use of private accommodation
was cost. At the fashionable end of the spectrum, the Coterie Society
disbursed as much as 13,000 guineas for Sir George Colebrook's house
in Arlington Street in 1775; the Kentish Bowmen raised 500 in 1789
to have `one of the most elegant rooms in Europe'; the more modest
Norwich Tusculan Society proposed to pay 9 a year for taking a hall
in the city in the 1790s, plus additional expenses for tting up the
room. In the 1760s subscribers to the Marine Society raised a special
fund (with contributions from India) to build a house for the society
in Bishopsgate Street, its rooms decorated with gures of Newton and
Locke, busts of Prior and Dryden, and paintings of battles. The
Theatrical Fund society was fortunate to have a house given to
38

H. Lyons, The Royal Society, 16601940 (Cambridge, 1944), 1316; W. O. B. Allen and
E. McClure, Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
(London, 1898), 1301; Atto, `Society for Encouragement of Learning', 2689; Nichols,
Bibliotheca, iii(2), 812.
39
See below, ch. 11; Evans, Antiquaries, 91, 11213, 1704; D. Hudson and K. W.
Luckhurst, The Royal Society of Arts, 17541954 (London, 1954), 1920; see below, p. 342; Sport.
Mag., 10 (1797), 53; J. H. Mee, The Oldest Music Room in Europe (London, 1911), 1; D. Johnson,
Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the 18th Century (London, 1972), 389.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

250

Organization

them in Drury Lane in 1776. By the turn of the century premises

could be extensive: the Royal Institution maintained a laboratory,
lecture theatre, library, model room, and repository at its house in
Albemarle Street. About 1800 social and dining clubs in the capital
were starting to take up residence in large, select houses in the Pall
Mall area. Such moves to private premises were not invariably
successful. The Society for Promoting Natural History had its own
rooms in London from 1789 to 1796, but had to give them up because
of the cost. Smaller clubs held private meetings in members' houses,
but this was never a real option for most societies. 40
Society rules devoted a good deal of time trying to control the
conduct of members. A particular worry was excessive drinking, with
the attendant risk of disputes and disorder. Loose talk was equally
dangerous: the Board of Loyal Brotherhood took steps `to silence any
brother who shall in his liquor . . . talk anything that shall ridicule the
Holy Scripture'. A stream of orders excoriated and prohibited swearing, cursing, immoral or controversial speeches, indecent songs,
betting, and the like. The pattern was similar in most associations,
whether a ringing club like the Esquire Youths, the artistic Virtuosi of
St Luke, or more modest benet and artisanal clubs. A small
Leicestershire clock club at the close of the period sought to insure
against every conceivable offence through its order that `no member is
allowed to swear, to give another [member] the lie, to be disguised in
liquor, to reproach another man with any natural defect, religion,
political opinion, etc.' 41
It is difcult to know how effective such regulations were in
restraining activities such as drinking, gambling, and singing which
were so essential for traditional club conviviality. For much of the
period, one suspects, regulations of this type provided a formal framework to prevent proceedings getting out of hand, but in practice, were
probably honoured more in the breach than the observance; they
generated useful income for club coffers through nes, but allowed
40
PRO, C 104/146, part 1; BL, Additional MS 6314, fo. 6v; NNRO, Norwich and Norfolk
Arch. Soc. MSS, G 2, pp. 1634; The Bye-Laws and Regulations of the Marine Society (London,
1775), 1035; T. Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick (London, 1781), ii. 321; M. Berman,
Social Change and Scientic Organization: The Royal Institution, 17991844 (London, 1978), 15, 259;
R. C. Rome, Union Club (London, 1948), 45; for other examples of this trend see M. Reed,
`The Transformation of the Urban Landscape, 17001840' in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge
Urban History of Britain, Vol. II (Cambridge, forthcoming); Gage and Stearn, Linnean Society, 4.
41
NNRO, City Records, Case 21 Shelf e, Box 2; BL, Additional MS 49,360, fos. 9v10;
Draper, `Esquire Youths', 2445; BL, Additional MS 39,167, fo. 79v; Leics. RO, 9 D 51/II/1.

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

251

many activities to persist, maintaining clubs and societies as distinctive

masculine refuges for traditional socializing. By the last years of the
eighteenth century, however, there may have been a change of
emphasis and a greater concern to force the reform of what were
increasingly regarded by many respectable people as antisocial forms
of behaviour. 42

vii
Virtually all formal societies had ofcers of some kind. At the most
basic level, this might mean only one or two stewards to organize the
society meetings or feast, but often the arrangements were more
complex, with a hierarchy of ofcers and a committee structure.
During the eighteenth century society ofcers became more numerous and powerful, and a parallel rise of salaried ofcials took place.
Such developments were particularly notable in the case of public
subscription associations. The key role of ofcers in early modern
associations is hardly surprising, given that, for all the rhetorical stress
on the equality and commensality of members, most societies
stemmed from the initiative of a small group of activists, sometimes
a single individual, and these people frequently held a dominant
position in the early days of the organization. An extreme example
was Dr Higgins, who established a Society for Philosophical Experiments at his house in Soho, providing apparatus for chemical tests.
Higgins took charge of admissions and soon attracted fty subscribers; the society drew up rules and elected a set of worthies as
ofcers, with Higgins as Experimenter. Sadly, attendance was poor
and Higgins ended up doing everything, including editing the minutes
and papers for publication, before the society folded. More successful
was the Society of Arts, established largely through the energy of the
drawing teacher William Shipley, who published his Proposals for a
Society of Arts in 1753, lobbied for landed patronage, and served as
the rst secretary from 1755 to 1760, by which time the society had
2,000 members. 43
As Higgins and Shipley remind us, a substantial proportion of
society founders were professional men, reecting their particular
social and economic position and ambitions in British society. Lawyers
42

See below, pp. 4512.

Minutes of the Society for Philosophical Experiments and Conversations (London, 1795); D. G. C.
Allan, William Shipley: Founder of the Royal Society of Arts (London, 1979), 424, 51 ff., 67.
43

5.11.99 15:57 07 Chapter 0394

252

Organization

were prominent: the attorney and town clerk of Oxford, John Payne,
organized the rst Oxfordshire county feast in that city about 1669,
while a leading gure in the formation of the Society of Ancient
Britons under George I was Thomas Jones, a barrister of Lincoln's
Inn, who became the rst registrar and treasurer. Other founders were
teachers or clergymen, but almost certainly the biggest category were
medical men. Not content with setting up medical bodies, they promoted a host of other societies. One early Georgian activist was the
polymathic physician William Stukeley, who established a number of
learned societies in the East Midlands, as well as playing a prominent
role in the formation of the Society of Antiquaries, the Modern grand
lodge, and the Egyptian Society. 44 In George III's reign William Hey,
the Leeds surgeon, promoted religious reform and Sunday school
societies in the West Riding, in addition to medical and learned bodies,
and the Licheld doctor Erasmus Darwin had a hand in the formation
of the Birmingham Lunar Society, the Botanical Society at Licheld,
and the Derby Philosophical Society. Likewise, Edinburgh's physicians
`were key gures among the city's cultural and social leaders', advancing improvement through societies. Leadership by professional men
stemmed not only from their rising social importance, but also, as
already suggested, from their pivotal role as social and cultural
brokers, operating on the ank of the upper and middle classes,
able to move and mediate between different social groups, such as
landowners, merchants, and traders. 45
Landowners played an important part in encouraging a wide range
of associations, either as initiators or patrons: among them, moral
reform societies in the 1690s, bell-ringing clubs and musical societies
like the London Catch Club (the Earl of Sandwich), sporting clubs
such the Swaffham Coursing Club (the Earl of Orford), and the
increasingly numerous hunt clubs. 46 The Earl of Romney was a key
44
A. Clark (ed.), The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. II, Oxford Historical Soc., 21
(1892), 154; BL, Sloane MS 2572, fo. 2v; Dictionary of Welsh Bibliography Down to 1940 (Oxford,
1959), 515; Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London, 181215), vi. 7;
S. Piggott, William Stukeley: An 18th-Century Antiquary (New York, 1985), ch. 5.
45
W. G. Rimmer, `William Hey of Leeds, Surgeon (17361819): A Reappraisal', Proceedings
of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, 9 (195962), 187, 203, 209; D. King-Hele, Doctor of
Revolution: The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin (London, 1977), 30, 112, 153; C. Lawrence,
`The Nervous System and Society in the Scottish Enlightenment', in B. Barnes and S. Shapin
(eds.), Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientic Culture (London, 1979), 212.
46
A. G. Craig, `The Movement for the Reformation of Manners, 16881715' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1980), 10, 25; BL: Additional MS 19,369, fos.
66v; Music Dept., H2788rr; Sport. Mag., 1 (17923), 136; 4 (1794), 3; 11 (1798), 176.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

253

supporter and patron of the Society of Arts, whilst other improving

grandees, such as the Earl of Winchilsea, were inuential in developing the Royal Institution. In Scotland landowners were active in the
spread of farming clubs, and the Earl of Buchan founded the Society
of Antiquaries. Aristocratic activism of this kind reected the growth
of new-style personal nobility in Georgian Britain, a world in which
peers were obliged to present an image of openness and accessibility,
to provide leadership rather than authority. 47
By contrast, merchants were less prominent as society founders, in
line with their more limited participation in voluntary associations as a
whole. The exception to prove the rule was Jonas Hanway, a Russia
Company merchant, who had also traded in Portugal. Hanway may
have exploited and built on a network of philanthropists in the Russia
Company to launch the London Marine Society in 1755. Thereafter he
rapidly turned into a professional organizer and fund-raiser, campaigning for support in the provinces, taking control of long-established
societies, and setting up other philanthropic bodies. There is no
evidence that other society founders, whatever their background,
went down this particular road, but, as we know, they were quite
often responsible for the institution of more than one society. 48
Though some founders withdrew gracefully from centre-stage once
their associations were up and running, others did their best to hang
on to power, a practice which was buttressed by the widespread
observance (as in other early modern organizations) of seniority in
associational ofce-holding. Informal societies might have a veteran
member as `father' or principal ofcer: at a meeting of Cambridge
alumni at Chester the gentlemen attended `their father', a cathedral
canon, to a local inn; and in Birmingham the `father and director' of a
money club was the landlord, who had probably created it. In some
societies ofces rotated according to seniority, or according to a blend
of seniority and election. Thus, at the election of the president of
Edinburgh's Chirurgo-Physical Society members by seniority made
four choices, the votes were counted by the ve longest-serving
members, and the four presidents chosen were ranked according to
seniority. Considerations of seniorityand gerontocracyno doubt
47
Allan, Shipley, 51 ff.; Berman, Social Change, 15, 1718; SRO (GRH), GD 345/867, 910,
1251; J. G. Lamb, `David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of Buchan: A Study of His Life and
Correspondence' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Dundee, 1963), 705; Langford,
Public Life, 510.
48
J. S. Taylor, Jonas Hanway: Founder of the Marine Society (London, 1985), 589, 645, and
passim.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

254

Organization

inuenced the selection of ofcers in more indirect ways too, and so

contributed to those tensions with younger members identied earlier.
Social status and education also had an effect.49
Patterns of ofce-holding varied considerably, both between types
of society and over time. English benet societies often had a
president or master, stewards, and a clerk, though there were wide
regional and local variations. A ringing society like the Cambridge
Youths was led by a steward, steeple-keeper, and a collector. Debating
societies seem to have had only one or two ofcers, a president and
receiver. Fashionable societies boasted a greater corps of ofcers,
often with exotic titles in the Italian style to articulate their body's
individual identity. The Dilettanti Society started with a president,
secretary, and treasurer, and by 1743 had acquired a Very High
Steward and Archmaster of Ceremonies; the Beggar's Bennison order
in Scotland had a Sovereign Guardian, Remembrancer, and Recorder;
the London Egyptian Society, a Sheik and Harnader; the Coul Club in
Glasgow, its King and Viceroy as well as Knights; the Poker Club of
Edinburgh, an Assassin (albeit with David Hume as Assessor to
cancel any rash act); the Annapolis Tuesday Club, a Chancellor,
Champion, High Steward, Attorney-General, Poet Laureate, and,
above all, a Lord President, who in 1745 attended a club session `in
a aming suit of scarlet, a magnicent hat, bound round with massy
scalloped silver lace, a ne, large and full, fair wig, white kid loves,
with a gold headed cane'. 50
The number of ofcers grew. The Society of Ancient Britons was
served in the 1710s by a president, secretary-cum-treasurer, and a
chaplain, but by the 1790s supported not only a president but also
twenty-three vice-presidents, a treasurer, secretary, chaplain, physician,
two surgeons, and an apothecary. At the close of the period it was
quite common for the philanthropic societies and public subscription
associations based in London to have a score of ofcers. Of these, a
substantial number were honorary: titled persons whose ofcial role
49
K. Thomas, `Age and Authority in Early Modern England', Proceedings of the British
Academy, 62 (1976), 610; Adams's Weekly Courant, 10 Aug. 1779; A Selection of favourite Catches
. . . at the Harmonic Society, in the City of Bath (Bath, 1797), p. 15; Laws of the Chirurgo-Physical
Society, 56.
50
See below, pp. 37980; Rules and Regulations of the Society of Ringers denominated `The
Cambridge Youths' (Cambridge, 1857), 46; e.g. An Apology for the Robin-Hood Society (London,
1751), 367, 467; Cust, Dilettanti, 25, 279; L. C. Jones, The Clubs of the Georgian Rakes (New
York, 1942), 180; BL, Additional MS 52,362, fos. 1516v; J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs
(Glasgow, 1864), 321; EUL, Special Collections, Dc. 5.126, fo. 3; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, i.
190.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

255

brought prestige to the society and, hopefully, a handsome subscription, but who had no hand in the organizational work. Even excepting
this group, however, the trend was for an ination of ofces.51
Similar expansion took place in the committee structure. Though
committees are found in some late Stuart societies (notably the Royal
Society), they became the norm during the eighteenth century. Early
committees tended to be small, but by the start of George III's reign a
dozen or so members was common, and by 1800 the standard size had
risen to a score or more. The Literary Fund had a committee of
twenty-one in 1790; the Bath Guardians Society one of twenty in 1788;
the Philanthropic Society counted fourteen on its committee in 1794,
and twenty-four ve years later. Larger still, the Patrons of the
Anniversary of the Charity Schools had a committee of forty-four
in 1793, and the Essex Agricultural Society a gargantuan board of over
a hundrednearly half the total membership. 52 Numbers of committees likewise mushroomed. Soon after its establishment, the Society of
Arts set up a raft of standing committees, and this model was adopted
by many other associations; even smaller bodies boasted several
committees. 53 Nor was this all. Shoring up the committee system
was often a luxuriant undergrowth of subcommittees. Committee
members usually met weekly or monthly, in conjunction with the
ofcers, sometimes on their own premises or in an ofcer's house
(the prize committee of the London Catch Club met in Lord
Sandwich's house). 54
The new profusion of ofcers and committees was partly for
publicity purposes, intended to boost the self-importance of societies,
and also a way of trying to engage and involve the well-heeled and the
socially inuential and active. Such moves were also part of the
51
Sir T. Jones, The Rise and Progress of the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Antient Britons
(London, 1717), sig. A3, p. 22; Medical Diary for the Year 1799 (London, 1799), 24 ; An Account
of the Nature and Views of the Philanthropic Society (London, 1799), 7.
52
Davies, Life of Garrick, ii. 320; Literary Fund. An Account of the Institution of the Society for the
Establishment of a Literary Fund (London, 1797), 6; Bath Chronicle, 24 Apr. 1788; Account of the
Nature and Views of the Philanthropic Society, 7; List of the Patrons of the Anniversary of the CharitySchools (London, 1790), 4; An Account of the Proceedings . . . of the Essex Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture and Industry (Bocking, 1794), 13 ff., 44 ff.
53
Hudson and Luckhurst, Royal Society of Arts, 12; e.g. Laws of the Society for promoting
Natural History (London, 1792),5; Third Year's Report of the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1796), 4.
54
J. Brown, The Extensive Inuence of Religious Knowledge (Edinburgh, 1769), appendix, p. 5;
Four Sermons Preached in London at the Second General Meeting of the Missionary Society . . . (London,
1796), p. xii; BL, Music Dept., H2788rr, pp. 229, 257.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

256

Organization

general formalization of societies and the growth of oligarchic control.

Elections by the membership to society ofces and the committees
were held at regular intervals, mostly either quarterly, twice-yearly, or
annually. During the late eighteenth century there was a trend towards
less-frequent, annual elections. One can, furthermore, detect a move
towards more complex and indirect procedures, with the membership
electing the committee, which in turn chose the ofcers and inner
committees.
Increasingly, the management of societies was dominated by a
powerful core of ofcers, with or without committee support. To
some extent this was a response to those basic organizational problems
already discussed, but it also needs to be seen in the context of the
prevalence of oligarchy in British political societynot least in town
corporationsand the mounting public activities of many bigger
societies, which required continuous and effective supervision.
Oligarchic leadership was particularly important in public subscription
associations, with their widely dispersed memberships and infrequent
general meetings; here strong central direction was at a premium. This
trend towards ofcial dominance was not always popular. Hamilton's
history of the Tuesday Club at Annapolis burlesqued the absolutist
pretensions of the president, William Cole, but other criticism of
ofcials was more vigorous. Like his counterpart, Banks, at the Royal
Society, the president of the Medical Society of London was condemned for packing the Council and acting autocratically (charges
which led to a secession in 1805). At the Philanthropic Society,
complaints were voiced that `all power is taken away from the subscribers at large. The government is in the committee law', and even
the committee members are `mere appendages' to the ofcers. 55
This shift towards more centralized power in societies was not
absolute. An important variable was the turnover of elected ofcers,
and this could differ greatly between societies (with a substantial
proportion of the membership ofciating in some associations); regional
variations were also signicant. Nonetheless, by the late eighteenth
century ofcers and committees frequently had wide-ranging powers
to vet new members, supervise day-to-day business, control the
nances, and run many of the public activities of the society. This
55
J. Innes and N. Rogers, `Politics and Government, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge
Urban History; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, i. 2923; M. Davidson, The Royal Society of Medicine:
The Realization of an Ideal, 18051955 (London, 1955), 1617; R. Young, Mr Young's Report on the
attempts made by the Usurpers of the Philanthropic Society (London, 1795), 27.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

257

control was tightened in a growing range of societies, particularly the

bigger ones, through the employment of salaried staff. In the early
decades of the eighteenth century the SPCK had a series of notable
secretariesJohn Chamberlayne, Humfrey Wanley, and the American
Henry Newman (who served from 1708 to 1742 and received a
handsome 60 a year); but this arrangement was somewhat exceptional. Later in the period salaried secretaries were numerous and
inuential. The London Catch Club paid its secretary 20 guineas a
year for his work on the annual prize competition; and the clerk to the
Linnaean Society received a similar stipend. A middle-ranking London
benet society spent a more modest 6 per annum on its clerk.
Outside the capital stipends were lower. Artisan box clubs often
paid their clerks via a per capita levy on members. 56
In 1793 the Society for Charitable Purposes was spending over a
tenth of its income on salaries. But the benet from having salaried
ofcers was considerable, providing administrative continuity and
coherence, contact with the membership, and improved recordkeeping, so crucial for longer-term development. Several of the early
major societies had kept detailed minutes and accounts, but otherwise
the practice was erratic. From George III's reign, however, more
societies (albeit still only a minority) began preserving their papers,
though too often the situation was like that of the York orists'
society, whose accounts were `so irregular and the papers . . . lost
or so decayed' that it was impossible to check anything. 57
In conclusion, the increase of ofcial authority and bureaucracy in
associations was an important stabilizing factor, which strengthened
them against their competitors. On the other hand, greater administrative costs inevitably exacerbated the nancial pressure on societies.

viii
Up to a quarter of the rules of many eighteenth-century societies
focused on nancial matters: income, expenditure, the management of
56

See below in the case of benet societies, pp. 37980; W. K. L. Clarke, The History of the
S.P.C.K. (London, 1959), 1517; BL, Music Dept., H 2788rr, p. 261; Gage and Stearn,
Linnean Society, 17; Guildhall, MS 9383/2.
57
An Account of the Proceedings of the Society for Charitable Purposes (London, 1793), 3. For
examples of early record-keeping: Cust, Dilettanti, 31; Geikie, Royal Society Club, 15; the
Spalding Gentlemen's Society in Lincolnshire has well-kept and detailed minutes and
accounts from its foundation. York City Reference Library, MS, Ancient Society of York
Florists, vol. 1 (unfoliated).

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

258

Organization

assets, and auditing. Inevitably the nancial balance sheet varied

greatly according to the social standing, activity, publicity, and
management of a society. Thus, in Glasgow at the start of the nineteenth century the income of the Auxiliary Bible Society was fteen
times that of one of the city's minor educational societies. 58 For most
societies the bulk of their revenue came from admission charges and
annual subscriptions, whose precise level depended on the clientele
targeted and the numbers recruited. Members might put up with
relatively high charges if the benets were commensurate. Any discrepancy meant problems of recruitment, arrears, and so on. Even
when recruitment went well, however, the likelihood of high arrears
meant that societies needed to nd additional sources of income.
Extra revenue came from nes for non-attendance and for antisocial
behaviour, as well as from levies on social success. The Dilettanti
Society ordered that every member increasing his wealth by inheritance, marriage, or preferment should pay half a per cent of his
augmented income to the society or face a 10 ne. Introducing a
similar rule, the London Catch Club anticipated a large inow of
money, `particularly by the laudable spirit of matrimony which now
prevails amongst us'. 59
Extraordinary payments by landed grandees could also be important, particularly for fashionable and philanthropic societies: hence,
part of the obsession with having aristocrats as patrons or honorary
ofcers. In Nottinghamshire, the Duke of Portland gave 10 guineas a
year to the county's charitable society for clergy and their families,
while the Spensers of Althorp in Northamptonshire donated the same
amount to a clerical society in Peterborough diocese, 5 guineas to
another at Norwich, 10 guineas to the body running St George's
Hospital in London, and substantial sums to other charitable organizations. In East Anglia, the Earl of Rosebery was a major benefactor
to the Scots Society at Norwich, and Lord Galway gave important
support to the Pontefract Library Society. 60
Charitable societies increasingly sought to attract benefactions and
donations both from members and outsiders, advertising in news58
C. G. Brown, `Religion and the Development of an Urban Society: Glasgow, 1780
1914' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1981), 244.
59
Cust, Dilettanti, 645; BL, Music Dept., H 2788rr, p. 233; less fashionable societies also
raised income in this way.
60
Notts RO, DD 5P 4/1, 1775, p. 99; BL, Althorp MSS, F 174 (1); An Account of the Scots
Society in Norwich (Norwich, ?1787), 57. 18; West Yorkshire Archives Service, Bradford, DB
17/C 37.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

259

papers for this purpose. The Scots Corporation of London received a

large number of bequests and donations from Scotland and England.
The Sons of the Clergy and other clerical benevolent societies were
equally successful in attracting bequests of money and property.61
Inter-club support was signicant, with social clubs and similar bodies
making donations to charitable societies. The Scots Corporation
received 20 from the Scots Club in London, over 15 from a similar
club in Westminster, and as much as 40 from the Scottish young men
and Scots Box at Paris. Exploiting national patriotism towards the end
of the Seven Years War, Hanway's British Troop Society welcomed a
ood of gifts from tradesmen and neighbourhood clubs, gentlemen's
societies, box clubs, masonic lodges, `a club of old maids', the Society
of Bucks at Liverpool, `sundry societies and clubs at Shefeld', and
many others up and down the country. 62
Public events might also prove protable, particularly for the larger
charitable bodies. The Sons of the Clergy led the way with its grand
annual concert (and public rehearsal) in St Paul's Cathedral, the
collections at the door yielding over a thousand pounds in some years.
During the 1780s the Royal Society of Musicians organized the enormously successful Handel anniversary concerts at Westminster Abbey,
generating large prots. Other bodies, such as the Marine Society, the
Ancient Britons, and the Theatrical Fund society, sponsored benet
plays, while another nancial staple was the charity sermon with
collections at the church door. The London charity school societies
seem to have popularized this money-spinning device under Anne,
and by the late eighteenth century some societies organized several
sermons a year. 63
Expenditure was fairly standard: the cost of meetings, payments to
ofcers, the occasional purchase of equipment, advertising, charitable
donations, and the charge of specialist activities. Meeting costs
included items for candles, alcohol, dinners (where provided), and in
some cases the hire of rooms. Purchases of furnishings and artefacts
61
The Original Design, Progress and Present State of the Scots Corporation at London (London,
1730), 17 ff.; N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A History of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . .
16551978 (Oxford, 1978), 25, 31, and passim.
62
Original Design of the Scots Corporation, 26; An Account of the Society For the Encouragement of
the British Troops . . . (London, 1760), appendix.
63
E. H. Pearce, The Sons of the Clergy (London, 1928), 205, 208, 210 ff.; P. Drummond,
`The Royal Society of Musicians in the 18th Century', Music and Letters, 59 (1978), 27985;
Folger Library, MSS: W. b. 472, fo. 8v; T. 63; NLW, MSS, Honourable and Loyal Society of
Ancient Britons, vol. 3 (unfoliated); for an early example: A Vindication of the Society Lately call'd
St Katherine Cree (London, 1718).

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

260

Organization

were a growing burden, along with salaries, publicity, and accommodation. Virtually all societies made donations to charity, the prime
concern being their own members, though outsiders also beneted.
In the case of philanthropic societies, relief expenditure was often
large-scale. Thus, in the late 1780s the London Society for the
Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts was
relieving 600 to 700 persons a year, at a cost of nearly 2,000. The
problem here was that demand for relief tended to be greatest in
times of economic recession, when income usually fell. Benet
societies also faced difculties in balancing their books. Their
complex tariff of entitlements, usually without a secure actuarial
base, imposed severe nancial strains as the membership aged. For
other societies, however, the cost of their core activities was
normally modest, though there was a growing tendency to engage
in expensive public activities. 64
To tide themselves over downturns of support and nancial
emergencies, prudent societies built up reserves, sometimes mountains of money. By 1760 the SPCK had capital assets of nearly
10,000; the Dilettanti Society increased its holdings from 321 in
1743 to over 4,000 in 1778; the Royal Society of Musicians did even
better, augmenting its capital base from about 400 in 1739 to
12,000 in 1784. 65 A good part of society capital was invested in
public funds. Already in 1751 the Castle Tavern Musical Society was
depositing funds with the Bank of England, and later in the century
the London Medical Benevolent Society had 6,000 invested in 3 per
cent consols. The Bristol Gloucestershire Society bought 300 of
government stock in 1778, and within ve years this had risen to
1,000; even a small Nottinghamshire prosecution society had 700
in consols by close of the period. 66 Capital was also deposited in
provincial banksin the 1790s the Society for the Sons of the
Clergy in Scotland had over 2,000 with the Royal Bank of Scotland,
and Birmingham's trade societies invested in town banks. Loans
might be made to turnpike trusts, local worthies, and society ofcers
and members, while benet clubs frequently deposited their funds
64

NLW, Twiston Davies MS 8784; see below, pp. 2702.

Clarke, S.P.C.K, 91; Cust, Dilettanti, 66; Drummond, `Royal Society of Musicians',
2789.
66
The Laws of the Musical Society, at the Castle-Tavern in Paternoster-Row (London, 1751), 8;
Medical Diary for 1799, 29; H. Bush, History of the Gloucestershire Society (Bristol, n.d.), p. 16;
Gloucester City Library, J. X. 11(4); Notts. RO, DD T11/9.
65

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

261

with brewers.67 Associational lending of this kind, individually fairly

modest but in aggregate on a large scale, probably reaching several
million pounds, may have contributed signicantly to the growth of
capital markets. Not all the investments were wise: Eden reported
how several friendly societies at Chester had broken up after losing
their funds in a bank failure and an abortive canal scheme. By contrast,
government securities provided societies with a safe home and
reasonable rate of return. On a smaller scale, there was some investment in real estate. As well as the growing practice of purchasing the
freehold or lease of premises for meetings, a number of clubs owned
other property. In the Midlands, we nd several box clubs owning
grain mills or investing in knitting frames; other societies bought up
houses. 68
As noted earlier, nancial mismanagement was a common threat to
societies. They struggled to contain the problem through legal
measures and, more generally, through administrative sanctions. After
1722 the SPCK had four treasurers to keep a check on one another.
Financial ofcers had to give bonds or enter into agreements for the
funds in their hands, and in some cases, to pay interest. Increasingly,
auditors vetted the accounts. As a further check, by the late eighteenth
century annual accounts were published. In the case of benet and
charitable societies, legislation in 1793 gave more general protection at
law against defaulting ofcials. There was no complete security, however. Robert Young, treasurer of the Philanthropic Society, was dismissed for nancial irregularities in the 1790s, and the society had him
imprisoned in the Fleet. But he was soon out, fund-raising again,
trading on his link with the society, which was forced to issue warning
notices against him. 69
67
H. Moncreiff-Wellwood, A Sermon Preached in the Tron Church of Edinburgh . . .
(Edinburgh, 1792), 46; Birmingham Central Library, 72309; J. B. Stone (ed.), Annals of the
Bean Club, Birmingham (Birmingham, 1904), 33; NNRO, S.O. 62/1; Kent Archives Ofce,
P 178/25/4 ; Portsmouth RO, 536A/1/1. Box clubs had nearly 10,000 invested with a
single London brewer in 1796: P. Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England, 17001830
(Cambridge, 1959), 264, 2778.
68
Stockton's twelve box clubs had nearly 1,300 out at interest in the 1790s: J. Brewster,
The Parochial History and Antiquities of Stockton upon Tees (Stockton, 1796), 98. F. M. Eden, The
State of the Poor, 1797 (repr. London, 1966), ii. 34; Notts. RO: DD 4P 79/601; DD T106/4. I
owe this point on knitting frames to Dr S. Chapman of Nottingham University; Calderdale
District Archives, Halifax, HPC/A 44; Archives, 1(4) (1950), 32.
69
Clarke, S.P.C.K., 91; Bristol RO, 8029 (11); NLW, Bronwydd MS 2144; Kansas
University Library, MS 37, 9/3; The Address of the Poor and Strangers' Friend Society, in Kingstonupon-Hull (Hull, 1805); Abstract of the Deed of Settlement of the Benevolent Society at Stafford, 16;
Bush, Gloucestershire Society, 12; see below, ch. 10; Young, Mr Young's Report.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

262

Organization

In sum, British clubs and societies became more institutionalized

and regulated during the period, fortied by a host of administrative
and nancial rules. Yet the organizational structure of many associations remained fragile and, in a highly competitive environment,
vulnerable to decline or even collapse. No society, however wellestablished, could afford to rest on its organizational laurels. To
maintain momentum, to attract the lifeblood of new members,
associations were obliged to market themselves.

ix
Many of those society activities which buttressed internal coherence
and identity were equally useful for advertising and promotional
purposes: they were opposite sides of the same coin. Even club
secrecy, however spurious, could serve, as the freemasons rapidly
learned, to heighten public interest and attract a ood of new
members. In our period the principal forms of promotion embraced
publications, anniversary celebrations (including feasts, processions,
and excursions), funerals, and public works.
The growth of the information industry was obviously crucial for
the spread of news about societies and their activities. As we have
seen, newspapers, with their heavy coverage of society meetings and
activities, and magazines, more selective in their reportage but no less
inuential, carried clubs and societies into the cultural mainstream of
Augustan Britain. Furthermore, there was a large specialist literature,
largely generated by the societies themselves, which sought to dene
and rene their distinctive image and appeal in the sociable marketplace. Five main types of work can be identied: histories, transactions, sermons, songs and poems, and administrative records
(membership lists, rules, accounts, and so on).
The rst of the British histories was Thomas Sprat's account of the
Royal Society, which rst appeared in 1667, with new editions in 1702,
1722, and 1734. Modelled on Pellisson-Fontanier's Relation contenant
l'Histoire de l'Academie Francaise (Paris, 1653), Sprat's History sought to
distance the body from its earlier origins during the English Revolution and to win support in the church, the city, and the landed classes
by stressing the utilitarian nature of its work, and its support for social
and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity. No less effective in
emphasizing the religious and social respectability of another early
type of association, was Josiah Woodward's account of the religious
societies in the city of London, rst published in the 1690s; this

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

263

encouraged the formation of societies across the British Isles and the
colonies. Another key text was James Anderson's Constitutions of the freemasons containing the history, charges, regulations, etc., which originally
appeared in 1723 and, as we shall see, played a powerful role in the
dissemination of Modern freemasonry.70 Other society histories had a
more modest impact. As with Sprat's work, recent origins were no bar
to historical study: in 1731 Mr Bishop was asked to write a `Historical
Account' of the Academy of Ancient Music founded just ve years
earlier; the Robin Hood debating club had a short historical defence in
1750 and a lengthier, largely fabricated, history seven years later. The
same decade saw Thomas Birch's monumental History of the Royal
Society, which printed its minutes up to the 1680s. 71 Across the Atlantic
at Annapolis, Alexander Hamilton's premature death prevented the
publication of his wonderfully detailed and amusing `History of the
Ancient and Honourable Tuesday Club'. In the later eighteenth
century these historical accounts merged into general reports of
society activity and explicitly propagandist material. 72
The Royal Society pioneered another publishing genre: society
transactions. Beginning in 1665, the Philosophical Transactions were
published by the Society's secretaries, until the Council took over
responsibility in the 1750s. Comprising a selection of presented papers
and communications from scholars, including foreigners, the Transactions had a dual function: to advance knowledge, and to promote the
scholarly standing of the fellowship and society in the national and
international community. Copies of the Transactions were transmitted
to overseas academies and scholars, and volumes translated into
foreign languages. In continental Europe transactions of this type
were mostly the output of state academies, but on the British scene
a great variety of associations published them, albeit often on a limited
scale. Among the early publishers were the Scottish Society of
Improvers, the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, and the Dublin
Society, which, concerned that conventional transactions were too
70
T. Sprat, History of the Royal Society, ed. J. I. Cope and H. W. Jones (London, 1959), pp. ix,
xv; P. B. Wood, `Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society',
British Journal for the History of Science, 13 (1980), 121; J. Woodward, An Account of the Religious
Societies in the City of London, etc. (4th edn., London, 1712, repr. Liverpool, 1935); D. Stevenson,
The First Freemasons: Scotland's Early Lodges and Their Members (Aberdeen, 1989), 14950.
71
BL, Additional MS 11,732, fo. 16; The Cause of Liberty and Free Enquiry . . . (London,
1750); The History of The Robinhood Society (London, 1764); T. Birch, The History of the Royal
Society of London (London, 17567).
72
Micklus, Tuesday Club, i. pp. xxxvxxxvi ; The Necessity, Utility, Nature and Object of a
Society Entitled The Sick Man's Friend (London, 1788).

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

264

Organization

bulky and expensive, produced a series of Weekly Observations.73

Transactions multiplied in the second half of the eighteenth century
with publications by the Society of Antiquaries (from 1770), the
Royal Society of Edinburgh (after 1788), and the Royal Irish
Academy (from 1787). Further aeld, the American Philosophical
Society at Philadelphia published a series of transactions after 1771,
and the Asiatic Society of Bengal from 1788. 74 Local agricultural,
medical, and learned societies also issued works of this type. Society
transactions were widely disseminated beyond the membership, and
appeared in private and public libraries and book clubs. They were
fundamental to the high social standing of associations in Georgian
Britain.
Other publications were more ephemeral, though no less signicant
in dening and promoting the image of an association and building
support. County, religious, masonic, and philanthropic bodies encouraged the publication of feast and charity sermons, which often
included justication of the society's aims and praise for its social
and charitable activity. Poems and songs appeared, often associated
with society feasts and meetings. In the 1720s, for instance, the Dublin
artisan Henry Nelson produced a series of poems lauding the city's
journeymen societies, their feasts, processions, and public acts. Of the
tailors society, he proclaimed in 1725:
Let time their actions write in books of fame,
Who age supports and orphans young maintain,
Their sick relieve, likewise their dead inter,
What actions greater can the world prefer.

The genre was not immune from retaliation, however. In 1726 the
tailors suffered from an anonymous pen:
I must needs satirise a vicious band
Of hungry prick-lice who in pomp appear
Like crawling maggots each revolving year.

73
Lyons, Royal Society, 51, 85, 179; J. E. McClellan, Science Reorganized; Scientic Societies in the
18th Century (New York, 1985), 156 ff.; Select Transactions Of the Honourable The Society of
Improvers . . . in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1743); Medical Essays and Observations Published by a Society
in Edinburgh, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1747); The Dublin Society's Weekly Observations (Dublin, 1739).
74
Evans, Antiquaries, 1447; McClellan, Science Reorganized, 268, 277; Transactions of the Royal
Irish Academy (Dublin, 1786); Asiatick Researches or, Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal
. . . (Calcutta and London, 1788 ).

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

265

Collections of club songs were also widely sold, appealing both to club
members and outsiders.75
Publication of society proceedings begins in the later Stuart period.
From the 1690s the London moral reform societies issued annual
reportsinitially the Black Listswhich rehearsed the number of
offenders prosecuted. At least one school society, the Merchant
Taylors, printed its accounts in the 1740s, while the Modern grand
lodge moved quickly to publicize its expansion with the issuing of the
Engraved Lists of warranted lodges after 1723. The Marine Society was
especially active in garnering publicity and funds through detailed
reports of its work, together with the names of subscribers. By the
later years of the century most philanthropic and public subscription
associations were publishing annual reports and accounts, usually
complete with a list of subscribers and their addresses. 76
If these were the main categories of promotional publication, they
were not the only ones. Bodies like the Society of Antiquaries,
Dilettanti, Ancient Britons, Dublin Physico-Historical Society, and
lesser societies sponsored scholarly works which brought them considerable repute. 77 Moreover, while publishing was obviously an
essential tool of associational marketing, clubs and societies also
mobilized other, more traditional methods of attracting public interest
and support, adapting and rening them to their own needs and
current fashions. Of central importance here was the society anniversary or feast daynormally an annual event.
Feast days of this type can be seen as successors to medieval
fraternity and trade gild celebrations, but society arrangements
became more elaborate from the late seventeenth century, turning
into major social events, which demonstrated membership solidarity
and won wide public attention. Generally, the feast day of a voluntary
association had four main elements: ofcial society business, the
procession of members, the church service, and the feast. Spatially,
one may see a progression from the semi-public world, the social
75
H. Nelson, A New Poem on the Ancient and Loyal Society of Journey-Men Taylors (Dublin,
1725); The Triumphant Taylors: Or the Vanquished Lice. A Satyr on the Taylors Procession, July the 25th
1726 (Dublin, 1726); see above, p. 227.
76
e.g., A Sixth Black List (London, 1701); The Eighth Black List (London, 1703); Bodl., Call
No.: 4 D 299 (9) [now apparently lost]; Lane, Masonic Records, 11, 2930; Taylor, Hanway, 74,
175; Calderdale District Archives, MISC 2/29/1; The Benevolent Society for the Relief of Widows
and Orphans of Medical Men in the County of Kent (Canterbury, 1796); A List of the Subscribers to the
United Society for the relief of Widows and Children of Seamen . . . (London, 1794).
77
Evans, Antiquaries, 57, 59, 623, and passim; Cust, Dilettanti, 80 ff., 101; O'Raifeartaigh,
Royal Irish Academy, 23.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

266

Organization

space, of the club room in a tavern or hall, to the public space of the
community and townmarked by the street and churchand back
again to the modied social space of the feast, where members often
mixed with outsiders, guests, and the like.
Feast days often started late in the morning with the auditing of the
accounts of outgoing ofcers, the election of new ofcers, and the
agreement of new regulations; by the late eighteenth century there
might be an oration on the past year's activities. About midday this
would give way to the procession to church. Processions were often
grand public spectacles, with hundreds of participants in the case of
bigger societies. In the later part of the period smaller societies often
banded together in joint marches, with bands of music and the ags of
different clubs: in 1788, for instance, nine Lancaster benet clubs and
their 700 members processed to church together. Ofcers and
members usually walked in seniority wearing society regalia and dress.
Even small clubs put on quite a show. At Timsbury in Somerset, each
member of a benet society `carried a red staff tied with different
coloured ribbons', their ranks preceded by a band of music. Dublin
journeymen tailors appeared `all clean and neatly dressed', while the
ofcers were `dignied with hats and feathers'. Masonic processions
were especially lavish affairs. 78
As at Timsbury, music usually added to the spectacle. In 1699 the
London St Cecilia Society followed its great concert in St Paul's by
marching, with the band of music before them, across the city to
Stationer's Hall. The band in a grand masonic procession in April 1735
included a kettle drum, four trumpets, two French horns, two hautboys (early oboes), and two bassoons, the performers all riding white
horses. There might also be special attractions. A society procession of
Dublin tailors was preceded by two gures representing Adam and
Eve, `dressed in leaves as after the fall', attended by a `terrifying
huzzar' to protect them from rowdy onlookers. At the anniversary
of the Old Colony Club at Plymouth, New England, the procession of
members was greeted by descendants of the rst settlers, who red a
volley of small arms amidst the cheers, and then by schoolboys singing
a festive song.
Crowds of spectators watched as the big society processions used
their passage across town, entering key areas of public space, to
78

For the major county feast society processions see p. 288. Bath Chronicle, 7 Aug. 1788,
8 Jan. 1789; see also Eden, State of the Poor, ii. 368; Read's Weekly Journal, 11 Aug. 1733; see
below, p. 327.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

267

identify themselves with the urban community. Thus, the Bristol

masons in 1735 marched together from the Council house, in the
heart of the medieval city, to St Nicholas's church by the main city
bridge, and afterwards to Merchant Venturers' Hall on the edge of one
of the newly gentried areas of the community. In Dublin, a number
of societies perambulated the bounds of the ancient city. 79
Club or society processions were a regular feature of public life in
larger Georgian towns. If feast days were the principal occasion,
societies also progressed together at funerals, at the opening of sister
or branch societies, to sponsored plays and concerts, at political, civic,
and church celebrations, and, indeed, at almost every possible opportunity. When one of its members departed for England in 1752, the
Tuesday Club at Annapolis `marched through the street in good order
with colours ying, drums beating, and the French horn a sounding'.
The growth of street processions was not limited to societies: political
and commercial demonstrations all involved similar public displays, as
did workshop, apprenticeship, and birthday festivities, producing a
street theatre of public processing. One factor in this development
was the more relaxed attitudes of magistrates towards public order;
another, the spread of street cleaning and improvement; a third, the
advent of public walking as a respectable social pursuit. Society
processions were not without their lesser problems: masons, in their
jewels and aprons, sometimes attracted more ridicule than praise,
while a Welsh society procession on St David's Day was also
lampooned. By the late eighteenth century the upper classes may
have become less enthusiastic, but society processions were a valuable
and inexpensive device for making a big impact in the community, and
remained important well into the modern period. 80
After the procession, the church service was usually held in a major
parish church. In London, St Mary le Bow, rebuilt and enlarged by
Wren (with a splendid tower) after the Great Fire and located in the
commercial heart of the city close to the Guildhall, was a favourite
venue for societies during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries. Nearby, St Paul's Cathedral was the main gathering place for
79
The Flying Post, 213 Nov. 1699; Read's Weekly Journal, 11 Aug. 1733, 19 Apr. 1735; e.g.
`Records of the Old Colony Club, Plymouth', Massachusetts Historical Soc. Proceedings, ns, 3
(18867), 401; Daily Gazetteer, 26 Aug. 1735; B. Little, The City and County of Bristol (London,
1954), 689; Westminster Journal, 12 Mar. 1768.
80
E. Breslaw (ed.), Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 174556 (Urbana, Ill., 1988), 373;
F. G. Stephens, Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Political and Personal Satires,
Vol. III(1) (London, 1877), 4305; Dublin Mercury, 68 Mar. 1770.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

268

Organization

great societies like the Sons of the Clergy. In 1731 the Ancient Britons
had a sermon for their Anglican members in St Paul's Covent Garden,
and a separate one for nonconformists at Haberdashers' Hall. Congregations included not only members but also their wives and
friends, society clients, and interested outsiders. The preacher was
normally a member of the society or had ties to one of the ofcials,
though a few clergy specialized in the genre, addressing different
societies. 81
Usually focusing on a conventional scriptural text, such as that of
the agape or love feast from the New Testament, the ideal sermon
would support the work of the society, encourage harmony and
solidarity among members, publicize achievements, and invite donations. Depending on the time and occasion, political or religious
comments might also gure. While many sermons were colourless
and tediously conventional, a few provoked controversy. In 1798 the
London Missionary Society denounced the sermon given by William
Maurice as `destructive of the peace and interests of the society', not
least because he had urged dissatised members to secede. In this case
the society refused to sanction publication, but generally a printed
version soon appeared, both as a form of wider promotion and to
ensure contact with members absent from the anniversary. 82
The high point of the day was the feast itself. In later Stuart London
the principal societies often held the celebration in one of the great
livery halls; in the next century it was more usual to gather at a major
inn or tavern. In provincial towns there was a mixture of venues,
mainly town-halls, assembly rooms, and inns. Attendance at the feast
was boosted by heavy newspaper advertising, with elaborately printed
tickets being sold in advance at various outlets (see plate 12). As well
as members (and on occasion their wives), the great and the good
tended to be invited, particularly when a society hoped to bolster its
social visibility. In 1717, for instance, the newly formed Society of
Ancient Britons had 500 feast tickets printed, of which 100 were given
to the stewards for their grandee friends, and another fty were
distributed by the secretary `amongst men of quality and esteem'. 83
A good deal of planning was required for the great feasts. The
81
See p. 283; Pearce, Sons of the Clergy, 186; Read's Weekly Journal, 6 Mar. 1730/1; Nichols,
Literary Anecdotes, ix. 131 n.
82
W. Maurice, The Meridian Glory . . . (London, 1798); for another incident: Cox, Bridging
the Gap, 64.
83
For examples of tickets: Bodl.: Rawlinson Prints A 2, fo. 45; J. Johnson Collection,
Sports Box 1 (Finsbury Archers). BL, Sloane MS 3834, fo. 15.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

269

stewards met beforehand to arrange the dinner, liquor, and entertainment, and to ensure that the tables were set out according to social
status and seniority. At the Ancient Britons' feast the president's table
was allocated `30 of the rst and best quality'. In lesser societies the
ofcers sometimes went out early to market to buy the provisions.
The dinner itself could be very elaborate, with over a hundred dishes.
At the Dublin journeymen tailors' feast in the 1720s, the bill of fare
included forty legs of mutton, forty rumps of beef, geese, giblet pies,
ten-dozen chickens, and a cartload of vegetables, washed down by an
ocean of beer, ale and brandy. Heavy drinking and toasts were compulsory. Clients or beneciaries of the society's largesse were paraded
to show their gratitude by waiting at table or giving humble thanks to
the company. Frequently these were apprentice boys, but at a Humane
Society dinner in the 1780s the show included grateful souls saved
from drowning by the society's resuscitation techniques. 84
In addition to fund-raising collections, music was prominent. Just as
at ordinary meetings, songs were popular, but given the presence of
notables and sometimes women, the musical entertainment was
usually polite and lavish. During the feast of the Gentlemen Lovers
of Music on St Cecilia's Day, when `the company is at table, the
hautboys and trumpets play successively'. The society also commissioned celebratory odes to be performed, including ones by John
Blow and Henry Purcell, who also composed for other feasts. In
1716 John Christopher Pepusch wrote the ode Cambria for the feast
of the Ancient Britons, and a decade later, when the Philo-Musicae
Society held its anniversary, it staged `a concert both vocal and
instrumental for the entertainment of the ladies'. As the century
progressed, musical entertainments became ever more prominent.
While a few societies prolonged their feast day over two days or
more, most limited everything to one climactic day. Unhappily, even
the best-laid plans can go awry. When the Sons of Liberty held their
feast at Roxbury in New England, the enormous marquee pitched for
the occasion collapsed onto the 200 participants who, `genteely
dressed, were mingled with gravies, sauces, salt, pepper, sugar,
marrow, esh and bones, rum, cider, punch and wine . . .' 85
84
Pearce, Sons of the Clergy, 201 ff.; BL, Sloane MS 3834, fo. 17; Read's Weekly Journal,
11 Aug. 1733; Westminster Public Library (Victoria), F 2481 (at front); Farley's Bristol Journal,
31 Mar. 1787.
85
W. H. Husk, An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St Cecilia's Day (London, 1857), 17,
19, 26, 27, 29, 34; BL: Sloane MS 3834, fos. 8v9; Additional MS 23,202, fo. 88v; B. W.
Pritchard, `The Music Festival and the Choral Society in England in the 18th and 19th

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

270

Organization

Not that the society anniversary exhausted all the occasions of

larger-scale socializing and parading. A number of societies, like the
Modern masons, had two feasts, with the summer one often taking
the form of an excursion into the country, or at least the suburbs.
Otherwise, the main occasion for a full-dress appearance was at a
member's burial. Societies often had detailed rules about compulsory
attendance, clothes, and ritual. The burial of a senior member of the
Cumberland Youths was attended by `all the ringing societies in the
metropolis and its environs, each sounding hand-bells' with mufed
clappers. When Samuel House, the Whig publican, died, his hearse
was escorted by the Grand Lodge of Constitutional Whigs in full
regalia, including the treasurer `with a star, carrying King William's key
with the impression of William and Mary', the staff ofcer `with the
intrepid Fox treading upon slavery', and the brethren of the lodges
dressed in their blue and buff uniforms. Members drank together after
a funeral and received funeral rings. Some societies erected tombstones and others published memorials on the deceased. Despite the
shift towards more commercialized undertaking by the late eighteenth
century (sometimes with links to benet clubs), the funerals of
members continued to reect older traditions. For most of our period
ceremonies of death remained an essential part of the activity of
voluntary associations, not only helping to assuage private and collective grief and reassert solidarity, but continuing that older function,
inherited from the parish fraternities and trade gilds, of organizing a
respectable funeral for the deceased and assisting the bereaved family.
In this, as in so much else, the reafrmation of club mutuality and
duties asserted the value and benet of joining such a body. 86
Other events in a society's public calendar included the patronage
of plays and concerts; attendance at the inauguration of public buildings; and the celebration of royal birthdays and successful battles. In
1710 the Beefsteak Club observed the queen's birthday with a dinner,
concert, and rework show in Covent Garden, which depicted, with
Centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1968), 21 ff.; `Boyle's
Journal of Occurrences in Boston, 17591778', New England Historical and Geneaological
Register, 84 (1930), 365.
86
See p. 326; Sport. Mag., 8 (1796), 202; The Life and Political Opinions of the late Sam House
(2nd edn., London, n.d.), 412; for funeral rings: Greater London RO, A/ BLB/1
(unfoliated); tombstones: e.g. Portsmouth RO, 536A/1/1; memorials: Nichols, Literary
Anecdote, ix. 256; E. Rack, A Respectful Tribute to the Memory of Thomas Curtis, Esq. (Bath,
1784). C. Gittings, Death, Burial, and the Individual in Early Modern England (London, 1984), esp.
989.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

271

pyrotechnic brilliance and chauvinistic pride, a handful of British

soldiers driving out an army of French. Forty years later a Bristol
club commemorated Culloden by inviting regimental ofcers to
dinner, and having volleys of arms and reworks afterwards. On
George III's recovery from madness in 1788 Brooks's Club organized
a splendid gala at the Opera House.87
Though spectacular, such events were increasingly eclipsed, at least
for the respectable classes, by associational patronage of public works
and improvement. The Royal Society led the way, with its close links
with the Greenwich Observatory from the 1670s and its involvement
in the measurement of longitude and observations of the Transit of
Venus. Again following the example of the Royal Society, a number of
societies established museums, and later exhibition rooms and laboratories; and the Bath Agricultural Society had its own experimental
farm from 1780. Prizes were a favourite way of promoting improvement. The Dublin Society after the 1730s offered a large array of
premiums for agricultural, trade, and other improvements, and, not to
be left behind, Shipley's Society of Arts likewise awarded prizes and
supported innovations in many elds, from cartography to agricultural
and industrial specialization. The late Georgian agricultural societies
were similarly caught up in the pursuit of improvement, 88 while prize
competitions became an important feature of all kinds of association
orists' feasts, ringing clubs, medical societies, philanthropic bodies,
ethnic societies, bee-keeping societies, and debating clubs. Prizes
identied British societies with public concern for improvement
and, at the same time, generated valuable publicity. 89
Improvement activity by societies might be more concrete. About
1770 New England's Old Colony Club initiated work on surveying and
87
N&Q, 11th series, 2 (1910), 445; Bristol Weekly Intelligencer, 21 Apr. 1750; Farley's Bristol
Journal, 4 Apr., 15 Aug. 1789.
88
Lyons, Royal Society, 878, 145, 183; Berman, Social Change, 20; K. Hudson, Patriotism with
Prot: British Agricultural Societies in the 18th and 19th Centuries (London, 1972), 57; K. S. Byrne,
`The Royal Dublin Society and the Advancement of Popular Science in Ireland, 17311860',
History of Education, 15 (1986), 823; Hudson and Luckurst, Royal Society of Arts, 8, 1516, and
passim; G. Mingay (ed.), Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VI (Cambridge, 1989), 375,
3778.
89
Read's Weekly Journal, 12 Aug. 1732; BL: Additional MSS: 19,368, fo. 19v; 27,669
(reversed), fo. 54v; Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, Vol. II (1789), p. v; Bodl., J. Johnson
Collection, Clubs Box 1, (Aesculapian); A. Fothergill, An Essay on the Preservation of Shipwrecked
Mariners (London, 1799), pp. vivii; J. Caldwell, `Some Notes on the First British Beekeeping
Society', Trans. Devon Association, 88 (1956), 667; Freeman's Journal, 235 Apr. 1771; J. Jones,
Remarks on the English Language . . . (Birmingham, 1774), 44.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

272

Organization

building local roads, while a decade or so later the Kent Society for
Useful Knowledge was involved in suppressing an outbreak of gaol
fever at Maidstone. The London Gwyneddigion Society organized the
Welsh Eisteddfod in the last years of the century; and Stirling's Port
Club drew up proposals for town improvement and urged its
members on the corporation to implement them. 90
Charity was another major area of associational intervention in the
public arena, creating respect and reputation. Supplementing the work
of the philanthropic and mutual aid societies, many societies gave
relief to needy outsiders, continuing a tradition going back to the
fraternities. In addition to casual aid to individuals, various societies,
notably the county and regional bodies, funded the apprenticeship of
poor boys to masters. Fire casualties were another favoured group: in
1731, for example, the Falcon Club at Cambridge contributed 200 for
victims of a re at nearby Barnwell. Poor debtors also beneted: the
most famous, and probably least deserving, was John Wilkes, whose
debts of 17,000 were paid off by an assortment of political clubs. In
Dublin, a number of societies, particularly musical ones, gave succour
to the inmates of the city's gaols, whilst at Dumfries eighteen societies
banded together in 1800 to buy corn from abroad to supply the town
markets starved by shortages. 91
Education was a further arena in which voluntary associations
demonstrated their commitment to public improvement. School
alumni societies showed their lial loyalty by educational donations;
county feast societies supported schools and students at university;
the London Ancient Britons established a school for Welsh-born
children in the capital; and in the 1750s the Portsea Benevolent Society
opened its own school for teaching poor boys. Charity schools were
actively promoted by religious and improvement societies, particularly
from the 1780s. Education was to be a prime concern of British
societies into the Victorian age. 92

90
`Records of the Old Colony Club', 4056; Leics. RO, DE 3214/364/38 (temp.); BL,
Additional MS 9,848, fos. 157 and passim; also P. Jenkins, A History of Modern Wales, 15361990
(London, 1992), 182; NLS, Misc. Acc. 7862.
91
See below, pp. 2778, 288; Read's Weekly Journal, 9 Oct. 1731; also The Times, 19 Apr.,
1785; Middlesex Journal, 810 June 1769 ; Dublin Newsletter, 15 Jan. 1739/40; Dublin Mercury,
79 Feb. 1769; SRO (GRH), RH 2/4/86, fo. 251.
92
A Catalogue of all the Books in the Library of St Paul's-School, London (London, 1743);
J. Laing, A Sermon Preached in the Cathedral-Church of St Paul . . . (London, 1727), 24; see
pp. 277298; Portsmouth RO, 536A/1/1; see above, p. 103 ff.

5.11.99 15:58 07 Chapter 0394

Organization

273

x
Organizational history does not always make for easy reading (or
writing), but it is essential for understanding the evolution of voluntary associations, their strengths, and limitations. Here we have seen
how British clubs and societies sought to address the numerous
structural problems of voluntarism through detailed regulation,
more bureaucratic and institutionalized structures, heavy marketing,
and high prole communal activities, all of which helped to consolidate
the loyalty of current members, attract new ones, and generate public
recognition and esteem. Voluntary associations were increasingly
portrayed and perceived as central, not only to urban sociability, but
also to public advancement and communal identity.
Such organizational advances, along with the complex recruitment
procedures and mechanisms for group solidarity (discussed in
Chapter 6) sought to mediate and reconcile those powerful secular
forces, economic, demographic, political and social, which, as we saw
in Chapter 5, forged and fuelled the growth of clubs and societies in
early modern Britain. In large measure, the outcome was that highly
articulated mosaic of societies on the ground which was uncovered
and exposed in the rst part of our study. But one further key
determinant of this associational pattern still needs to be addressed:
the role of individual types of societies, with their own chronologies,
recruitment patterns, administrative structures, and levels of success.
Focusing on specic types of association may also shed stronger light
on issues already identied but requiring further analysis, such as the
extent of social mixing within societies, the impact of regional and
local variations, and the transmission of associations overseas. With
these questions in mind, the third part of this book examines three
contrasting types of society: regional and ethnic societies, including
upper-class county feasts (Chapter 8); the masonic order, the most
structured and successful of all upper- and middle-class associations in
our period (Chapter 9); and nally, benet societies, mainly supported
by the artisan and lower classes (Chapter 10).

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

Regional and ethnic associations were one of the earliest types of

voluntary society in early modern Britain, and we can identify distinct
phases in their development and organization. County feast societies
possibly originated before the calling of the Long Parliament, but their
rst surge of activity, with annual meetings, processions, sermons, and
dinners, occurred during the 1650s. After the Restoration there were
new clusters of meetings, especially in the later part of Charles II's
reign, and a nal burst of activity followed the Glorious Revolution.
By the early eighteenth century county feast societies were declining in
number, like other kinds of feast society, and their place was largely
taken by more informal county clubs. At the same time ethnic
associations began to emerge, and these bodies were also exported
to North America, where they became a major feature of urban
sociability before the War of Independence. They also survived and
ourished under the new republic, supplemented by new middle-class
bodies specically concerned with relieving the plight of poor
immigrants.

i
Writing soon after the Restoration, the Yorkshire dissenter, John Shaw,
claimed that in the early 1630s:
there was at that time (and formerly had been) a custom for the merchants
and other tradesmen that lived in London, so many of them as were all born
in the same county, to meet at a solemn feast (upon their own charges)
together in London and then to consult what good they might do to their
native county by settling some ministers (or some other good work) in that
county.

Several preachers in the 1650s and afterwards, likewise, referred back

to earlier meetings. In 1654 Samuel Clarke noted that `these meetings
of country-men are no new thing, though of late years they have been
interrupted by reason of the sad calamities'. At the end of the century,

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

275

Richard Holland, in a sermon to the Warwickshire feast, claimed there

had been an Elizabethan forerunner, `admired and imitated by other
countries [counties]'. Supporting evidence is lacking, however, with no
references in the numerous county histories published before the Civil
War. If there had been meetings, they may have been linked to the
work of the Puritan feoffees of appropriations, London-based godly,
who, from the 1620s if not earlier, were concerned to appoint
committed young preachers to provincial lectureships and livings.
Christopher Hill has also identied a wider network of merchants
and others, beyond the feoffees, who were involved in similar
activities before 1640. William Laud's suppression of the feoffees after
1632 may have driven such meetings underground, though the
absence of references to county societies in the early 1640s, after
the collapse of Laudian controls, is puzzling. 1
We are on rmer ground from the 1650s.2 In London, the decisive
year appears to have been 1654, when at least three county feasts were
held: by the Cheshire men on 6 June; for Wiltshire on 9 November;
and by the gentlemen natives of Warwickshire on 30 November. The
Cheshire feast was explicitly referred to as new. It is possible that
other counties held meetings at this time: addressing the Wiltshire
feast, Samuel Annesley claimed `to hear of many county feasts'. The
autumn meetings coincided with the assembly of the rst Protectorate
Parliament (September 1654), and some of the feast participants were,
doubtless, in the capital for that session. Feast meetings may well have
ventilated religious and political issues being debated at Westminster,
for, as Annesley observed, `we have the members [of Parliament]
chosen for every county, [and] their county expects good from
1
Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Surtees Soc., 65 (1877),
126; S. Clarke, Christian Good-Fellowship (London, 1655), 1; see also R. Robinson, The Saints
longings after their Heavenly Country (London, 1655), p. i; R. Holland, A Sermon Preach'd to the
Natives of the County of Warwick . . . (London, 1703), 5; C. Hill, Economic Problems of the Church
(Oxford, 1963), 25363, 26772.
2
The numbers and incidence of county feasts discussed here and in subsequent paragraphs are based principally on a survey of: sermons in the Short Title Catalogues for the
17th and 18th centuries (an index of many of these appears in Sampson Letsome's The
Preacher's Assistant in Two Parts . . . (London, 1753)); and of London papers, notably the
London Gazette, Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, Post Man, and The Flying Post. At
an early stage of my research Professor Paul Hardacre and Mr Paul Morgan gave me
numerous references and I am very grateful to both of them; Keith Thomas also kindly
supplied important references. After this chapter had been written Dr Newton Key published his excellent piece on `The Political Culture and Political Rhetoric of County Feasts
and Feast Sermons, 16541714', JBS, 33 (1994), 22356. Though there are differences in
numerical detail, the broad outlines of our ndings are similar.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

276

Regional and Ethnic Societies

them'.3 The divisions in that Parliament, its summary dissolution in

January 1655, the royalist risings the next summer, and the installation
of the Major-Generals, created a less propitious political climate for
county meetings, at least in the short-term. However, during the autumn
of 1655 Hertfordshire and possibly Warwickshire held feasts, and the
following May the Natives of London organized a celebration on the
county feast model; the Warwickshire feast was also held again in 1656,
probably in the autumn, after the return of the second Protectorate
Parliament.4 Parliamentary meetings and the revival of more conservative gentry and Presbyterian groupings in the shires may help to explain
the growth of county feasts, three or four (including London) meeting in
1657, and seven or eight (if not more) in 1658.5 The Protectorate's
collapse in early 1659 and growing political uncertainty led to a virtual
suspension of feast societies until after the Restoration.6
Overall, ten English shiresCheshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire,
Kent, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk,
Warwickshire, and Wiltshireare known to have held county feasts
during the Interregnum, together with those organized for native
Londoners. It is difcult to deduce much from the regional distribution, since our information is probably incomplete, but southern and
Midland counties seem to have made most of the running. As with the
City companies, a half-dozen or so stewards were chosen at the
county feast to make arrangements for the coming year, organize
the next feast and sermon, collect and dispense charity, and provide
overall continuity. The sermon was usually given in one of the main
city churchesold St Paul's was the favouriteand the feast itself
was probably kept in a city tavern or company hall. Participants paid
for the feast by buying a ticket in advance. At rst sight, there seems to
be a greater parallel with the late medieval fraternities and their
irregular, largely annual meetings, than with the more tightly structured
societies of the eighteenth century. 7 This may actually underestimate
3

Robinson, Saints longings; S. Annesley, The First Dish at the Wiltshire Feast . . . (London,
1655), sig. A.2 ; Clarke, Christian Good-Fellowship.
4
W. Clarke, The Innocent Love-Feast (London, 1656); E. Calamy, The City Remembrancer. Or,
A Sermon Preached To the Native-Citizens of London (London, 1657); Huntington Library, Stowe
MS 56 (1 Dec. 1656) (I am grateful to Dr J. Broad for this reference).
5
In 1657 the counties included Kent and Hertfordshire, plus London; in 1658,
Herefordshire, Suffolk, Kent, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire,
6
Key, `County Feasts', 229.
plus London.
7
Cf. H. R. Plomer, The Kentish Feast (Canterbury, 1916), 13; see also E. A. Beller, `A
Seventeenth-Century Miscellany', Huntington Library Quarterly, 6 (19423), 21618; see above,
p. 20 ff.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

277

the degree of continuity and organization. Stewards (sometimes old

and new together) arranged meetings separate from the feasts, and for
Kent at least there was a clear structure. By 1657 a committee of
eighteen trustees, led by Thomas Player, the Chamberlain of London,
assembled several times a year at Salters Hall. Gentlemen and
merchants could pay quarterly contributions to the treasurer, Thomas
Gellibrand. The trustees' main concern was to support godly students
at the universities, and they examined and selected candidates from
those nominated by the county gentry and others. By the late 1650s
county feast meetings may also have beneted from the parallel
activity of less formal county or regional clubs. 8
Participants at London's county feasts included people up from the
shires for Parliament, the Westminster courts, and business and
pleasure, together with county-born Londoners. In 1654 up to 500
Wiltshiremen gathered at the county feast from all parts of that shire.
Merchants, traders, and lesser gentry probably comprised the bulk of
participants: where the names of stewards are given, they tend to be
drawn from those groups. There is not much to suggest that county
grandees were involved. One of the exceptions was Sir Thomas
Dacres, steward of the Hertfordshire feast in 1657. Dacres was a
Parliamentarian MP in the Long Parliament, who had been ejected
at Pride's Purge. With the revival of more conservative and
Presbyterian groups in the late 1650s, he may have been trying to
reassert himself in eastern England: he was also steward of a
Cambridge feast, which had an active Anglican preacher. The trustees
for the Kent feast were predominantly established Londoners, mainly
Presbyterians, men who were to ourish under Charles II. 9
A constant refrain of the county feast societies was their value in
bringing together outsiders and London residents, to smooth the
process of urban integration. In 1656 Thomas Horton noted the
need for natives of `countries [counties] . . . which are foreign and
more remote [from London] . . . to meet one with another', for social
and other purposes. Feast societies also helped to apprentice poor
boys from the home shire to city traders. After the problems of the
8
N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall (eds.), Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter
(Oxford, 1991), i. 1934, 196, 202; T. Case, Sensuality Dissected. . . . In a Sermon preached To divers
Citizens of London Born in the County of Kent (London, 1657); also Plomer, Kentish Feast, 57; e.g.,
J. T. Rutt, ed., Diary of Thomas Burton (London, 1828), iv. 162.
9
Annesley, First Dish, sig. A2v., pp. 78; I. Craven, The New Paradise of God (London, 1658),
sig. A2; M. F. Keeler, The Long Parliament, 16401 (Philadelphia, 1954), 1501; Calendar of State
Papers Domestic, 16578, 174; Plomer, Kentish Feast, 79.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

278

Regional and Ethnic Societies

1640s, the Interregnum saw an important revival of immigration to the

capital, and the societies contributed to that process.10 County consciousness was another ingredient in the story. In 1654 the Wiltshire
feast was praised as `the Wiltshire Parliament', while other preachers
lauded the fame of particular shires and their leading families. Preaching to the Cheshire feast in 1654, Ralph Robinson argued how men
that `love their country . . . observe the usages of it' in dress, speech,
and cuisine. Vital here was the growth of county patriotism among the
landed classes from the late sixteenth century, promoted by local
antiquarianism, county histories, county representations (maps,
paintings), and the development of shire administration, particularly
in the decades before 1640. This county feeling was progressively
outward-looking, marked by strong links with London and the wider
nation. The county feast societies t closely with the picture of a
more extrovert county awareness, one which was increasingly promoted and dened by rivalry with other shires and communities.
Thus, native-born Londoners, according to Edmund Calamy in 1657,
should strongly support their feast society, in order to surpass what
`the Kentishmen have done lately in their meetings and what the
Warwickshire men have done'. 11
Charity was an essential element of county feast activity in the
seventeenth century, as with most other associations. Besides apprenticing boys from the shires, societies frequently maintained poor
students at university; the Wiltshire feast sought to establish petty
schools in its area; and the Warwickshire feasts in 1655 and 1656 raised
money for the repair of Stratford market house. Relief of ministers
and their widows also gured as a concern. 12 Philanthropy frequently
overlapped with godly provision and regulation. Samuel Annesley
called for a godly reformation of manners in Wiltshire, especially in
the suppression of the `multitude of alehouses in your country', while
10
T. Horton, Zion's Birth-Register (London, 1656), 68; R. Gardiner, Sermon preached at BowChurch, London, on the Anniversary meeting of the Herefordshire Natives . . . (London, 1659), 2789
(sic); S. R. Smith, `The Social and Geographical Origins of the London Apprentices, 1630
1660', Guildhall Miscellany, 4 (19713), 2034.
11
Annesley, First Dish, 16; Robinson, Saints longings, 20; C. Holmes, `The County
Community in Stuart Historiography', JBS, 19(2) (1980), 5473; also S. A. E. Mendyk,
`Speculum Britanniae': Regional Study, Antiquarianism and Science in Britain to 1700 (Toronto,
1989); A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War: Warwickshire, 16201660 (Cambridge, 1987),
49 and passim; Calamy, City Remembrancer, 46.
12
Calamy, City Remembrancer, 423; N. Hardy, The Olive-Branch, Presented to the Native
Citizens of London (London, 1658), 367; Case, Sensuality Dissected; Annesley, First Dish, 17;
Huntington Library, Stowe MS 56 (Dec. 1656).

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

279

several preachers stressed the role of societies in maintaining lectureships, particularly in `dark places'. The Worcestershire stewards, at
their feast in 1655, requested donations to fund weekly lectureships in
the shire, as well as apprenticeships and poor relief. The stewards
consulted Richard Baxter on how the money should be spent, and
Baxter publicized the lectureship, and the work of the feast society,
among the ministers of his Worcestershire Association; this body
possibly continued the lectureship once the society's money ran out. 13
A sizeable proportion of the preachers whose names are known
were prominent London Presbyterians. Ralph Robinson, who gave the
Cheshire sermon in 1654, had been scribe to the rst assembly of
provincial ministers, had opposed the king's execution, and had been
arrested for involvement in Love's plot against the Commonwealth in
1651. Thomas Case, the preacher at the Kentish feast in 1657, had
supported the Covenant, condemned the king's trial, been imprisoned
over the Love business, and was to go to the Hague in 1660 to
congratulate Charles II on his restoration. Case was a colleague of
Edmund Calamy, who gave a sermon to the Londoners feast in 1657;
Calamy had likewise opposed Charles I's death, and was to become a
chaplain to the new king in 1660, only to be deprived of his living two
years later. Samuel Annesley was a more conformist Puritan in the
1650s, associated with the Earl of Warwick, the Parliamentarian
admiral; but several others, such as Richard Gardiner and Thomas
Pierce, were semi-open Anglicans. 14
One's impression is that the growth of county feasts in the 1650s
was linked to a more moderate regrouping in the shires and the
capital, to reassert traditional county identities and concerns after
the radical uncertainty caused by the sects. Thus, the Nottinghamshire
feast heard of the need for unity in the face of `those monsters in
religion . . . the Seekers, Ranters and Quakers'. Politically, the London
county feasts may parallel the provincial associations of Presbyterian
and Independent ministers which Baxter and others promoted in
Worcestershire and sixteen or so other counties in the late 1650s
the most active in the Westto rally and organize moderate Puritanism. Baxter was a friend or associate of several of the preachers at the
county feasts. As well as working closely with the Worcestershire feast
stewards, in 1656 he made a general appeal to other feast societies to
13

Annesley, First Dish, 9, 1617; Robinson, Saints longings, 345; Keeble and Nuttall (eds.),
Baxter Correspondence, i. 1934, 196, 202.
14
DNB: Robinson, Ralph; Calamy, Edmund; Annesley, Samuel; Plomer, Kentish Feast, 78.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

280

Regional and Ethnic Societies

follow the Worcestershire example and entrust moneys raised at their

feasts to godly ministers in the county associations.15
Outside the capital, the only town with clearly identied county
feasts in the 1650s was Bristol. Here meetings may have been held
from about 1657 for Somerset, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire men,
and for those locally born. The Gloucestershire society was soon well
established, led by a steward, two assistants, and ward collectors.
Society tradition suggests that it was a royalist body, and it is
conceivable that the Bristol societies, like their London counterparts,
were part of the political and religious realignment of the late
Interregnum. 16

ii
After Charles II's return from exile, county meetings started to revive
in London on a limited scale: a Staffordshire feast was held in
November 1660, an Oxfordshire one in 1662 (its procession along
Cornhill impressing the Dutch visitor William Schellinks), and
Westmorland and Staffordshire meetings appeared the following
year, possibly with others. Outside London, county meetings continued to take place at Bristol. 17 However, for metropolitan feast
societies the Great Fire of London in 1666, its devastation of much
of the old city, with its churches and company halls, and the subsequent exodus of wealthier inhabitants proved disruptive, putting a
stop to meetings for several years. In Bristol, the outbreak of the
plague during the summer of 1665 caused the ofcial suspension of
the four public feasts there, although the Gloucestershire society soon
reappeared. The end of the decade also witnessed the advent of feast
societies at Oxford, for Berkshire and Oxfordshire men (the last
continuing until at least 1695); and at Winchester, where a society
15

Key, `County Feast', 231 n.; R. Hutton, The British Republic, 16491660 (London, 1990),
81; Hughes, Politics, 3012; Keeble and Nuttall (eds.), Baxter Correspondence, i. 2067.
16
H. Bush, History of the Gloucestershire Society (Bristol, n.d.), 57, 26 ff.; also J. Barry, `The
Cultural Life of Bristol, 16401775' (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1985),
179.
17
J. R. Pitman (ed.), The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot, DD (London, 18225), vi.
20950 (Lightfoot gave the Staffordshire sermons in 1658, 1660, and 1663). A. Clark (ed.),
The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. I, Oxford Historical Soc., 19 (1891), 4623;
M. Exwood and H. L. Lehmann (eds.), The Journal of William Schellinks' Travels in England,
16611663, Camden Soc., 5th series, 1 (1993), 172; J. Crosbie, Philadelphia or Brotherly Love
(London, 1669); Bush, Gloucestershire Society, 78.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

281

of natives and citizens was established to celebrate the town's recovery

from the plague.18
In London, only a few county feasts met in the early 1670s, though
county clubs were clearly functioning, such as a Kentish club in
1671.19 In the second half of the decade, however, the number of
feast meetings multiplied, probably encouraged by the frequent
parliamentary sessions during the Exclusion Crisis. The level of feast
activity remained high for the rest of Charles II's reign, despite the
absence of Parliament after 1681: the number of feasts reached a peak
in 1684, when at least twelve counties organized gatherings, before
declining sharply under James II. Of the fourteen or so counties
known to have had feasts in the years from 1675 to 1687, Warwickshire had the most regular (or at least best documented) series of
meetings, with eight identied. Few of the other counties active in the
1650s gure prominently in meetings under Charles II. New counties
emerge, however: Yorkshire, whose rst county feast took place in
1678, held at least six further meetings over the next decade;
Oxfordshire and Worcestershire were also active. Huntingdonshire,
which had an early meeting in 1675, had to postpone its feast in 1685,
but regained momentum the following year, incorporating
Cambridgeshire, and then the Isle of Ely in its organization. Most
other shires recorded only a handful of meetings, usually in the last
part of Charles II's reign. The Society of Manxmen had its only known
meeting in London during the late 1670s. 20
A regional analysis of all known London feasts between 1675 and
the Glorious Revolution (Table 8.1) reveals the strong representation
of upland England: the West Midland shires held twenty meetings, and
those in the South-West, ten; though for the North only Yorkshire
made any showing. The South-East performed quite strongly, particularly the counties west of London, but elsewhere the incidence of
meetings was low. The upland bias might suggest that newcomers and
settled residents from more-distant counties had greater need of
public solidarity in the capital.
After the Restoration county feasts operated with a growing
administrative structure. The Leicestershire gentlemen met weekly
18
E. Fowler, Sermon Preached at the General Meeting of Gloucestershire-Men . . . (London, 1685),
33; Bush, Gloucestershire Society, 7; A. Clark (ed.), The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. II,
Oxford Historical Soc., 21 (1892), 154 and passim; Hants. RO, 120 M 94 W/F8.
19
N&Q, 159 (1930), 452.
20
BL, Lansdowne MS 921, fo. 34; London Gazette, 69 July 1685, 1417 June 1686, 26
June 1687; BL, Additional MS 4424, fo. 79.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

282

Regional and Ethnic Societies

Table 8.1. Regional analysis of county feasts in London, 16751687
Number of feasts

East Anglia
Huntingdonshire and
Cambridgeshire
Suffolk
Total

% of total feasts held

6
1
7

12

East Midlands
Northamptonshire
Leicestershire
Total

3
1
4

North
Yorkshire
Total

7
7

12

South-East
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Hampshire
Total

1
4
4
9

16

South-West
Gloucestershire
Herefordshire
Somerset
Wiltshire
Total

2
3
1
4
10

17

West Midlands
Oxfordshire
Warwickshire
Worcestershire
Total

6
8
6
20

35

Isle of Man
total n

57

(from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.) at the Fountain tavern to organize their county

feast in 1680, while the accounts survive of James Cornwall, treasurer
and steward of the Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire feast in
1687. These papers reveal busy meetings held by the stewards in
inns and taverns for several weeks before the feast day, and heavy
expenditure on the printing of tickets, hiring of Goldsmiths' Hall, the

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

283

painting of coats of arms of county notables to decorate the hall, and

provision of venison for the dinner; further meetings took place in the
months afterwards, to pay off creditors and nalize the accounts.
Most feasts now had ten or twelve stewards, though Oxfordshire in
the 1670s mustered thirteen. Sermons continued to be preached in a
major city church: with St Paul's damaged by the Great Fire, the
church of St Mary le Bow was the most popular. Though the
Hampshire feast was held at a tavern, many county meetings were
too large for that kind of venue and had to nd accommodation in a
company hall. Sixty per cent of county feasts (where the venue is
noted) were held at Merchant Taylors' Hall, which had a large
medieval hall, and (after 1681) an extensive complex of kitchen, great
parlour, and other rooms; a scattering of other halls provided alternatives. Tickets were sold at specied coffee-houses and inns, probably those associated with the shire. The Warwickshire stewards
announced in 1682 that no tickets would be delivered at the church
or hall, to `ensure a sufcient accommodation which has often been
wanting by a sudden appearance of such as were not expected'. While
meetings retained their standard elements, the rst signs began to
appear of more lavish entertainments. In 1678, for instance, the
Huntingdon county feast at Merchant Taylors' Hall included the
`Huntingdon Divertissement', a short play or interlude, probably
with music. 21
After the Restoration the committees of stewards of London feast
bodies frequently included one or two county gures, MPs or senior
magistrates, but the rest were largely London residents from prosperous trading backgrounds. The leadership was a social cut below the
Court, church, and county grandees who carried the stewards' staffs
for the fashionable Sons of the Clergy, but the Caroline societies
probably attracted increasing elitist support. In 1675 Francis Gregory
claimed that the Oxfordshire feast had expected the attendance of
`many of our countrymen who are persons of fair estates . . .'. At the
Yorkshire feast in 1686 the dinner was attended by the Archbishop of
York and `most of the principal gentlemen of that county then in
town', including Sir John Reresby, Lord Latimer, and Sir John Kay,
who were chosen stewards. 22
21
London Gazette, 28 June1 July 1680; Huntingdonshire RO, Acc. 3970/K 67; R. T. D.
Sayle, A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors (London, 1945), ch. 3; The
Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence, 2 Nov. 1682; N&Q, 12th series, 2 (1916), 614.
22
Key, `County Feasts', 2389; F. Gregory, Agape or the Feast of Love (London, 1675), sig.
A2; A. Browning (ed.), Memoirs of Sir John Reresby (Glasgow, 1936), 411.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

284

Regional and Ethnic Societies

Migration remained a signicant concern of these societies, reecting the heavy inows into the later Stuart capital, with up to 8,000
newcomers a year, genteel migrants as well as troops of lower-class
men and women from the shires. While the volume of migration
increased, some of the traditional institutions of integration, such as
the City companies, were in decay. County feast societies may have
served as a signicant new focus for immigrant socializing, their
greatest attraction being for those from more distant shires, who
had fewer established connections with the capital. 23 As in the
1650s, however, county pride and solidarity played an important part
in these meetings. Preaching at the Buckinghamshire county meeting
in 1685, Lewis Atterbury exclaimed: `whether we view our Chiltern or
our Vale [the two divisions of the shire], consider pastime, health
or prot, we have a goodly heritage, well watered as the garden of the
Lord.' The 1683 Oxfordshire feast heard that their county was `the
garden and paradise of the whole world'. In the West Midlands, in
particular, county rivalry may have contributed to the multiplication of
meetings. County consciousness under the later Stuarts was promoted
by the continuing ow of county histories (for instance, John Aubrey
on Wiltshire, Robert Plot on Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, Sir Peter
Leycester on Cheshire, Sir Robert Atkins on Gloucestershire), by the
upsurge of inter-county sporting xtures, notably cock-ghts, and by
the renewed ascendancy of county gentry over the shires. 24
An important symbol of county solidarity remained philanthropy.
As one preacher declared in 1682, `these county-meetings' are not only
a means of `endearing country men together', but `they give the richer
sort an opportunity of providing for [the] poor'. Two years earlier
Andrew Littleton called on the Worcestershire feast meeting to assist
poor clergy, schools, indigent cavaliers, and the clothing trade. For this
purpose he projected a county bank or Mount of Piety, probably
modelled on the Italian Monta di Pieta. Most charitable activity, however, seems to have been conned to apprenticing poor boys and
relieving small numbers of the destitute. By the 1670s the philanthropic work of the county societies was part of wider associational
23
P. Clark and D. Souden (eds.), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London,
1987), 24, 25; for the decline of gilds see above, p. 185.
24 L. Atterbury, The Grand Charter of Christian Feasts . . . (London, 1686), 28; J. Hartcliffe,
A Sermon Preached at the Oxford-shire Feast . . . (London, 1684), 7; Mendyk, Speculum Britanniae,
chs. 9, 1112; A. Everitt, `The English Urban Inn, 15601760', in id. (ed.), Perspectives in
English Urban History (London, 1973), 117; A. Coleby, Central Government and the Localities:
Hampshire, 16491689 (Cambridge, 1987), chs. 49.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

285

activity in the eld, involving school feast and clerical benevolent

societies, like the Sons of the Clergy. Not that the discussions at
county feasts and clubs were always so disinterested. Roger North
noted at about this time that `the English gentry were perpetually
hunting projects to make their estates richer', and how `all this came
from their clubs where those of a country [county] and interest usually
met and plotted projects for their private interest'. 25
Dr Key has recently drawn attention to the political signicance of
county feast societies in the later years of Charles II's reign. At the
height of the Exclusion Crisis in 1679, when king and Parliament were
locked in conict over the Catholic threat, John Tillotson asserted the
role of county meetings for reconciling `animosities which have been
caused by our civil confusions and religious distractions'. In June 1681,
soon after the dissolution of the last Exclusion Parliament, George
Walls urged at the Worcestershire feast the necessity for all Protestants
to unite. This rationale of the voluntary association as a unifying
political space, bringing together disparate groups, was vulnerable to
being hijacked by political parties or factions, and their calls for action
against opponents. With the defeat of Exclusion, the county meetings
seem to have been taken over by Tory loyalists who used them to attack
the Whigs. Walls's successor in 1683 counselled the Worcestershire
society to be `loyal and obedient subjects . . . [not] politicians and
statesmen meddling with things above our sphere'. Other feast
sermons denounced the Whig Green Ribbon Club, and excoriated
the dissenters. One of the few exceptions to the barrage of Tory
preaching was Edward Fowler's Gloucestershire feast sermon in
1684, which decried the loyalists' time-serving hypocrisy and selfinterest. Not long after, Fowler was prosecuted in the church courts
for uncanonical behaviour and suspended from his livings. 26
Feasts of native-born Londoners did not reappear after the Restoration, probably because of the sprawling growth of the metropolis. From
the 1670s, however, several parish or district feasts were established on
25
G. Hickes, The moral Shechinah: Or a Discourse of Gods Glory (London, 1682), 29;
A. Littleton, A Sermon at a Solemn Meeting of the City and County of Worcester . . . (London, 1680),
324; see above, pp. 556; A. Jessopp (ed.), The Autobiography of The Hon. Roger North
(London, 1887), 182.
26
Key, `County Feasts', 24753; J. Tillotson, A Sermon Preached at the First General Meeting of
the Gentlemen and others . . . Born within the County of York (London, 1679), 312; G. Walls, A
Sermon Preached to the Natives of the City and County of Worcester (London, 1681), 29; G. Boraston,
The Royal Law, or The Golden Rule of Justice and Charity (London, 1684), 21; W. Bolton, Joseph's
Entertainment of his Brethren (London, 1684), 3; T. Manningham, A Sermon Preached at the
Hampshire-Feast . . . (London, 1686), 11. Fowler, Sermon, 11, 25; DNB: Fowler, Edward.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

286

Regional and Ethnic Societies

the county model: at Stepney in 1674 ( subsequently known as the

`Cockney Feast'), St Martin's in the Fields (1676), St Giles Cripplegate
(1685), and Westminster (1685). In the wake of Exclusion, these parish
feasts, like their county cousins, seem to have been dominated by Tory
loyalists.27
Outside the capital, regional societies remained few, only those at
Oxford and Bristol holding regular meetings up to the Glorious
Revolution. Dublin had a county feast in the 1670s, as well as a Welsh
meeting; and across the Atlantic Londoners staged feasts in Virginia,
and the West Indies during the 1680s. Under James II the London
county feast societies declined in number, as Tory leaders were discomtted by royal innovation in religious policy and the Crown's
interference in local government. Meetings may also have been
deterred by government hostility (signicantly, Anglican religious
societies became less public at this time). In 1688 only one county
meeting was held in the capital. 28

iii
The years after the Glorious Revolution saw the renewal of county
meetings in the capital. Amidst the political uncertainty of William
III's invasion and accession, only the long-established Warwickshire
society held a feast, but in early 1690 Yorkshire celebrated the triumph
of Whiggery with a great meeting in London. Originally planned for
February, the absence of several of the stewards away in Yorkshire for
the elections caused it to be postponed until Parliament assembled in
late March. Copying the Gentlemen Lovers of Music and their St
Cecilia Day entertainments, the stewards commissioned Henry Purcell
and the popular poet Tom D'Urfey to produce a grand patriotic ode in
praise of the county's part in the Glorious Revolution:
27

The Rules and Orders of the Stepney Society . . . (London, 1759), 1; S. Pegge, Anecdotes of the
English Language (London, 1814), 31; J. Horden, A Sermon Preached at St Martin's in the Fields
(London, 1676); Westminster Public Library (Victoria), F 2481; London Gazette, 1316 July,
203 July 1685, 226 July 1686; R. Burd, A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the
Natives of St Martin's in the Fields (London, 1684), 12 ff., 24, 29. For the Tory campaign against
Whigs and dissenters in St Giles, Cripplegate (including an attack on the vicar, Edward
Fowler, preacher at the Gloucestershire feast), see M. Goldie and J. Spurr, `Politics and the
Restoration Parish: Edward Fowler and the Struggle for St Giles Cripplegate', English
Historical Review, 109 (1994), 57296.
28
P. Clark and B. Lepetit (eds.), Capital Cities and their Hinterlands in Early Modern Europe
(London, 1996), 92; see above, p. 58; London Gazette, 258 June 1688.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

287

. . . now when the Renown'd Nassau

Came to restore our Liberty and Law . . .
And as the chief Agent of this Royal Work,
Long ourish the city and county of York.

Performed with vocal and instrumental accompaniment, the ode

reportedly cost 100 to stage, and received a tumultuous reception
from the assembled northerners.29 There are no subsequent
references to the Yorkshire feast, and in the county meetings of the
early 1690s only Dorset and Cheshire joined the long-established
Warwickshire and Oxfordshire societies. From the late 1690s, however, Kent and Huntingdonshire revived their meetings, and other
shires joined them. Somewhat exceptionally, in about 1692 a society
was formed to promote good-fellowship among Cirencester men in
the capital and to apprentice boys from the Gloucestershire town. 30
After 1688 there was a return to the theme of political and religious
harmony. Addressing the Dorset society, William Wake criticized
divisions among the Protestant churches and argued for unity in the
face of the overweening power of Catholic France. Edward Brown, at
the Kentish feast, praised the toleration of dissenters. The religious
targets now were atheism, irreligion, and profanity, with a strong
emphasis on moral reformationcoinciding with the upsurge of
moral reform societies at this time. In 1697 there was a proposal to
supply the `whole of England' with religious books, presumably moral
reform tracts, money for which (5,000) was to be collected at
London's county feasts. 31
Protestations of county pride appear conventional and politically
innocuous, but there are occasional country party resonances, as when
the preacher to Wiltshire's meeting in 1695 claimed to speak with `our
honest Wiltshire plainness' not with the `smooth language as well as
the rened arts of the Court'. In the same way, the increasingly lavish
and explicit assertions of county autonomy in the Kent feasts anticipate and echo the famous Kentish petition to the Commons in May
1701, whose demand that the safety of the country and county take
29

London Gazette, 2831 Oct. 1689; 610 Feb., 1317 Mar. 1689/90; W. H. Cummings
(ed.), The Works of Henry Purcell, Vol. I, The Yorkshire Feast Song (London, 1878), pp. ii, iv.
30 W. Wake, A Sermon Preach'd at the Reviving of the General Meetings . . . of the County of Dorset
(London, 1690); London Gazette, 1620 Nov. 1693, 226 Nov. 1694 and passim, 29 Oct.2 Nov.
1696; Keys, `County Feasts', 229; Cirencester Society in London. Rules, etc., including Some Notes on
the Society's History ( ?London, 1936), 1016.
31
Wake, Sermon, 17, 33; E. Brown, A Sermon Preach'd before the Honourable Society of the Natives
of the County of Kent (London, 1699), 16 ff.; HMC, Downshire MSS, I, 767.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

288

Regional and Ethnic Societies

precedence over partisan faction-ghting ended in the imprisonment

of the petitioners. That year the Society of Kentishmen were headed
in their march through the capital by William Joy, the famous Kentish
strong man, followed by members in buff-coats carrying traditional
green boughs, symbolizing the county's opposition to William the
Conqueror after the battle of Hastings, when local people met the
king and forced him to recognize their ancient customs and liberties. 32
Philanthropic activity was mostly limited to apprenticing poor boys,
while the sociable aspect of the annual meeting was increasingly
paramount. Sermon after sermon stressed the importance of friendship and solidarity among participants. John Russel, the preacher at
the Wiltshire meeting in 1695, identied the four aims of these public
feasts: eating and drinking; socializing `to advance our temporal
interest'; `the reviving [of] good neighbourhood'; and, lastly, charity
for the poor. A growing difculty for the county meetings by the
1690s was competition from alternative kinds of public sociability,
including musical, philanthropic, political, and other associations
(some run as feast-type bodies, others more elaborately structured).
The county feast societies fought back. There was improved advertising through repeated notices in the new London newspapers; feast
tickets were sold at a greater number of outlets. 33 Anniversaries
acquired a more obvious entertainment aspect. Processions to church
were often accompanied by a band playing music and other displays,
whilst feasts were regaled with county odes. In 1698 the Wiltshire feast
announced that the lord mayor would attend, presumably to draw in
wealthy citizens. 34
Nonetheless, by the start of the eighteenth century county societies
found it difcult to recruit stewards. The enhanced scale of county
meetings, involving more preparation and organization, may have
acted as a deterrent, while more fashionable events, such as the St
Cecilia and Sons of the Clergy feasts, were draining away genteel
patronage. A downturn in county meetings occurred soon after
1700, and this may help to explain why no attempt was made to
embroil them in the bitter party conict under Anne. Those old-style
meetings which were held during the early eighteenth century seem
32
J. Russel, A Sermon Preach'd . . . to the Natives of Wiltshire (London, 1696), 8; D. Ogg,
England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford, 1955), 4613; Plomer, Kentish Feast,
1519.
33
Russel, Sermon, 57; Plomer, Kentish Feast, 1112; Post Man, 79 Feb. 1698/9 and passim.
34
Plomer, Kentish Feast, 15, 1819; e.g., An Ode Performed at the Anniversary Feast of the
Gentlemen, Natives of the County of Kent (London, 1700); Post Man, 1922 Nov. 1698.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

289

have been modest affairs, like the Lincolnshire feast, which met
sporadically in the 1720s (with Isaac Newton as president), or the
Oxfordshire feast that appeared during the following decade.35

iv
Basic to the eclipse of the London county meetings was their general
failure to develop a fully edged associational structure, with a hierarchy of ofcers and dened functions (the same problems aficted
other kinds of feast society). There were exceptions. In 1710 the
Herefordshire county feast seems to have constituted itself as a formal
society for the purpose of clothing and apprenticing poor children
whose parents came from the shire. In the mid-1730s the society was
holding its feast in a London tavern, having dispensed with the
traditional sermon, which had lasted up to the 1720s. However,
most of the formal county societies which appear in the Hanoverian
period start later and were probably new creations. In 1746 a
Westmorland Society was established (with monthly meetings) to
relieve poor newcomers to the capital and to repatriate others ; it
also developed an educational function. A similar Cumberland Society
appeared a few years later. In 1769 it had a Wilkesite avour, and in
the following decade the annual feast attracted up to 140 gentlemen. 36
A Gloucestershire Society appeared in 1767, holding monthly meetings during the year as well as the annual feast, and by the end of our
period it had apprenticed nearly 200 poor boys in the capital. In 1787
the feast attracted around fty gentlemen, including the Duke of
Beaufort and the county MPs, and the total membership was about
150. The society suffered recurrent nancial difculties, and major
administrative reforms had to be introduced, with the creation of a
committee structure and a plethora of ofces to recruit the statusconscious; this gave the society renewed momentum. 37 Other
attempts to set up formal county associations in the capital were
less successful. The Buckinghamshire Amicable Society, which held
35

e.g., Post Man, 79 Feb. 1698/9, 269 Oct. 1700; W. C. Lukis (ed.), The Family Memoirs of
the Rev. William Stukeley, Vol. I, Surtees Soc., 73 (1880), 63; Read's Weekly Journal, 25 Nov. 1732,
25 Nov. 1738 and passim.
36
S. Low, The Charities of London (London, 1850), 169, 245; Daily Post, 2 Feb. 1735/6; J. D.
Marshall, `Cumberland and Westmorland Societies in London, 17341914', Trans. of the
Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc., 84 (1984), 23943; Middlesex
Journal, 202 Apr. 1769; for later records of the Cumberland Society: Guildhall, MS 3322/1.
37
Gloucester City Library, JX.11.3; Gloucs. RO: D 214, F1/72; S.O.3 (1); D 149, R70.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

290

Regional and Ethnic Societies

London meetings in 1749 and 1750, the Lancashire Society (about 1754),
and the Yorkshire Society (about 1760) all seem to have been short-lived
or episodic in their meetings.38 Other societies under George III, for
Derbyshire, Devon, Huntingdonshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Sussex,
have left relatively little information, and were again mostly ephemeral.39
The three or four formal county societies which developed permanent structures in London during the eighteenth century all involved
more distant counties on the Welsh and northern borders, responding
perhaps to that greater need for contact among long-distance
immigrants to the capital. In general, however, county solidarity and
sociability in the metropolis was increasingly focused on smaller
county clubs, meeting on a regular but informal basis, with lower
costs. Clubs of this sort had already appeared in the seventeenth
century, and after 1700 numbers multiplied, the Cornish club gathering at the Fountain tavern and the Herefordshire club at the Blue
Posts; a weekly Leicestershire club in Cheapside; a Wiltshire club `for
the encouragement of trade and mutual society' in Cornhill; and a
Gloucestershire club, which met weekly after 1705. 40 Ned Ward
mocked the Yorkshire club which assembled every market day at
Smitheld, in a countryman's public house, so `that by consulting
one another they might be able to exercise their cunning in this
southern air', including selling dud horses. Members comprised an
`attorney in his weather-beaten wig with his tun-belly hooped round
with a horseman's belt', together with victuallers, farriers, and horsedealers, who celebrated their county origins by swigging that famous
northern beer, Yorkshire stingo, and by drinking toasts to northern
grandees. Later clubs were often involved in political activity, organizing London out-voters to poll in county and borough elections, or
claiming to represent shire opinion to Parliament. A continuing function, however, was social networking and sociability, as when Lord
Sandwich chaired the monthly Huntingdonshire club in Holborn in
1780, `and the remainder of the night and part of the morning was
spent in the greatest conviviality and jollity'. 41
38
London Evening-Post, 1416 Feb. 1748/9, 810 Feb. 1749/50; F. W. Levander, `The
Collectanea of the Rev. Daniel Lysons F.R.S. F.S.A.', AQC, 29 (1916), 54, 70.
39
Levander, `Collectanea', 44, 50, 59, 65; East Sussex RO, ACC 4485.
40
Huntington Library, Stowe MS 26 (1); for the later Cornish club (1768) see N. H.
Nicolas, The Cornish Club (London, 1842), 36; Post Man, 1316 Feb. 1702/3, 13 Apr. 1703,
1316 Jan. 1704/5, and 1720 Aug. 1706.
41
E. Ward, A Compleat and Humorous Acccount of all the Remarkable Clubs and Societies in the
Cities of London and Westminster (London 1756), 736; Grub St Journal, 27 June 1734; Lincs. RO,
Field 3/1, pp. 223; St James Chronicle, 35 Feb. 1780.

5.11.99 16:06 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

291

Yet even for London's county clubs, the eighteenth-century

evidence is restricted to about a dozen shires meeting for a few years
at a time. References appear less often than for many other kinds of
society. In terms of public visibility at least, county gatherings,
whether as clubs or societies, seem signicantly less important than
during the late seventeenth century. Why? One factor, already
mentioned, was the heavy competition from other types of elitist
association after the Glorious Revolution. Another factor may be
demographic. The trend towards more localized migration from the
late seventeenth century possibly reduced the need for distinct
societies for long-distance movers, except for those from the English
periphery. Moreover, with fashionable social migration to London
becoming increasingly widespread by the eighteenth century, regional
social networks of an informal sort developed on a growing scale.
Thus, John Byrom's diary reveals important but informal Lancashire
and Cheshire circles operating in the metropolis under George II,
circles which provided a contact point for immigrants; some people
from the same shire may have resided near each other. On the other
hand, there was little of the large-scale clustering of long-distance
outsiders seen in Paris, where Burgundians and migrants from
Lorraine and Champagne grouped together in the faubourg St Marcel,
and others predominated elsewhere, frequently taking over specic
trades. 42
By the early eighteenth century informal regional networks were
complemented by other integrative mechanisms for outsiders. We
stressed earlier the role of assemblies and other types of public
socializing for the upper classes. For the middling and lower orders
there were new opportunities for employment in the Georgian period
offered by commercial organizations such as register ofces, and also
by advertising in newspapers. 43
Whether the decline of county societies was also affected by a
decline of county consciousness during the eighteenth century is
more problematical. Falling gentry attendance at quarter sessions in
the early eighteenth century, and the unimportance of sessions as
42
M. J. Kitch, `Capital and Kingdom: Migration to Later Stuart London', in A. L. Beier
and R. Finlay (eds.), London, 15001700: The Making of the Metropolis (London, 1986), 22831;
R. Parkinson (ed.), The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom, Vol. I(1), Chetham
Soc. Remains, os, 32 (1854), 2256; Vol. I(2), Chetham Soc. Remains, os 34 (1855), 445 and
passim; D. Roche, The People of Paris (Leamington, 1987), 2930.
43
P. Clark, `Migrants in the City: The Process of Social Adaptation in English Towns', in
Clark and Souden (eds.), Migration, 2856.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

292

Regional and Ethnic Societies

major political or sociable occasions, might suggest a diminution of

county awareness. On the other hand, assizes maintained their role as
a county forum during the period, and there is plenty of evidence that
county rivalries continued to be fanned by sporting xtures, with oldstyle cock-ghts joined now by cricket matches involving county
teams. 44
County histories have often been cited as an index of county
consciousness, and Figure 8.1 provides a survey of county histories
and related works appearing in print from the seventeenth to the early
nineteenth century.45 It raises more questions than it answers. As
noted earlier, a small but growing number of works were published
in the seventeenth century, which may be associated with the initial
development of county feast societies; there was also a major surge
around the start of the eighteenth century (after the end of censorship). This was followed by a marked fall-off between 1720 and
1759in sharp contrast to the rise of local town histories at the
time. Only under George III was there a recovery, particularly after
1780. Here, mounting middle-class afuence and the expansion of the
publishing industry may have been inuential, along with renewed
interest in the county communityevinced by the reformist association movement after 1779, and the reinvigoration of county administration by the 1790s. 46
If the decline of county societies in London in the early eighteenth
century can be interpreted as part of a diminished interest in county
identity at that time, what is puzzling is why there was such a limited
revival of county societies and clubs in the capital in the last years of
the period. The explanation may stem partly from the way that
regional networks increasingly penetrated not only informal social
circles, but also a wide spectrum of non-regional clubs and societies.
Regional groups and county contingents can be found in drinking and
learned clubs and masonic lodges. Whether the trend towards more
federal structures or networking among associations contributed to
44

N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 16791760 (London, 1984), ch. 8; see above, pp. 81, 186.
Fig. 8.1 is based on an analysis of entries for county histories in the 18th-Century Short
Title Catalogue, supplemented by C. Gross, A Bibliography of British Municipal History (new
edn. Leicester, 1966).
46
For town histories see P. Clark, `Visions of the Urban Community: Antiquarians and
the English City before 1800', in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History
(London, 1983), esp. 106; also R. Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in 18th-Century England
(Oxford,1997). E. C. Black, The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organisation,
17691793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), chs. 23; D. Eastwood, Governing Rural England (Oxford,
1994), ch. 3.
45

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

293

Fig. 8.1. County Publications, 15601839

this process is uncertain. More signicant is that the county revival of

the late eighteenth century was only part of the regional picture. In
more dynamic areas in particular, new kinds of regional identity were
being forged through rising provincial capitals such as Birmingham,
Manchester, Newcastle, and (in Scotland) Glasgow, whose emerging
cultural hinterlands increasingly overlay old county limits. 47
How far is the metropolitan picture conrmed by the provincial
evidence? Apart from Bristol, there are few signs of county-type
societies in English provincial towns. The Oxfordshire feast at Oxford
probably ended in the 1690s; Canterbury had a short-lived Kentish
society in the mid-1720s. At Cambridge there was a university ban
on county feasts in 1728. In the case of Bristol, however, county
meetings increased during the Augustan period. As well as the earlier
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset meetings, the city acquired
new Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Dorset societies. The Gloucestershire body remained conformist Tory, criticism of the dissenters in
1713 being followed next year by denunciation of the Jacobites; it is
likely that other Bristol societies also had a political dimension. 48 At
47
Parkinson, ed., Byrom Journal, i(1), 31516; A. F. Calvert, History of the Old King's Arms
No. 28 (London, 1899), 23; see below, pp. 4578.
48
A. Clark (ed.), The Life and Times of Anthony Wood, Vol. III, Oxford Historical Soc., 26
(1894), 433, 471, 491; Kentish Post, 912, 1619 Nov. 1726; R. B. Johnson, The Undergraduate
(London, 1928), 2601; Barry, `Cultural Life of Bristol', 179; H. Abbot, Unity, Friendship and
Charity, Recommended in a Sermon . . . (Bristol, 1713), 1112; Bristol Central Library, Accession
No. 21511.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

294

Regional and Ethnic Societies

the same time, the main functions were social and charitable. The
Gloucestershire society more than quadrupled its funds between the
1730s and 1770s, while its traditional expenditure on apprenticeship
was exceeded by medical charity, notably new payments to lying-in
women. Other county societies in the city were less prestigious and
successful: the Wiltshire society tried hard to publicize itself, one of its
anniversary processions being led by `a shepherd with his habit, crook,
bottle and dog', but the society raised only half the income of its
Gloucestershire counterpart. Why this constellation of county
organizations at Bristol? Admittedly, the city's associational life was
generally ourishing at this time, yet not all types of society thrived:
thus, masonic lodges were less important here than in comparable
centres, such as Norwich. 49 The link with Bristol's regional ambitions
in the South-West may have been a factor, but more important,
probably, were local conditions, including elite support and the
momentum created by old established bodies like the Gloucestershire
Society and the desire to emulate them. Localism helped to design the
distinctive matrix of associations in a particular community, which, in
turn, helped to reinforce a local sense of urban identity.
In Scotland, county societies emerged later and were largely concentrated in Glasgow. In 1756 it was said `there are now several
societies erected' in the town `for gathering funds for the support
of the poor born in other parts of the country'. One of the bestdocumented of these societies was the Fifeshire Society established in
1759, but others functioning in the last decades of the century covered
Ayrshire, Stirlingshire, Argyllshire, Renfrew, and Galloway. 50 In
addition, the city's early Highland Society (1727) was joined after
1780 by a Gaelic Club, offering, alongside the Gaelic chapels, a
home for the growing tide of Highlanders moving into the region.
Native-born societies were also formed. Like their English counterparts, the Glaswegian societies played a major philanthropic role: the
Highland Society helped to educate and clothe boys and girls from the
region and put them out to trades; the Fifeshire society lent money to
members in addition to relieving the sick (another function may have
been as a focus for middle-rank and craftsmen members excluded
from the town's still powerful gilds). The Highland Society and Gaelic
49
Bush, Gloucestershire Society, 11, 15; Bristol Central Library, Accession No. 21511, p. 8;
Read's Weekly Journal, 2 Sept. 1732; see below, ch. 9.
50
Strathclyde Regional Archives: T-TH 21/1/1; AGN 466; T-BK 29/1; TD 70/2; SRO
(GRH), RH 2/4/ 383, fos. 7578; for Galloway Society references see Broughton House,
Kirkudbright (I am indebted for this information to Sheriff D. Smith).

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

295

Club were associated with the cultural revival of the Gaelic language
and customs, and by 1800 both had acquired a signicant sociable
function.51
One or two societies appear in other Scottish towns, for instance
Greenock; but Edinburgh was notable for their general absence.
Again, how do we explain the contrast? In the Scottish capital population increase and probably immigration were more sluggish than in the
expansive western port, with migrants pouring in from the western
shires. The growth of societies can also be regarded as part of the
process by which Glasgow developed its new regional ascendancy in
western Scotland. 52
Yet Glasgow and Bristol were the exceptions that prove the rule of
the general insignicance of regional or county societies in late
Georgian Britain. When other regional capitals, such as Birmingham
or Manchester, sought to extend their cultural inuence over their
hinterlands, they did so, not via county societies, but through a
mixture of philanthropic, learned, and other (often subscriptiontype) associations, which attracted members across several counties.
The presence (or absence) of particular types of society in a city or
town is a litmus test for its individual community prole.

v
In contrast to the relative decline of regional societies, ethnic societies,
particularly those involving the so-called home nations, became more
important. In London, the Scots were the earliest and best organized;
the Welsh came next; while the Irish were the last to organize effectively. This may well reect the scale and timing of migration ows.
Detailed information on ethnic migration to the capital is sparse, but
mobility was never on the scale found in many large continental cities.
It has been estimated that there were about 4,000 to 6,000 Welsh in
Stuart London. The Scots inux was probably larger, and in the late
seventeenth century they commemorated St Andrew's Day by thronging the city wearing `blue and white St Andrew's crosses on [their] hats
and shoulders'. Immigration from Ireland in the earlier period was
geared to seasonal movement, but by the 1780s London may have
51
J. Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs (Glasgow, 1864), 10715; C. W. J. Withers, `Kirk, Club
and Cultural Change: Gaelic Chapels, Highland Societies and the Urban Gaelic Subculture in
18th-Century Scotland', Social History, 10 (1985), 17692; Strathclyde Regional Archives,
52
Ayr Advertiser, 23 Feb. 1804.
AGN 466.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

296

Regional and Ethnic Societies

lodged about 23,000 Irish; on St Patrick's Day the streets were

crowded with `multitudes of Irishmen with green in their hats'. Of
those Londoners treated at the Westminster General Dispensary in
177481, about 6.5 per cent were Scots-born and 8.7 per cent were
Irish.53
Though there was a Scottish box or benet society in the capital
earlier, at the Restoration a Scottish merchant proposed to endow a
permanent charity or corporation for relieving paupers from north of
the border. After negotiation with Scots at Court, a royal charter was
obtained in 1665 to set up a so-called Scots Hospital or Corporation.
Premises were purchased in Blackfriars in the 1670s, loans and gifts
coming from Scottish and English benefactors; but the hospital was
never adequate to house the needy, and the organization concentrated
on providing outdoor relief. Already in 1665 a great deal of the
charity's money had been spent burying hundreds of Scots who had
died of the plague. A second royal charter in 1676 established a strong
ruling body of a master, eight governors, thirty-three assistants, and
other ofcers. As well as offering pensions to the elderly, the body
relieved the sick and, most important, repatriated the destitute. 54
The Scots Hospital combined institutional and associational
features, and though its function was narrowly philanthropic, it served
as the focus for many other, more informal, Scottish bodies, the
corporation itself welcoming donations from Scots clubs across the
metropolis. About the time of the Glorious Revolution, Robert Kirk, a
Scottish visitor to London, went to a club of Scottish Presbyterian
schoolmasters, which met every Saturday at 6 p.m. discoursing in
Latin and lending money to Scottish scholars `till they nd out a t
place for him'. During the 1770s there was a Scottish literary club at
the British Coffee-house and the Highland Society was established in
the capital, bringing together Scottish nobles and gentry concerned
53

E. Jones, `The Welsh in London in the 17th and 18th Centuries', Welsh History Review,
10 (19801), 466, 469; D. McLean, `London in 168990: Part I', Trans. of the London and
Middlesex Archaeological Soc., ns, 6 (192731), 342; Clark and Souden (eds.), Migration, 2745;
`Extracts from the Journal of Edward Oxnard', New England Historical and Geneaological
Register, 26 (1872), 255; C. Ryskamp and F. A. Pottle (eds.), Boswell: The Ominous Years
(London, 1963), 263; M. D. George, London Life in the 18th Century (London, 1926),
11819; L. P. Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (Bloomington,
Ind., 1992), 2631.
54
The Original Design, Progress and Present State of the Scots Corporation at London (London,
1730), 314; An Account of the Institution, Progress and Present State of the Scots Corporation . . .
(London, 1807), 78, 12.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

297

with the improvement and preservation of the highland regions; at

around the same time, a Gaelic Society was instituted in London.55
Nevertheless, a great deal of Scots socializing and integration in the
capital appears to have been done on a more informal basis. There
were Scottish coffee-houses, taverns, and dining circles. James Boswell
complained that the `Scotch who come up to London are like galleyslaves chained together. They only coast it and never get into the main
ocean . . .; when a Scotsman asks you to dine with him here, instead
of letting you see English company, he asks at the same time a number
of the very people whom you see at home.' Registers of the Scots
Presbyterian church, rst in St Martin's Lane and then in Crown
Court, Covent Garden, indicate a signicant density of immigrants
living in the western suburbs close to the old city walls, in St Martin's,
the Strand, Bedfordbury, and Holburn, often working in the tailoring
and hairdressing trades: but there was no Scottish ghetto. By the late
eighteenth century ethnic societies were probably less important for
most Scots, as a focus of socializing, than other types of association
which they joined or established, such as orists' feasts and golf
clubs. 56
The Welsh were slower to set up metropolitan associations, perhaps
because of their smaller numbers and greater diffusion in the capital.
Nevertheless, the Society of Ancient Britons, founded in 1715 largely
through the efforts of the lawyer Thomas Jones, was a major success.
The society drew on the format and practices of the old county feast
societies, but it quickly established its own organization and identity.
Its inauguration on St David's Day was marked by a sermon in Welsh,
a great feast in Haberdashers Hall, and odes written by Thomas
D'Urfey. The political orientation from the start was Whiggish, the
Prince of Wales became president, and the society made a toadyingly
loyal address against the 1715 rebellion. Though never chartered, the
society soon established an elaborate administrative structure, with a
cadre of ofcials and monthly committee sessions. Originally concerned, like the county meetings, with apprenticing poor boys, in 1718
55

Original Design of the Scots Corporation, 26; D. McLean, `London in 168990: Part II',
Trans. of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Soc., ns, 6 (192731), 491; J. L. Clifford (ed.), Dr
Campbell's Diary of a Visit to England in 1775 (Cambridge, 1947), 49; G. G. Cameron, The Scots
Kirk in London (Oxford, 1979), 1034.
56
D. McLean, `London in 168990: part III', Trans. of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Soc., ns, 6 (192731), 658; Ryskamp and Pottle (eds.), Boswell Ominous Years, 311; Clark
and Souden (eds.), Migration, 274; St James Chronicle, 1316 May 1769; I. T. Henderson and
D. I. Stirk, Royal Blackheath (London, 1981), 8.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

298

Regional and Ethnic Societies

a group of members took the important step of setting up a school for

poor children of Welsh parentage. Initially, there seems to have been a
separate board of governors and trustees for the school, but in 1721 it
was agreed that the stewards of the feast would become trustees for
the school society. In the early 1720s Welsh gentry complained that
poor families were leaving the principality so they could send their
children to the school, `by which removal there may be want of hands
for common labour'. The number of pupils rose from twelve to forty,
and in 1737 a subscription was raised to set up a schoolhouse in
Clerkenwell; in the 1770s the school moved (at a cost of nearly
3,600) to larger accommodation on Grays Inn Road. 57
Having a clear educational function (through its associated school),
effective administration, and fashionable patronage and publicity
(including heavy advertising), the Ancient Britons won considerable
support from the Welsh community in London and the principality,
from dissenters as well as Anglicans (in some years there were feastday services for both denominations). By the 1750s, however, the
society's work was increasingly dominated by the school, while its
organization may have appeared old-fashioned and narrow. 58 In 1751
the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion was founded, having as its
object `the cultivation of the British [i.e. Celtic] language and a search
into antiquities'. The society served as an important focus for the
mounting interest in Celtic antiquities and language, and attracted the
backing of English antiquaries like Browne Willis and Stukeley. Inuenced by the spread of improvement societies in Britain, it declared its
support for advances in trade and manufactures, and sought to establish links with Welsh emigrants to Pennsylvania, where a Welsh society
had thrived since 1729. 59
By the late 1760s the Cymmrodorion Society was busy lobbying the
Welsh bishops to present Welsh-speaking clergy to livings in the
principality, on one occasion helping to nance the prosecution of
an Anglophone parson in Anglesey. But divisions within the society
57
Sir T. Jones, The Rise and Progress of the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Antient Britons
(London, 1717); BL, Sloane MSS: 2572, fos. 14; 3834; A Brief Account of the Rise, Progress and
Present State of the Most Honourable and Loyal Society of Ancient Britons (London, 1839), 610;
NLW, MSS Honourable and Loyal Society of Ancient Britons, vol. 1, fo. 25, 48v and
passim; J. York, A Sermon Preached at St Clement Dane . . . (London, 1775), 278.
58
Jones, Rise of the Ancient Britons, 1522, 41 and passim; BL, Sloane MS 3834, fo. 14 ff.;
Read's Weekly Journal, 6 Mar. 1730/1.
59
Constitutions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in London (London, 1755), 13, 17, 22,
and passim; The Origin and Progress of the Gwyneddigion Society of London (London, 1831), 10 n.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

299

over its direction led to the formation (in 1770) of another London
Welsh association, the Gwyneddigion Society, restricted initially to
Welsh-speakers from North Wales, and committed to the promotion
of Welsh music and poetry. When the Cymmrodorion Society
collapsed in 1787, due to a nancial crisis, the Gwyneddigion became
the leading Welsh association in the capital, holding major social events,
relieving members, investigating stories of Welsh American Indians,
supporting publications, and, most important, after 1789 organizing an
annual Eisteddfod in Wales. 60 At the same time, it maintained links
with the Society of Ancient Britons and the Welsh school. As with the
Scots, however, Welsh cultural and social networking in the metropolis
was not restricted to these established associations. There were various
informal clubs and Welsh-speaking religious societies, together with
churches, which helped integrate newcomers to the capital. 61
Irish ethnic associations in London made slower progress, partly
because of the poor background of many immigrants and their
Catholicismleading to racist hostility and attacks (as, for instance,
the anti-Irish riots of 1736 and anti-Catholic disturbances of 1780). In
1704 an Irish Charitable society was formed in London by several Irish
nobility and gentry to relieve distressed immigrants. When this ceased
in 1756, its funds remained invested in stock and were eventually
worth over 10,000. As Irish immigration rose sharply in the last
half of the century, a London knot of the Irish Benevolent Order
of the Friendly Brothers of St Patrick was established about 1775
(earlier short-lived branches had been formed at Oxford, Liverpool,
and Bath). It is possible that this body was linked to the Benevolent
Society of St Patrick, which began in the capital in 1783 and took over
the old charitable society's funds; three years later it was remodelled
with a formal body of ofcers and a scheme for schools for poor Irish
childrenprobably on the Welsh model. Support was extensive. In
1791 the anniversary dinner was attended by the Duke of York and
about 500 nobles and gentlemen. 62
60
P. Jenkins, A History of Modern Wales, 15361990 (London, 1992), 734; The Depositions,
Arguments and Judgement in the Cause of the Church-Wardens of Trefdraeth . . . (London, 1773);
Origin of the Gwyneddigion Society, 1026; BL, Additional MS 9848.
61 Farley's Bristol Journal, 8 Mar. 1787; Origin of the Gwyneddigion Society, 14; NLW, Iolo
Morganwg MS 92; T. Beynon (ed.), Howell Harris's Visits to London (Aberystwyth, 1966), 25.
62
G. Rude, Hanoverian London, 17141808 (London, 1971), 1789, 18790, 2213; General
Advertiser, 22 Apr. 1745; Bodl., J. Johnson Collection, Charitable Societies, Box 3 (Benevolent
Soc. of St Patrick); R. Portlock, The Ancient and Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of St
Patrick: History of the London Knots (London, 1973), 12; Star, 19 Mar. 1791; Morning Chronicle,
25 Feb. 1791.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

300

Regional and Ethnic Societies

Once again, however, informal socializing was probably more

crucial for Irish newcomers. Arriving in the capital during the
1760s, one Irish visitor went rst to the `Irish walk' at the Royal
Exchange, where he met several Irish merchants, one of whom invited
him to dine with `him and some of my countrymen', and `for the
honour of old Ireland . . . he generously gave us a very elegant
entertainment'. On other occasions, he met groups of Irish in the
Mall and at Vauxhall gardens, and attended a largely Irish drum or
rout. Most importantly, the Catholic churches with their charities
provided a major resort for the ethnic community. The Irish also
joined certain other types of voluntary association: thus, the Ancient
order of masons seems to have been started by Irish migrants to
England. 63
In provincial towns, with their much smaller immigrant numbers,
ethnic associations were of minor signicance: Bristol and Birmingham
had societies of Ancient Britons; Oxford, Welsh and Irish clubs ; and
Newcastle and Haslingden (near Accrington), Scottish benet
societies. In Scotland, Glasgow had a Hibernian Society, essentially a
loan and benet association. 64 The best-documented of the provincial
societies was at Norwich, where the city had for some years supported
an informal Scottish circle celebrating St Andrew's Day. In 1775 they
agreed to set up a charitable Scots society to relieve poor natives. The
society quickly expanded, a London sister body was established, and
from 1783 to 1789 successful concerts were held, their audiences being
entertained with Scottish songs, increasingly in vogue, in order to raise
funds. But after 1777 the ethnic remit was widened to provide relief to
non-Scots, and two years later non-Scots were admitted as members
or associates. By 1785, when it renamed itself the Society of Universal
Goodwill, the association had largely abandoned its ethnic origins and
become a successful, but general, philanthropic organization. 65
The home nation associations were clearly more signicant in the
eighteenth century than the ragtag of county meetings, but, as we have
63
BL, Additional MS 27,951, fos. 2424v, 28v, 38v, 6262v; S. Gilley, `English Catholic
Charity', Recusant History, 11 (19712), 17989; see below, p. 309.
64
Farley's Bristol Journal, 8 Mar. 1787; J. Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the
West Midlands (Manchester, 1977), 118 n.; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 22 May 1762; Tyne and
Wear RO, Acc. 540/6; Lancs. RO, DDX 1225/1; Strathclyde Regional Archives, TD 200.7.
65
An Account of the Scots Society in Norwich . . . (Norwich, 1783); An Account of the Scots Society
in Norwich . . . (Norwich, 1784); T. Fawcett, Music in 18th-Century Norwich and Norfolk
(Norwich, 1979), 16; An Account of the Proceedings of the Society of Universal Goodwill (Norwich,
?1787).

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

301

seen, their social importance was modest and their political role
minimal. In addition to the powerful pressure of cultural and social
assimilation in a largely homogenous population, there was also strong
competition from alternative social activities, not least the multitude
of other clubs and societies.
The same picture emerges when we look at different ethnic groups.
The Germans and Swiss had one or two benet societies, while the large
Huguenot inux into London at the end of the seventeenth century
spawned a half-dozen or so box clubs, but had little other associational
impact, as the newcomers were steadily integrated into the general
population. While the two waves of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews
formed their own charitable and religious organizations, they too tended
to join existing societies, including masonic lodges.66 Throughout British
society, integration and assimilation rather than organizational segregation seems to have been the abiding preference of migrant and minority
groups. Typically, Americans in London before the Revolution had their
coffee-houses, taverns, and dining circles, but opted to join a host of
indigenous associations rather than set up their own, though the
impecunious loyalist refugees who arrived once war broke out were
forced to cluster at cheap dining clubs.67

vi
How does this mainland mosaic compare to the developing associational world across the Atlantic and beyond? Regional meetings appear
only eetingly in the colonies, mainly in the earlier period. As well as
the Londoners' feast at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1686, London-born
planters and merchants held annual meetings at Bridgetown, Barbados,
from 1680 to at least 1710. These involved a grand procession (with
music) to church, a sermon, a collection for the poor, and a well
lubricated feast which lasted for six hours and was interspersed with
ritual health-drinking, trumpet ourishes, and volleys of gunre. 68
66
Rules and Orders for a Charitable Society set up by Some Germans at London . . . (London,
1713); Greater London RO, MR/SB, Box 1; Guildhall, MS 9899; W. C. Waller, `Early
Huguenot Friendly Societies', Huguenot Society Proceedings, 6 (1901), 20127; Clark and Souden
(eds.), Migration, 275; e.g. FMH, SN (Moderns), 990.
67
`Extracts from Journal of Edward Oxnard', 810 an passim; M. A. D. Howe, `English
Journal of Josiah Quincy junior, 17741775', Massachusetts Historical Soc. Proceedings, 50 (191617),
438, 456; `Refugees in London', New England Historical and Geneaological Register, 3 (1849), 823.
68
R. B. Davis, `A Sermon Preached at James City in Virginia the 23rd of April 1686 by
Denuel Pead', WMQ, 3rd series, 17 (1960), 37194; `T. Walduck's Letters from Barbados,
1710', Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Soc., 15 (19478), 1467.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

302

Regional and Ethnic Societies

Though county and regional meetings were largely absent elsewhere,

we nd the transmission of a signicant number of ethnic societies to
North America. The Scots had a box society at Boston after 1658
(reorganized in 1684), and New York supported Irish and French
clubs in about 1716. The early Georgian era witnessed the proliferation of formal societies, more or less on the English model. At
Boston, in about 1723, we hear that `strangers from Great Britain
love one another's company and draw one another off '. Philadelphia
had its own Society of Ancient Britons after 1729, an informal St
George's Society from the 1730s, and a well-organized St Andrew's
Society after 1747. 69 New York saw the establishment of a Scots
society in 1744, and Savannah a St Andrew's Society six years later,
while Charleston hosted a set of home nation societies in George II's
reign. Occasionally ethnic associations surfaced in the interior, as at
Hanover County in Virginia in the late 1730s, an area of heavy Scottish
settlement, where a body of Scots organized horse-races, wrestling
and other sports, dancing, and music competitions, their ag ying
high over the proceedings, drums beating, and trumpets sounding. 70
Most activity, however, was located in the big ports. The majority of
societies attracted migrants from the British Isles, though, following
New York's example, Charleston had a Huguenot society by the 1730s,
and Philadelphia, its region deluged with new arrivals from the
Palatinate, maintained a German Society after the 1760s. 71
The London model was undoubtedly inuential: many of the early
colonial societies, as we have seen, boasted metropolitan-style processions, sermons, and feasts. The Philadelphia society of Ancient
Britons was directly inspired by its counterpart in the capital, and
the 1769 rules of the St Andrew's Society of Philadelphia quoted the
example of the London migrant societies. Progressively, though,
American societies imitated others on the East Coast. The New
York Scots society referred in its constitution to the Scots society
69

The Constitution and By-Laws of the Scots Charitable Society of Boston (Boston, Mass., 1896),
917 and passim; A. Maury (ed.), Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (New York, 1907), 296, 2989;
N. Caplan, `Some Unpublished Letters of Benjamin Colman, 171725', Massachusetts Historical
Soc. Proceedings, 77 (1965), 137; E. Risch, `Immigrant Aid Societies before 1820', Pennsylvania
Magazine, 60 (1936), 1517; D. R. Gilbert, `Patterns of Organisation and Membership in
Colonial Philadelphia Club Life, 17251755' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
Pennsylvania, 1952), 1568, 1603.
70
D. B. Morrison, Two Hundredth Anniversary 1756 of St Andrew's Society of the State of New
York (New York, 1956), 78; H. Cohen, The South Carolina Gazette, 17321775 (Columbia, SC,
1953), 1718; Virginia Gazette, 30 Sept.2 Oct. 1737, 29 Dec. 1737.
71 Cohen, South Carolina Gazette, 1718; Risch, `Immigrant Aid Societies', 1820.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

303

of Boston, and Philadelphia's German Society inuenced comparable

bodies at Charleston, Baltimore, and New York.72
As in England, most of the ethnic societies met in taverns, and
there was usually a corps of half a dozen ofcials and a committee.
Support seems to have come primarily from the upper ranks of urban
society, merchants, ofcials, professional men, and the ubiquitous
tavernkeepers, although the precise occupational composition varied
according to the ethnic group and its ranking in the community. At
Philadelphia, for instance, the St Andrew's Society had a more elitist
following (generally wealthy men active in civic affairs) than the Irish
and Welsh societies. 73
The prime concern was helping to relieve and integrate newcomers
from Europe. The St George's Society of Philadelphia explained that
`numbers of Englishmen have arrived in this city and being disappointed in their expectations have been reduced to the lowest
ebb of distress'. Emigration to the colonies, already heavy in the early
part of the eighteenth century, soared in the years after the Treaty of
Paris (1763). Of those landing before the outbreak of the revolutionary war, about 40,000 were Scots, 55,000 Irish, and 30,000 English,
together with considerable numbers of Germans. Many arrivals
wanted to move quickly into the interior, but lacked means. Societies
offered relief or advice and, in some desperate cases, helped with
repatriation. In the late 1760s the St Andrew's Society at Philadelphia
claimed it had aided many hundreds of migrants, while the city's
German charitable society ran a lottery to build a shelter for newly
arrived poor families. Relief was not indiscriminate. Philadelphia's St
George's Society targeted those Englishmen who might be advantageous to the community, `articers and manufacturers, [rather] than
those poor people who are not of any trade or calling'. 74
Colonial societies like this were not just concerned with aiding
newcomers. There was support for more settled residents as well,
72

Pennsylvania Gazette, 25 Feb. 1728/9; The Constitution and Rules of the St Andrew's Society in
Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1769), 4; Morrison, St Andrew's Society, 7; Risch, `Immigrant Aid
Societies', 18.
73
e.g., Morrison, St Andrew's Society, 78; F. P. Bowes, The Culture of Early Charleston (Chapel
Hill, NC, 1942), 119; Gilbert, `Philadelphia Club Life', 1609.
74
Rules and Constitutions of the Society of the Sons of St George (Philadelphia, 1772), 6, 19; H. A.
Gemery, `European Emigration to North America, 17001820', Perspectives in American
History, ns, 1 (1984), 286, 311, 31720; B. Bailyn, Voyagers to the West (New York, 1986),
1020, 246; C. Carson et al. (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the 18th Century
(Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 544 ff.; Constitution of the St Andrew's Society in Philadelphia, 3; The
German Charitable Society's Lottery On Petty's Island (Philadelphia, ?1773).

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

304

Regional and Ethnic Societies

like Hugh Rose, an old man, who petitioned Charleston's St Andrew's

Society in 1758 claiming that his crops had been `destroyed by bears
and stolen by negroes', so that he was forced to live as a black in a
little hut with `neither clothes nor liquor'. An educational function was
also signicant: the St Andrew's Society dedicated part of its funds to
maintaining a school for poor children, and the German Society in
Philadelphia planned its own school and library. 75
Not least important were the opportunities the societies afforded
for better-off newcomers and visiting merchants and ofcials to meet,
socialize, and integrate with the local respectability. Society feasts on
national days became major social events in the civic calendar, the
traditional heavy drinking leavened by entertainments like concerts
and plays. In 1771 the St George's Society of New York arranged an
elegant dinner at Bolton's tavern attended by 120 people including
Lord Dunmore, the provincial governor; twenty-three toasts were
drunk and `the company parted at early dawn in high good humour'.
A few years later the St Andrew's feast at Charleston cost 249
(colonial currency), much of it splashed out on alcohol. Its Philadelphia
counterpart reacted to the extravagance by calling for a `neat and plain
supper' at meetings, but parsimony of this kind was risky and could
have a dire effect on attendance and support. 76
Immigrants maintained contact and solidarity in a variety of ways,
formal and informal. Networks developed through people living in the
same area, kinship and business activity, church membership, music
(the Virginia Scots commonly carried bagpipes to meetings), and
other forms of socializing. By the 1760s, however, ethnic societies
played an important role in the major American cities. Those bodies
associated with Britain became somewhat elitist, with membership
charges rising sharply and members linked to the local civic and
business leadership. On the other hand, despite their metropolitan
trappings, there is little to suggest they were centres of loyalism, once
political relations with London deteriorated under George III. Recognition of the need for all ethnic bodies to rally together on the
colonists' side was stressed by the Sons of St George in Philadelphia
in 1772, which rejected `invidious national distinctions . . . between
75
J. H. Easterby, History of the St Andrew's Society of Charleston, South Carolina (Charleston,
1929), 40; E. McCrady, The History of South Carolina Under the Royal Government 17191776 (New
York, 1969), 530; Eine Acte . . . [German Society Contributing for the Relief of Distressed Germans]
(Philadelphia, 1793), 4.
76
E. Singleton, Social New York Under the Georges, 17141776 (New York, 1902), 308;
Easterby, St Andrew's Society, 43; Constitution of the St Andrew's Society in Philadelphia, 12.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

305

the different nations which compose the British state in America,

where all the freemen . . . are brethren, friends and countrymen'.77
This period also saw the emergence of St Tammany societies for
native-born colonists. Evolving from informal festivals held on May
Day, by the early 1770s St Tammany societies, often with strong antiBritish views, had spread to various urban centres on the East Coast.
In 1774 at Norfolk, Virginia, there was an elaborate St Tammany feast
with 400 people taking part, among them the Sons of St George, St
Andrew, St Patrick, and St David, `emblematic of that happy union
. . . while Britain was just and America was free'. 78
Outbreak of war disrupted the activity of ethnic societies, but after
1785 a number of the older ones reassembled and new ones sprang up,
usually chartered by the individual state authorities. At New York, the
St Andrew's Society was reorganized in 1785 and the Sons of St Patrick
and the St George's Society revived not long after, whilst Charleston's
St Andrew's Society had reappeared by 1787. Among the new associations, Richmond possessed its Sons of St Patrick by 1786, and
Baltimore a ourishing St George's Society in the next decade. 79
For most associations it seems to have been business as usual:
philanthropy combined with high socializing. At the St George's
Society in Baltimore the anniversary dinner was held in a great
room, the table crowded with members and guests, and the drinking
and eating punctuated by toasts and songs. For New York's German
Society the anniversary celebrations in 1789 comprised a church
service (with orations in German and English), and a dinner enjoyed
by the state governor, the city mayor, and ofcers of the various
British ethnic societies. Members were recruited from the elite classes
of the new republic, as in the case of New York's St Andrew's society,
77
A. L. Karras, Sojourners in the Sun: Scottish Migrants in Jamaica and the Chesapeake, 17401800
(London, 1992), 119, 1223, 1378, 141, 1523, 157; South Carolina Historical Soc., MS 43/
93, vol. 1, p. 9; Easterby, St Andrew's Society, 43; Rules of the Society of the Sons of St George, 6; in
1776 the Sons of St George split into factions over the war (noted in P. Thompson, `A Social
History of Philadelphia's Taverns' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania,
1989), 5012), but this was exceptional.
78 Virginia Gazette, 19 May 1774; for other St Tammany meetings: W. Eddis, Letters from
America, ed. A. C. Land (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 59; C. Bridenbaugh and J. Bridenbaugh,
Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin (New York, 1962), 241.
79
See below, pp. 4067; Rules for the St. Andrew's Society of the State of New-York (New York,
1785); Rules to be observed by the Society of the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, in the State of New York
(New York, 1786); Rules of the Society of St. George . . . (New York, 1787); Calendar of Virginia
State Papers, 4 (17859), 105; T. Twining, Travels in India a Hundred Years Ago, with a Visit to the
United States (London, 1893), 3968.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

306

Regional and Ethnic Societies

where over half were merchants. Politically, some ethnic bodies maintained a traditional British link and supported the Federalist party:
thus, the Baltimore St George's Society had toasts both to the
president and the king of England. But the New York Tammany
Society and others elsewhere displayed an increasingly anti-Federalist
stance, helping to organize campaigns for the Republican party. 80
By the 1790s older forms of ethnic association were supplemented
by new kinds of middle-class philanthropic society, almost exclusively
committed to relieving and assisting the huge number of foreign
migrants now starting to ood into the country. Philadelphia had a
Hibernian Society for the Relief of Emigrants from Ireland (1790,
incorporated in 1792). Members of the committee visited newly
arrived ships to check if passengers had been well treated (and to
prosecute offending masters), as well as to identify those in need of
relief. The Scotch Thistle Society, established in the same city in 1796,
offered a broad range of aid for Scottish immigrants, including help
with getting jobs, medical care, and funeral benets, the concern being
`to relieve distress rather than accumulate funds'. Three years later the
Welsh too had an immigrant society, which published a register of
employment and provided a physician to care for newcomers. At
Baltimore, the Irish instituted a society which subsequently lobbied
Congress for land for immigrants. 81 Furthermore, a growing number
of general aid societies for immigrants appeared, such as the
Philadelphia Society for the Information and Assistance of Persons
Emigrating from Foreign Countries. Speaking to it in 1796, Morgan
Rhees contrasted the situation between the Old World, where
migrants found help and jobs through commercial agencies such as
register ofces, and the New World, where `a great number of philanthropic citizens associate together . . . to take the stranger and the
distressed pilgrim by the hand'. Though the comparison is exaggerated, failing to recognize the role of British charitable societies,
Rhees's comments underline the striking importance of ethnic societies
in the United States. 82
80
Twining, Travels, 398; New York Journal and Weekly Register, 12 Nov. 1789; Rules for the St
Andrew's Society of the State of New-York, 11 ff.; O. E. Allen, The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of
Tammany Hall (Reading, Mass., 1993), 911.
81
L. Lees, Exiles of Erin (Manchester, 1979), ch. 1; Risch, `Immigrant Aid Societies', 301;
Constitution of the Scots Thistle Society of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1799), 1618; Constitution and
Rules of the Welsh Society of Pennsylvania . . . (Mount Holly, Penn., 1799), 78; Maryland
Historical Soc., MS 2029, Box 2, pp. 912.
82
Risch, `Immigrant Aid Societies', 15; M. J. Rhees, The Good Samaritan (Philadelphia,
1796), 13, 16.

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

Regional and Ethnic Societies

307

vii
This chapter has surveyed the development of one of the earliest
classes of British voluntary association, from the rather rudimentary
meetings of the Stuart era to the regular, well organized societies of
the late eighteenth century. Progress was erratic, with sharp uctuations in the level of activity, on several occasions linked to the
changing political situation. In Britain, most societies of this kind
were concentrated in the capital and one or two provincial centres,
such as Bristol and Glasgow (little or no activity occurred in Wales or
Ireland). The explanation for this lack of penetration is as instructive
as that for successful dissemination. The relative failure of the regional
and ethnic societies was due, in considerable part, to the progressive
localization of internal migration from the late seventeenth century,
and the relative homogeneity of the British population. Associated
with this was the strong pressureand also opportunitiesfor
minorities to assimilate, at least until the last part of the eighteenth
century. Here, many alternative gateways into the urban community
were open for outsiders: traditional kin and regional networks;
conventional forms of public socializing, such as drinking houses
and new-style assemblies; the growing role of commercial channels,
including register ofces and newspapers, that helped migrants nd
employment; and, last but not least, the multitude of other societies
serving as competing venues for outsiders to gather and integrate in
urban society.
North American developments conrm the ndings of recent
scholarship, which has pointed to the considerable continuities
between the Old and New Worlds, through the interplay of neighbourly, kin, and regional connections across the Atlantic ocean. 83 At
the same time, the pattern of continuity was complex and negotiated.
There was no automatic spread of British societies to the periphery.
Regional meetings generally failed to make the Atlantic crossing, while
ethnic societies were much more important in American society than
in most British towns. The high proportion of long-distance movers in
American towns was doubtless a powerful force, but so was the way
that ethnic societies, far from being seen as divisive or separatist,
became incorporated into the elite order of many urban centres.
Despite the Revolution, many of the old-style societies survived,
83

For the recent literature see A. Taylor, `An Atlantic People', JBS, 29 (1990), 4027. For
an extreme view of continuity see D. H. Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Pathways in America
(New York, 1989).

5.11.99 16:07 08 Chapter 0394

308

Regional and Ethnic Societies

adapting to the changed political circumstances, and were complemented rather than challenged by the new immigration societies of the
last years of the century. Clearly, there were losers as well as winners in
the associational steeple chase. In contrast to the mixed fortunes of
our early-start regional and ethnic societies, no one can doubt the allround success of our next class of association: the freemasons.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

Decisive for the creation of English, and indeed British, freemasonry

as a speculative (that is, non-gild) movement was the assembly of four
London lodges at the little Goose and Gridiron alehouse in St Paul's
Churchyard on the feast of St John the Baptist, 1717. Here they
elected Anthony Sayer, gentleman, as rst grand master, and Captain
Joseph Elliot and Jacob Lamball, a carpenter, as grand wardens, and so
inaugurated what was to become the Modern grand lodge of England.
Within eight years the number of afliated lodges in London had
multiplied to about sixty, with a small number in the provinces
(England and Wales), and the subsequent rate of growth was high
(see Table 9.1). By 1740 the order could boast over a hundred London
lodges, several score more in the provinces, and just over a dozen
abroad (nine in the colonies, the rest on the continent). 1
In 1751 there was a schism in freemasonry and the new Ancient
order was established, initiated by a group of Irish masons. The
division was partly over rites and customs, with the new order claiming to restore ancient, true practices that had been abandoned by the
so-called Moderns, but social and organizational factors were also
probably implicated. 2 Despite the split, Modern lodge numbers continued to grow steadily. More than 500 Modern lodges were functioning by 1800, with large numbers in the provinces (including Wales and
the Channel Isles), and abroad. The snapshot gures provided by the
ofcial lists have their limitations. They may count lodges which were
moribund, while omitting active lodges which had neglected to pay
their dues to grand lodge. Numerous lodges lasted for only very short
periods and so were not captured in these ofcial returns. Nonetheless, the lodge statistics amply demonstrate the dynamic growth
of the Moderns. 3
1
A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 17171967 (Oxford, 1967), 489; J. Lane, Masonic Records,
17171894 (London, 1895), 30; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1740).
2
Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 927; for the minor rival grand lodge at York see above,
3
Lane, Masonic Records, lists a large number of short-lived lodges.
p. 87.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

310

Freemasons
Table 9.1. Number of Modern lodges 171718004
1717

1725

1740

1760

1778

1800

London
Provincial
Colonial/abroad

60
10

113
53
14

97
91
57

137
109
118

93
263
171

total

70

180

245

364

527

Evidence for the other main British lodges is less complete, but
indicative. By 1754 the English Ancients had chartered about thirtyfour lodges in the capital, plus a couple at Bristol; in 1807 the London
gure stood at forty-nine, and the provincial lodges (including some
military lodges) numbered 125, with a further ninety-six abroad
(mostly in the empire and the United States). Over the border in
Scotland, where freemasonry was more organized from the late sixteenth century on, but without a grand lodge until the 1730s, the total
number of lodges warranted in the period up to 1799 came to 326,
including twenty-ve military lodges, and eighteen in the colonies and
United States. Here the peak period of lodge foundation appears to
have been the 1760s and 1770s, when grand lodge chartered over a
hundred lodges. 5 The Irish grand lodge had thirty-seven lodges in
1735, of which fteen were in Dublin. The last years of the century
saw rapid expansion: by 1789 over 700 warrants had been issued, and
fteen years later a detailed list identied 669 Irish civilian lodges, plus
112 military and nine colonial ones.6
On top of the increased number of lodges, lodge membership was
probably increasing in size. During the 1720s the average strength of
Modern lodges in the capital was about twenty members, but four
decades later it had risen to about thirty-three. The last years of the
period saw a heavy inow of members into Modern lodges. 7
4
Figures taken from Lane, Masonic Records, 30; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1740); A
List of Regular Lodges (1760); The Free-Masons' Calendar . . . 1778 (London, 1778); The FreeMasons' Calendar . . . 1800 (London, 1800).
5
Lane, Masonic Records, 32 ; The Constitution of Free-Masonry or Ahiman Rezon (London,
1807); G. S. Draffen, Scottish Masonic Records, 17361950 (n.p., 1950).
6
W. J. Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernia, Vol. II (Dublin, 1896), part iii, p. 76;
J. H. Lepper and P. Crossle, History of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ireland,
Vol. I (Dublin, 1925), 223 ; J. Smyth, `Freemasonry and the United Irishmen', in D. Dickson
et al. (eds.), The United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), 170.
7
Based on W. Songhurst (ed.), The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England, 1723
39, Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha, 10 (1913), 2247; FMH, Grand Lodge Registers:
London Registers, 17681813; Country Registers, 17681813.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

311

While the extraordinary rise of Georgian freemasonry is easily

charted, the explanation for its origins are more obscure. Putting on
one side masonic traditions of descent from the builders of Solomon's
Temple, the obvious precursors of eighteenth-century speculative
freemasonry were the medieval masonic gilds. In England, however,
evidence for direct linkages is imsy, probably because there were no
permanent masonic lodges in the past. A few mixed lodges of operative masons and gentlemen may have met from the 1640s, and by the
start of the eighteenth century gentle lodges had clearly arrived. It has
been suggested that the origins of English freemasonry are closely
identied with radical intellectuals and deists in the later Stuart era,
stepchildren of the English Revolution, but the connection is tenuous. 8
For Scotland, the transition from operative freemasonry is more
substantive, since it is clear that the masonic craft north of the border
was reorganized by William Schaw in about 1600, which brought the
introduction of Neoplatonic and Hermetic ideas and limited moves
towards centralization. During the seventeenth century Scotland had
permanent lodges separate from the gilds, and these admitted small
numbers of gentlemen and others. It is possible that this Scottish
model triggered interest in England in speculative freemasonry (a
number of the rst English lodges were in the North). Moreover,
there was considerable experimentation with different kinds of voluntary association in the later Stuart period, and the start of speculative
freemasonry must be seen in this context. One nds parallel attempts
to convert textile gilds into benet clubs, and growing upper-class
patronage of bell-ringing bands, turning them into fashionable societies. Whatever the background, there can be no question that after
1717 the London grand lodge performed a key role in promoting the
advance and organization of English freemasonry, setting a pattern
quickly copied in Ireland and Scotland through the establishment of
their own grand lodges. 9
The documentation available for the study of early freemasonry is
richer than for any other type of voluntary association in Hanoverian
Britain. As well as local lodge records, there are the archives of the
grand lodges and a wealth of printed materials. Much of the secondary
8
Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 1112 ; M. C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London, 1981),
24, 38, 11720, 143, 151, 155 ff.; for criticism of Jacob see D. Stevenson, The Origins of
Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 15901710 (Cambridge, 1988), 227; also 21826.
9
Stevenson, Origins of Freemasonry, ch. 3, pp. 197, 198 ff., 229; see pp. 72, 353; Lepper and
Crossle, History, 523; R. F. Gould, The History of Freemasonry (London, n.d.), v. 4851.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

312

Freemasons

literature on eighteenth-century freemasonry has been written by

freemasons and tends to emphasize its special features (ritual and
otherwise). However, British freemasonry in our period was never
in any real sense a secret society. Though, in common with other
associations, it had secret rites and ceremonies, it operated openly and
publicly, lodges meeting in taverns and processing through the streets.
There was no imperative to go underground because, unlike in the
Netherlands or France, it never suffered persecution or serious
harassment. While there were polemical outbursts against freemasonry, it enjoyed the widespread support of the respectable classes
throughout our period.
This raises the question of how far freemasonry was a completely
distinct movement in the eighteenth century. Some accounts have
sought to emphasize `the distinctively civic quality of masonic sociabilityits building of the polity within sociability, the political content
of its moral vision and its discourse; its imitation and initiation of
forms of governance, not least its quasi-religious quality'. Other
evidence would indicate that freemasonry operated closer to the
mainstream of British associations. As the preacher to one American
lodge declared in the 1750s, the principles of freemasonry were those
`of societies of every kind'. 10 In a way this is hardly surprising, since
English masons did not inhabit a world apart, but frequently belonged
to a range of other clubs and societies. On the other hand, while
freemasonry shared many of the features of other Georgian associations, there can be no doubt that it was distinctive in one cardinal
respect: its development of a strongly federal organization.
The following analysis will concentrate mainly on the English
lodges, looking at patterns of growth and distribution, recruitment,
and the reasons for the movement's success. A nal section will
examine the export of freemasonry to the colonies, including North
America, where it continued to ourish after the American Revolution. Given the exceptional scale of the sources, this can only be a
preliminary sketch (the social history of Hanoverian freemasonry cries
out for detailed attention); but the analysis may shed light not only on
masonic developments, but also on a number of those difcult general
questions concerning British associations (social composition, regionality, and the like), which were discussed in earlier chapters.
10

M. C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in 18th-Century Europe

(Oxford, 1991), 13; W. Smith, A Sermon Preached in Christ-Church, Philadelphia . . .
(Philadelphia, 1755), 810.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

313

i
English freemasonry, like many early British societies, had a powerful
metropolitan impetus. As late as 1760 the majority of Modern lodges
were located in the capital, while most Ancient lodges at that time
were also London based. Nevertheless, within the metropolis the
distribution of masonic lodges was far from even. In 1740 nearly
half of all lodges were clustered in the central city district, and just
over a third in the West Endattracting gentry, merchant, and
middle-rank support. By contrast, less than a fth were found in
the poorer East End, and a solitary lodge was sited across the Thames
on the South Bank, probably deterred by the poor communication
across the river until the new bridge at Westminster opened in 1750.
By 1778 the social and demographic decline of the old city was
affecting the masonic pattern: nearly half of Modern lodges were
located in the West End, as against a third in the City, and only 7
per cent in the East End; but now one in eight of all lodges appeared
in the rapidly expanding area of South London. This trend continued
until the close of the century. In 1800 only a fth of London lodges
were based in the City area, whereas over half had West End
addresses, and another 16 per cent were meeting south of the river. 11
One factor in the changing geography of Modern lodges was
growing residential segregation and social stratication across the
metropolis. Another may have been the impact of competition from
the Ancients after 1750. Though earlier listings are not available, by
1807 almost half of all Ancient lodges in the capital were held in the
City and central area, with another fth in the East End; relatively few
operated in either the West End or South London. In this way the two
orders complemented each other across the metropolis, the Moderns
consolidating their position in more fashionable areas, the Ancients
attracting support from the middling and artisan groups of the East
End.
Outside the capital the distribution of freemasonry was far from
uniform, and affords a clearer picture of the topography of societies
than was evident in earlier chapters. Looking rst at the regions, there
is no clear evidence of any distance-decay principle at work in terms
of London's inuence. By 1740 (see Figure 9.1) the greatest proportion of English Modern lodges (still a modest number) was found in
11
The discussion of London lodges in this and the next paragraph is based on the
sources listed in notes 45.

5.11.99 16:24 09 Chapter 0394

314

Freemasons

the North, followed by the South-West and East Anglia; the Midlands
were reasonably well represented, but the Home Counties garnered
few lodgespossibly because members had easy access to the London
lodges, aided by the turnpiking of the region. 12 The pattern was
broadly similar in 1778 (see Figure 9.2): the North, the South-West,
and East Anglia all displayed a signicant density of Modern lodges,
the Home Counties saw increasing lodge numbers, but the Midlands
experienced a sharp decline, perhaps due to competition from the
Ancients. While the high incidence of lodges in the North may be
linked to the quickening pace of urban growth, industrialization, and
rising prosperity, the explanation for masonic success in the SouthWest and East Anglia is more debatable, since both areas were starting
to suffer from industrial stagnation and low urban growth rates.
Inuential here may have been the active role of provincial grand
masters and their success in promoting membership. As Figure 9.3
shows, the North, South-West, and East Anglia remained important
centres of Modern masonry until the end of the century, though the
West Midlands was starting to catch up. 13
The Ancient freemasons also prospered in the expanding North,
having over a third of their lodges in the region by 1807 (see Figure
9.4), but their presence in East Anglia and the South-West was minor,
probably because of the entrenched position of their rivals. They were
more successful in the Home Counties (18 per cent of provincial
lodges), perhaps cultivating territory neglected by the Moderns. As for
other British societies, competition was a vital ingredient in the
development of Georgian freemasonry.
Just as the diffusion of freemasonry was regionally biased, so there
was no automatic percolation down the English urban hierarchy. In
1740 the ve provincial capitals (Exeter, Bristol, Norwich, York, and
Newcastle) had only ve lodges, or one-tenth of the provincial total
(less than their share of the provincial urban population); county
towns (places like Gloucester or Nottingham) had somewhat over a
third; while small market towns hosted 40 per cent of provincial
lodges. Neither the industrial towns nor the spa towns made much
of a showing. By 1778 the regional capitals showed a greater appetite
12
The source for Fig. 9.1 is A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1740). E. Pawson, Transport
and Economy: The Turnpike Roads of 18th-Century Britain (London, 1977), 13641.
13
The sources for Fig. 9.23 are The Free-Masons' Calendar . . . 1778; The Free-Masons'
Calendar . . . 1800; for provincial grand-masters see FMH, Historical Correspondence
(HC), 2/C/7 and passim; H. le Strange, History of Freemasonry in Norfolk, 1724 to 1895 (London,
1896), 3.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

315

Fig. 9.1. Provincial Modern Lodges, 1740

for freemasonry, but the large number at Norwich contrasted with the
small clusters at Bristol. County towns were less notable now (19 per
cent of the total), underperforming their population share; smaller
towns still had the greatest number of provincial lodges (47 per cent);
and rising industrial cities, such as Birmingham and Leeds, started to
make an impact (6 per cent). By 1800 the pattern had changed again.
The old regional capitals, affected by economic setbacks, witnessed a
sharp fall in the number of lodges; gures for county towns also

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

316

Freemasons

Fig. 9.2. Provincial Modern Lodges, 1778

ebbed. The new industrializing towns continued their advance (11

per cent of the provincial total), and the lesser market towns
remained heavily represented (56 per cent). The distribution of
Ancient lodges for 1807 reveals interesting variations on the
Modern picture. While there were considerable numbers in county
and small towns (but not provincial capitals), the proportion was
higher in the industrial towns (19 per cent) and dockyard towns

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

317

Fig. 9.3. Provincial Modern Lodges, 1800

(11 per cent), probably because of greater middling and artisanal

support.14
Evidence from Ireland suggests similar spatial diversity. Dublin
remained the main hub of activity, and very few lodges operated in
the South (outside Cork), or the South-West. The largest provincial
14
The source for Fig. 9.4 is The Constitution of Free-Masonry. Discussion of provincial
diffusion derived from sources listed in notes 45.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

318

Freemasons

Ancients

Fig. 9.4. Provincial Ancient Lodges, 1807

concentrations occurred in the North-East, fuelled by growing urbanization and prosperity, largely derived from the expansion of the
Ulster linen industry.15
Overall, the distribution of freemasonry seems to have been
affected both by institutional and external factors. Undoubtedly, the
15
A. J. B. Milbourne, `An Irish Lane' (typescript FMH, London, 1960); G. Camblin, The
Town in Ulster (Belfast, 1951), chs. 79.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

319

activity of the grand lodges was inuential, not least through the
establishment of the provincial grand lodges; in England, rivalry
between grand lodges was also a factor. At the same time, one can
also see the effect of variable levels of urbanization, economic growth,
and the scale of elite and middle-class support.
The precision of the picture must not be overstated. Not only was
there a high turnover rate of masonic lodges, but masonic warrants
could be recycledobtained or purchased from defunct lodges by
new societies, sometimes in other parts of town or, indeed, different
towns. As with other societies, lodges migrated about town (or
beyond) in search of members or more congenial landlords. No less
signicant, our evidence is limited to warranted lodges under the
jurisdiction of the main grand lodges. In the early eighteenth century
especially, a considerable number of irregular or non-warranted meetings existed, the so-called St John's lodges. Some of these may have
been established before the advent of the grand lodges; others had
allowed their warrants to lapse or been excluded for failing to pay fees
to grand lodge; yet others rejected the jurisdiction of the Modern
grand lodge because of opposition to its rules and ceremonies. At least
some of these irregular lodges joined the Ancients after 1751, but a
minority (probably small) preferred their own autonomy and ability to
attract members through cut-price fees. In 1752, for instance, the
Ancients complained of two `leg of mutton masons' who initiated
new members for `a leg of mutton for dinner or supper'. While the
problem may have diminished over time, as the London grand lodges
consolidated their authority, for much of our period the existence of
irregular lodges (about which little is known) cautions against any
dogmatic analysis of the masonic order. 16

ii
Preachers and masonic writers throughout the eighteenth century
emphasized the role of freemasonry in fostering social harmony,
serving to unite different social, as well as political and religious,
16
See above, p. 241; J. W. S. Godding, A History of the Westminster and Keystone Lodge . . .
No.10 (Plymouth, 1907), pp. 30, 345; A.E. Bell, A Bi-Centenary Review of the History of the
Imperial George Lodge, No. 78, 17521952 (Middleton, 1952), 19; F. R. King, Through Ten Reigns:
History of Mount Lebanon Lodge No. 73 (Lewes, 1960), 56; Moira Lodge No. 92: Bi-centenary . . .
17551955 (n.p., 1955), 1415; J. R. Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of the Grand Lodge of England
According to the Old Constitution, Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha, 11 (1958), 31; for a later
clandestine lodge: FMH, HC, 1/G/9.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

320

Freemasons

groups. As we know, this kind of ideological commitment to order and

unity was hardly exclusive to freemasonry, but appeared in the rule-books
and literature of many other British societies. On the other hand, one
might argue that the masonic order was especially successful in turning
ideology into practice. Thus, it has been suggested that the organization
became `a social nexus that bridged profound class differences'.17
At rst sight, such a view would seem at odds with our evidence for
London, which pointed to the growing impact of residential segregation on freemasonry, while the rise of the Ancients has often been
seen as a more popular reaction to the increasing social fashionability
and exclusivity of the Moderns.18 Here we can call on more detailed
evidence to shed light on the issue: the extensive membership lists of
the Modern order. In addition to the survival of a handful of early
Georgian lists, afliated Modern lodges after 1768 were required to
return to London details of registered members, including occupations and places of residence; by the 1780s annual returns had become
standard. Analysis of the membership is not without its problems.
Occupational descriptions are a precarious source at the best of times;
in this period their meaning is often uid. Yet, treated with care,
occupational data may shed light on the question of social mixing in
eighteenth-century freemasonry and illuminate wider issues concerning recruitment, enabling us to ask how far support was socially
heterogeneous, and how far it matched the broad pattern of social
banding, with clusters of elite, middle-rank, and artisan social groups,
which were discernible for other types of British association. Given
the varied geography of freemasonry, it would seem sensible to pursue
a regional approach, looking rst at membership in London and then
in the provinces. The object is less orthodox occupational classication, than it is the identication of major social and economic groups:
landowners and gentlemen, the professions, principal distributive
trades (merchants, mercers, grocers, and the like), victualling, and
the residual, mainly artisanal trades. The occupational analysis is
conned to men: British freemasonry, like most eighteenth-century
societies, was exclusively male.
For London, three early lodge lists from about 1730 offer information on their social complexion. 19 Of those occupations identied, an
17
J. Price, The Advantanges of Unity Considered . . . (Bristol, 1748), 68; C. Brockwell,
Brotherly Love Recommended (Boston, Mass., 1750), 7, 14; see above, pp. 1956; Jacob, Radical
18
Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 923.
Enlightenment, 115.
19
For the problems of occupational analysis see P. J. Coreld and D. Keene (eds.), Work
in Towns, 8501850 (Leicester, 1990), 1647, 1839, 21618. Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 136, fos.
35v, 42, 57v, 70v.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

321

average of 9 per cent were landowners and gentlemen; 18 per cent were
professionals, and 19 per cent major distributive traders; victuallers
were surprisingly rare; the other, mostly artisan, trades comprised just
over half (53 per cent) of the total. The relatively low level of gentle
membership may reect freemasonry's tardy success in attracting
fashionable support; in contrast, the key role of professional men is
already signalled.
Statistically more signicant is the evidence analysed in Table 9.2,
for London in the period after 1768. 20
Compared with the earlier period, landowners and gentlemen
appear more prominentlyseveral times their incidence in the metropolitan population as a whole. The steady rise of gentle recruitment
over the period may indicate the increasingly elitist bias of the
Moderns, though one should not forget the progressive widening of
gentle status in the period. Professional representation was also clearly
signicant, moving ahead of their proportion of adult male Londoners.
Another superior social group, the major tradesmen, had a marked
presence, while victuallers provided a nucleus of members in most
lodges, because of their role as prime sponsors of lodge sociability.
Groups of masons and building-workers appear in a small minority of
lodges in the 1760s, maintaining vestigial links with operative freemasonry. At the same time, substantial numbers of brethren belonged
to a broad range of other largely artisanal tradesfrom cooper to
colourman, scourer to shoemaker. One nds a few references to
servants, but none of the London masons in our sample was a
labourer or worked in poor trades, such as peddling or hawking. In
sum, the impression from Table 9.2 is that the London Moderns
belonged to the elite and respectable ranks of middling and lesser
trades, though there may have been a shift towards the middle- and
upper-classes over time, underlined by the decline of lesser trades by
the 1790s.
Outside London the sample is smaller, and limited to the earlier
part of George III's reign, but Table 9.3 suggests important regional
variations. 21
Elite groups were clearly prominent in southern England: landed
brethren were numerous in the South-East and, to a lesser extent, in
the South-West; for lawyers, medical practitioners, and other professionals, it was the other way round. In these regions artisanal and
20
21

Data taken from FMH, Grand Lodge Registers: London Registers.

Data taken from FMH, Grand Lodge Registers: Country Registers.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

322

Freemasons
Table 9.2. Occupations of London Modern masons 17681800
176870

178190

17911800

Landowner/gentleman
Professions
Major distributive trades
Victualling
Other trades

15.9
8.8
9.9
7.5
57.9

23.0
11.4
9.1
5.7
50.8

23.2
12.6
9.7
6.4
48.1

n of lodges
n of occupations

21
687

28
2,101

27
1,988

Table 9.3. Occupations of provincial Modern masons 17681770

South-East

South-West

North

Landowner/gentleman
Professional
Major trades
Victualling
Other trades

25.6
18.0
2.4
3.6
50.4

16.2
20.4
7.9
5.2
50.3

6.4
10.5
11.3
3.6
68.2

n of lodges
n of occupations

6
107

20
421

18
534

Note: South-East 5 Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent; South-West 5 Cornwall, Devon,

Dorset, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Wiltshire; North 5 Cheshire, County Durham,
Cumberland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire

other residual trades comprised somewhat under half the known

members. Further north, recruitment was less elitist, marked by
much smaller proportions of landed and professional groups (but
with a signicant contingent of major trades): here other trades
formed over two-thirds of lodge membership.
Comparison with the Ancients is difcult because of the general
absence of occupational returns to grand lodge, except for the early
years of the new order, and then mostly for London lodges. During
the period 1751 to 1755 there seems to have been a lower proportion
of elite members than among the Modern masons: only 5.2 per cent of
all listed occupations were gentle and 4.3 per cent professional; 8.8 per
cent were major distributive traders and a similar gure were victuallers; in contrast, a high 72.9 per cent came from other, mainly artisanal,
trades. There was little room for the poor, however: for instance, an

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

323

Ancient lodge at Norwich protested bitterly at the `disgrace to the

fraternity' by another lodge admitting a chimney-sweeper.22
In aggregate, then, the Moderns, if not the Ancients, seem to be
socially biased towards the respectable classes, and in the South-East
towards elitism. But how far was this conrmed by growing social
exclusivity, at the individual lodge level? As a working measure of
exclusivity we have counted those lodges with more than 70 per cent
of their membership belonging to one of the main social categories
used earlier. The results are mixed. In Southern England as a whole
(East Anglia, the South-West, and South-East), there are some signs
of increased social differentiation, as the proportion of exclusive
lodges rose from 30 per cent in 176870, to 44 per cent in the
1780s, and to about a half in the 1790s. In northern regions, however,
there was no clear trend, with 67 per cent exclusive in 176870, but
only 60 per cent in the nal decade of the period: here, virtually all the
`exclusive' lodges were dominated by lesser trades. Most surprising, in
London and Middlesex exclusivity declined from 42.8 per cent in
176870 to 7 per cent in the next two decades, data which would
seem to be at odds with our earlier geographical evidence suggesting
the increased bunching of Modern lodges in the capital and their
greater concentration in elite areas such as the West End. 23 As we
noted earlier, other factors, such as competition with the Ancients,
may be more crucial in explaining the topographical trends.
Making due allowance for the small size of the samples, our
evidence suggests that arguments about the social heterogeneity of
the freemasons need careful qualication. While membership did
embrace most respectable groups, there was probably a move towards
greater elitism, albeit without a major increase of social exclusivity at
the individual lodge level. Particularly interesting are the regional
variations, which may be applicable for other societies. Such ndings
raise general questions about the pace and extent of social and class
segregation in English society in the late eighteenth century, as exemplied by one of the leading forms of associational activity, a point we
must return to later. 24
This picture of enhanced respectability, but not social exclusivity,
may well reect conicting institutional and ideological pressures
within freemasonry. Although masonic commentators throughout
22

FMH, Athol Register A, vol. 1 (175155); SN (Ancients), 791.

FMH, Grand Lodge Registers: Country Registers and London Registers; data for
24
See below, ch. 12.
176870, 178190, 17911800.
23

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

324

Freemasons

the period stressed the role of freemasonry as a unifying force in

society, the Modern grand lodge seems from early on to have sought
to advance the order's fame and fashionability by raising the social
threshold of membership. In the 1720s this may have been in reaction
to complaints that freemasonry was too open: as one critic charged in
1725, `the weak heads of vintners, drawers, wigmakers, weavers etc.
admitted . . . not only [bring] . . . contempt upon the institution but
. . . much endanger it'. The election of aristocratic grand masters from
1721, the proposal in 1729 that new lodges pay a substantial sum a year
to the grand charity, and the attempt to regulate the growing number
of lodges in the following decade, can be interpreted as early efforts at
social enhancement for the order. This was given further impetus
from the 1760s, through growing controls over lodge membership and
the attempt to impose a minimum 2 guinea entrance ne on new
members. 25
Yet freemasonry remained a federal organization during the eighteenth century, and for all the efforts of the grand lodges, and at the
price of considerable tension with London, local lodges retained a
good deal of autonomy over recruitment. A key factor inuencing the
social clientele of a lodge (as with other voluntary associations) was
the admission charge. This had to be low enough to attract members
away from competing attractions, but high enough to exclude those
people regarded as socially undesirable, thereby putting membership
at a premium. Charges varied considerably between lodges, mirroring
different markets and lodge aspirations. Certain lodges were explicitly
elitist in their attitude. The Britannic lodge at the Thatched House
tavern in the West End, anxious to be `composed of members select
and very respectable', levied a high annual subscription of 5 guineas.
By contrast, the Dundee Lodge at Wapping in the East End charged
only 6 shillings a quarter, with a discount rate for seafarers. Charges
might be increased if a lodge were successful, but conversely, a fall in
recruitment would normally cause them to be scaled down. One
Spitalelds lodge was able to charge well over 2 guineas a year for
initiation in the 1730s, but a couple of decades later diminished
support led to a reduction to 1 6s. 26
25
The Grand Mystery of the Free Masons Discover'd (London, 1725), 15; see below, p. 328;
Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 11516, 223.
26 FMH, HC, 5/E/17; W. Sanderson, Two Hundred Years of Freemasonry: A History of the
Britannic Lodge No. 33 (London, 1930), 501; A. Heiron, Ancient Freemasonry and the Old Dundee
Lodge, No. 18 (London, 1921), 46; J. W. H. Eyre and J. B. Sellors, The Grenadiers Lodge: Two
Hundred Years of Craft Masonry (n.p., 1939), 45.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

325

A serious constraint on Modern lodges and their membership

policies was competition, rst from irregular lodges and later from
the Ancients, as well as from the wider spectrum of voluntary associations. No less serious were the nancial difculties created (as for
other clubs and societies) by the high drop-out rate, poor attendance,
and subscription arrears. Broadly based membership, which attracted
support from a range of social groups, served to give a lodge greater
stability and, conceivably, helped ameliorate such difculties. A few
lodges went so far as to insist, like some benet societies, that all the
members should come from different trades. 27 To a considerable
extent, then, the composition of eighteenth-century freemasonry conforms to the broad pattern of social banding that we saw in other
types of association. But it also had a pluralistic character, reecting
both the slow and confused pace of class formation, and the commercial and institutional realities of organizing lodges at the local level.

iii
Running masonic lodges in the eighteenth century was certainly no
bowl of cherries. Even so, the advance and achievement of British
freemasonry was remarkable. Only the friendly societies were more
numerous and had a larger membership, but they were mainly
restricted to the artisan and lower classes. So far as the respectable
classes were concerned, freemasonry was the biggest association in
the British world.
How do we explain this success? In part, lodges offered the same or
similar attractions and opportunities for members as other voluntary
associations, in particular, conviviality, entertainment, processions,
fashionable patronage, employment, and help to migrants. But, given
the federal structure of freemasonry, these activities were on a larger
and more organized scale. In addition, the masonic orders developed
and manipulated those other engines of success: publicity and selfpromotion. Increasingly, they also mobilized powerful administrative
support at grand lodge.
Lodges were, of course, major arenas of male conviviality and heavy
drinking. Most masonic assemblies, the German Carl Moritz noted on
a visit to England, `are degenerated into drinking clubs', while in the
27

F. W. Golby, History of the Neptune Lodge . . . No. 22, 17571909 (London, 1910), 17, 201,
2934; T. E. Peart, Enoch Lodge, No. 11 (n.p., n.d.), 19; H. W. Morrieson, A Short History of the
Castle Lodge of Harmony No. 26 (London, 1925), 22; Godding, Westminster and Keystone Lodge, 20.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

326

Freemasons

West Indies brethren thought it `incumbent on them to endeavour by

every means in their power to send [other members] away more or
less intoxicated'.28 Drinking was particularly important at the feasts,
with lodges (unlike most other societies) holding two a year: a summer
one in June, often taking the form of a country outing and dinner, and
another on St John's Day in December. Some of the early masonic
feasts were nancial disasters, but by the late eighteenth century
attendances were high, and such occasions served as a valuable way
of attracting new members. As one Indian mason declared in 1785,
`the observation of this festival has been of great advantage to private
lodges by institutions [admissions] etc.' 29
Masonic feasts had an extensive music programme, and singing was
equally important on lodge nights, sometimes accompanied in the
rst-rate lodges by `a concert of French horns and other instruments'.
About 1760 over a hundred masonic songs were in print, and during
the next thirty or so years the number nearly doubled. This collection
of songs, making a kind of musical lingua franca, facilitated the participation of visitors at lodge meetings. 30
In 1725 the Irish grand lodge concluded its Dublin feast with a visit
to the playhouse: `the private brothers sat in the pit, but the grand
master, deputy grand master and grand wardens in the government's
box; [and] at the conclusion of the play Mr Grifth, the player, who is
a brother, sang the Freemason's Apprentice's Song, the grand master,
and the whole brotherhood joining in the chorus'. Masons frequently
sponsored theatrical performances, sometimes with scenes written
specially for them. As well as being good publicity, the practice
beneted the numerous brethren who were actors. 31 In Ireland, performances of this sort provided the main income for the grand lodge
charity committee; one play in Dublin in 1764 netted nearly 350 in
receipts. Masonic plays were an early export to the colonies. When the
provincial grand lodge was inaugurated at Charleston in 1755, the
28

Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 61; C. P. Moritz, Journeys of a German in England in 1782, ed.
R. Nettel (London, 1965), 73; FMH, SN (Ancients), 1190.
29
H. Sadler, History and Records of the Lodge of Emulation, No. 21 (London, 1906), 39;
Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 789; F. W. Driver, A History of the Strong Man Lodge
(n.p., n.d.), 23; Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 703; FMH, HC, 17/A/17.
30 Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 6970; A Master-key to Free-masonry (London, 1760), 11;
A. Sharp, `Masonic Songs and Song Books of the Late 18th century', AQC, 65 (1953), 8397.
31
Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernica, Vol. ii, part i, pp. 1011; T. O. Todd, The
History of the Phoenix Lodge, No. 94, Sunderland (Sunderland, 1906), 867; Bodl., Rawlinson MS
C 136, fos. 1067v, 145; J. H. Boocock, Early Records of St Paul's Lodge No. 43 . . . 17641863
(Birmingham, 1903), 25.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

327

festivities ended with the performance of a play at the New Theatre,

where masonic songs were chorused between the acts.32
Masonic processions tended to be bigger and better than those of
other associations. Grand lodge processions were often spectacular
events, patronized by large numbers of nobles and gentry, but even
local lodges could put on an impressive show. In 1743 the Youghall
lodge in Ireland celebrated St John's Day with great festivities, the
ships in the port ring their guns and ying their ags, while the
brethren marched through the town in order, headed by a band of
musicians and two sentinels, their swords drawn, the members and
ofcers in their lodge dress, carrying the Royal Arch, lodge jewels, and
other artefacts, `the streets being well lined, the gentlemen and ladies
out of their windows constantly saluting' the procession. Increasingly
such events involved several lodges, often from different places. In
1796, for instance, the small Bolton lodge was reinforced by the
Chorley and Wigan masons, so that 140 brethren in all, `consisting
of Turks, Americans, Scotch, Irish and English', paraded to church in
their regalia. 33 In fact, masons processed on the streets in large
numbers, not only at feast days, funerals, and other masonic events,
but also on church and civic occasions, notably the foundation or
opening of bridges, major buildings, and other public works. 34 In the
1770s a Hampshire schoolboy, Richard Warner, was so impressed by a
masonic funeral, with `their white aprons, cocked hats and curious
symbolical insignia', that he and his school chums set up their own
lodge, an episode which, alas, ended in drunkenness among the boys
and the lodge's suppression. Distinctive processions were vital for
masonic solidarity and for the publicity and promotion of the order.
When an Alnwick lodge debated the issue of processions in 1803,
there was a large majority in favour of continuing them. 35
Another strength of eighteenth-century freemasonry was its
success in gaining and exploiting fashionable elite patronage in order
to win public attention and recruit new members. This operated to a
32

Lepper and Crossle, Grand Lodge of Ireland, 1045; South Carolina Gazette, 9 Jan. 1755.
Read's Weekly Journal, 19 Apr. 1735; W. J. Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernia
Vol. I (Dublin, 1895), part iv, pp. 1112; see also at Newcastle: Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 136,
fo. 123. FMH, SN (Ancients), 927; see also FMH, SN (Moderns), 1041.
34
BL, Bell Collections (Call No.: L.R. 264 b.1), vol. 3, fo. 160; FMH, SN (Ancients), 1294;
J. Newton and F. W. Brockbank, A Revised History of the `Anchor and Hope' Lodge . . . Bolton
(Bolton, 1896), 3840; Exeter Flying Post, 512 Nov., 1219 Nov. 1773; Farley's Bristol Journal,
22 Aug. 1789; Maryland Gazette, 27 Dec. 1753.
35
G. P. G. Hills, `Sidelights on Freemasonry', AQC, 29 (1916), 3567; FMH, SN
(Moderns), 962.
33

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

328

Freemasons

limited extent at the level of local lodges. From the 1720s several
elected grandees as ofcers; for instance, the Duke of Richmond was
master of the Horn tavern lodge in Westminster in 1724.36 Few lodges
with a professional or middle-rank complexion could hope for such
elevated patronage, but virtually all members might gain a simulcrum
of fashionability through their lodge's association with grand lodge,
presided over for most of our period by aristocrats or royal princes.
Admittedly, the rst Modern grand masters (until 1721) were commoners, and grand lodge had some difculty in maintaining the
subsequent succession of noble patrons. When the Duke of Norfolk
retired as grand master in 1730, the Earl of Sunderland and Lord
Portmore were approached and both declined; it took several months
before Lord Lovell was elected. Within a few years, however, the
tradition was assured, and during the last years of the century the
Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, Prince Edward, and the royal
Duke of Cumberland all served as grand ofcers, their tenure coinciding with a surge of membership in the provinces. The Ancients
followed the same path. Acquiring their rst noble grand master
proved difcult, but not long after the election of the Earl of
Blessington in 1756 the order was boasting of its rapid growth, and
thenceforward it had an unbroken line of noble grand ofcers, even
sharing Prince Edward with the Moderns during the 1790s. 37
Freemasonry offered ordinary members the opportunity for social
advancement, not just through vicarious identication with the aristocratic ofcers of grand lodge, but more conventionally, through
social mixing at local lodge meetings. As we know, the actual extent
of this mixing might vary between regions and lodges, but only a
minority of English lodges were socially exclusive. For many middlerank peopleshopkeepers and professionals especiallyfreemasonry
provided regular and amicable contact with members of higher and
more fashionable social groups.
Freemasonry was not only fashionable, but also brought social and
economic dividends. Masonry is `no small advantage', one writer
noted in 1726, `to a man who would rise in the world, and one of
the principal reasons why I would be a mason'. Business commissions
36
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 136, fo. 122; A. F. Calvert, History of the Old King's Arms Lodge
No. 28 (London, 1899), 35; Gould, History, iv. pp. 3423; also at Norwich: le Strange,
Freemasonry, 13.
37
D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry (Manchester, 1947), 1725; Frere
(ed.), Grand Lodge, 26673, 2745; Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 1423, 146;
Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of Grand Lodge, 84, 86.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

329

were one obvious benet. Lodges generated heavy demand for a

variety of products, including drink, dress, jewels, artefacts, portraits,
and publications, and inevitably gave the business to members. Grand
lodge was a particularly important patron of professionals and tradesmen, but business opportunities were not conned to lodge meetings.
Tradesmen advertised their wares, making clear their masonic afliation to attract the custom of brethren. 38 Employment might be got in
a similar way. In booming Manchester during the 1790s, James
Harrison, who was in difculties, living in a cellar with his son, asked
another mason, a Manchester factory-owner, James Stewart, for work.
Though he had no vacancy, Stewart paid a man 18s to teach Harrison
the spinning trade, and afterwards took him into his works to turn a
carding machine. Jobs and help of this type were often arranged
informally via local lodges, but the grand lodge papers record formal
appeals for assistance. In 1764, for instance, a masonic corporal asked
the Ancients' stewards' lodge for a recommendation for promotion;
the next year a member `in perfect health and inured to hard labour'
was commended to work for the master of a local lodge. Assistance
might span the Atlantic. In 1782 the head of a Barbados lodge
requested the Modern grand secretary to help his son nd work in
one of the `most noted printing ofces' in the capital. Here the
extended, federal structure of the order reinforced the employment
opportunities available from local lodges. 39
Other help sought from the London grand lodges was more varied.
In 1796 Ebenezer Hepburn, a preacher at a lodge feast, asked for a
model sermon that he could plagiarise: `too remote to be known; for
example some Scotch production', one not previously published in the
Freemasons' Magazine and `therefore liable to detection'. A mason in the
army requested help in getting a discharge; another brother sought
the nomination of a young boy to Christ's Hospital. John Bates, a
convicted horse-thief, asked the grand master to get him released
from gaol; while members of a dockyard lodge lobbied to stop one
of their brethren being ogged for embezzlement (a request angrily
denied). Even more desperate, in 1781 a Spanish-born sailor, John
Patterson, without `a friend in the world', petitioned from Spithead for
38
Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 133; Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 234, 207; Calvert, Old
King's Arms Lodge, 56; FMH, HC, 8/F/59; 1/C/2; 8/C/2. For the wide range of artefacts
provided for lodges and their members see A. Tudor-Craig, Catalogue of the Contents of the
Museum at Freemasons' Hall (London, 1938).
39
FMH, SN (Ancients), 1295; Calvert, Old King's Arms Lodge, 11; FMH, Athol Stewards
Lodge Minutes, 176495, Aug. 1764, Apr. 1765; HC, 23/B/9.

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

330

Freemasons

help to gain a reprieve from execution. Patronage and mutual aid were
among the basic benets of society membership throughout our
period, but the greater scale and organization of freemasonry made
them particularly valuable.40
Among the oft-proclaimed strengths and functions of Georgian
freemasonry was its role as a centre of union, a nexus of contact and
solidarity between people of different backgrounds. In terms of
politics, Birmingham lodges in the mid-eighteenth century had a
radical tendency, though by the 1790s they had become a focus of
loyalist sympathy; in contrast, at Maidstone the town's Modern lodge
town remained strongly Whig. Detailed research would probably
uncover a great deal of local variation, but some lodges certainly tried
to stay apolitical, with rules and nes against political discussion: at
Swaffham, for instance, offenders had to `drink a half pint bumper of
salt and water'. 41 The same was probably true of religion. In the
early eighteenth century the London lodges may well have attracted
low-churchmen and others interested in the cabbala, but overall there
was a great deal of religious diversity, both within lodges and, even
more important, between them. At Maccleseld, Catholics were
alleged to have attempted to take over a local lodge, while in Ireland,
Protestant lodges generally discriminated against Papists. Jews were
specically excluded from some lodges, but in other cases the
brethren were predominantly Jewish. 42
Where, undoubtedly, freemasonry had an important integrative
function was in bringing strangers and outsiders into the sociable
community. This was achieved in numerous ways: by the common
practice of individual masons being invited to visit other lodges; by
exchange visits involving whole lodges in joint functions; and by the
issue of masonic certicates to enable travelling masons to attend
different lodges and receive recognition and benets. Though most clubs
and societies welcomed visitors, masonic visiting seems to have been
on a different scale, encouraged by the large membership, multiplicity
40

FMH, SN (Ancients), 465, 837A; HC, 1/B/2; 8/F/ 89; SN (Ancients), 465; HC, 8/F/41.
J. Money, `The Masonic Moment; or, Ritual, Replica and Credit', JBS, 32 (1993), 37392;
P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County Town (Stroud,
1995), 110; H. le Strange, `The Great Lodge, Swaffham, Norfolk, 17641785', AQC, 20
(1907), 236.
42
Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 93 and passim; J. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies
(London, 1972), 237; H. Kelly, History of the Knights of Malta Lodge No. 47, in Maccleseld
(Maccleseld, n.d.), 22; R. E. Parkinson, `The First 50 Years of the Downpatrick Lodge',
AQC, 46 (1937), 10; Howkins, Mount Moriah Lodge, 45; FMH, SN (Moderns), 990.
41

5.11.99 16:25 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

331

of lodges, and federal structure. Some lodge meetings had nearly as

many visiting masons as members. Visitors paid a fairly nominal
charge for the evening's entertainment and, when the Old King's
Arms lodge in London tried to raise the price, other lodges protested
at this breach in `communication' among masons. One problem in the
earlier period was visiting by members of the numerous irregular or
unafliated lodges, who on occasion had to pay higher dues. Attitudes
by Modern lodges to Ancient visitors (and vice versa) varied: some
places were hostile, but others welcomed them, exemplifying the
general masonic openness to outsiders. 43
Ofcial visiting by lodges was part of the general practice of lodge
solidarity and support. London lodges seem to have visited only
metropolitan counterparts, but provincial lodges travelled further
aeld. During the 1770s the St Paul's lodge in Birmingham was going
as far as Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, and Dudley for meetings.
Lodges from different places also organized joint gatherings at the
funerals of leading masons, or at the inauguration of public buildings.
Activity of this kind was encouraged by the creation of provincial
grand lodges. 44
Just as formal lodge visits and joint activities enlarged social contacts within and between urban communities, the certicate system
enabled itinerant masons to nd their social footing and obtain
support in new communities across the British Isles and empire. As
the New Englander William Bentley shrewdly observed, other kinds
of society protected property or supported trade, but it was the
distinct object of `free masons to assist the stranger'. Certicates
seem to have originated with Ancient lodges, but by 1755 the Moderns
issued them as well. Demand was heavy from merchants, sea captains,
and travelling traders (including Jews). Sealed certicates might be
granted both by local lodges and grand lodge (see plate 16). The
latter's were elaborately designed and engraved and were clearly prestigious, but cost 5s, and often arrived too late for those leaving on
their travels. At the end of the eighteenth century increased mobility
caused by the French wars, the expansion of trade, and improved
43
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, Minutes of the Williamsburg Lodge, 1773
79, pp. 17, 32; Calvert, Old King's Arms Lodge, 8; W. J. Hughan, Early Records of the Original of
Lodge No. 35 . . . (London, 1889), 56; H. T. Perkins, Brief Survey of the Records of the Lodge of
Felicity No. 58, 17371937 (Wisbech, 1937), 1617; Moira Lodge, p. 14.
44
S. J. Fenton et al., St Paul's Lodge, Warwickshire No. 43 (Birmingham, ?1954), 33; FMH, SN
(Moderns), 1041; Exeter Flying Post, 512 Nov. 1773.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

332

Freemasons

communications led to an upsurge of certication. Some lodges even

provided documents in several foreign languages.45
Among the most mobile sections of British society were military
men, and all the grand lodges sought to make special arrangements for
them. Military lodges were rst warranted in Ireland in about 1732, the
Scots following suit in about 1743, and the English grand lodges a few
years later. In the colonies they were an important bridge to the local
settler population. By the early nineteenth century more than 250
military lodges had been chartered by the British and Irish grand
lodges. 46
Nevertheless, the success of Georgian freemasonry was not simply
the result of creating, through its federal structure, a more coordinated and comprehensive programme of economic and social
benets for brethren. Above all, it promoted and publicized itself
much more vigorously than most other kinds of association. As
well as the high-prole processions and funerals noted earlier, there
was heavy advertising in newspapers, either directly through regular
advertisements, or through publicity material placed by friendly
printers and journalists. Moreover, as the movement took off and
gained large-scale support, it became naturally newsworthy, so ensuring extensive coverage of masonic events. Towards the end of the
century masonic magazines arrived, catering specically for the large
body of brethren. 47
No less vital in promoting freemasonry was the spate of ofcial
publications, often written by grand ofcers and sponsored by the
grand lodges. A crucial development in 1723 was the appearance of
the rst Engraved List of Lodges, along with detailed regulations for
speculative freemasonry set out by James Anderson in The Constitutions
of the Freemasons (further editions of which appeared in 1738, 1746,
1756, 1767, 1776, and 1784). As well as tracing the historic cradle of
freemasonry back to Jerusalem, Anderson wove together old Scottish
customs, the lore of the operative Old Charge, and recent English
45
W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD., Vol. II (Salem, Mass., 1907), 1, 123;
Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of Grand Lodge, 77; T. O. Haunch, `English Craft Certicates',
AQC, 82 (1969), 1718; FMH, SN (Ancients), 832; FMH, HC, 1/C/1; Heiron, Old Dundee
Lodge, 199.
46
N. Rogers, `Lancashire Military Lodges', AQC, 76 (1963), 102; Chetwode Crawley (ed.),
Caementaria Hibernia, Vol. ii, part i, p. 2.
47
Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of Grand Lodge, 65; see above, p. 173; G. Elkington, `Some
Notes on the ``Freemasons' Magazine'' or General and Complete Library', AQC, 42 (1929),
14055.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

333

innovations to create an intellectual and ritual framework for

speculative freemasonry, one which positioned it on the cultural
centre-stage of an intellectual world increasingly fascinated by early
civilizations.48 Other works followed Anderson's lead. In Ireland, John
Pennell's Constitutions, a version of Anderson, was published in 1730.
When Anderson's work went out of print in the early 1730s, William
Smith's Pocket-Companion for Free-Masons (1735) lled the gap, with Irish
editions soon after, and a Scottish Pocket Companion in 1752. Five years
after the formation of the Ancient order, Laurence Dermott, their
grand secretary, produced Ahiman Rezon, its rule book, and this work
was heavily inuential in Ireland. In 1772 William Preston published
his Illustrations of Freemasonry, which became the authoritative Modern
text, with nine further editions by 1801. After 1775 the annual Freemason's Calendar combined updated engraved lists with masonic rules,
history, and songs. Published under the supervision of a subcommittee of grand lodge, the calendar was sold widely to local lodges, a
share of the prots going to Freemasons' Hall in London. 49 Local
lodges also printed their own lists of members. On top of this pile of
ofcially inspired publications, there was a multitude of private works
by masonssermons, songbooks, tracts, poems, and prints. The
market was clearly large and lucrative. Quite frequently authors asked
for grand lodge's imprimatur, sometimes offering a share of the
proceeds in return. Lodge lists were especially useful for advertising
and distribution, serving as the basis for an early form of direct
mailing. 50
Freemasonry also attracted a good deal of critical reportagewith
expose tracts, theatrical burlesques, lampoons, prints, and cartoons.
In fact, masons were among the rst beneciaries of the adage that
all publicity is good publicity. Far from being put off, public interest
was heightened by this coverage, particularly by sensationalist works
dealing with the secret rituals, passwords, mysteries, and science of
freemasonry. How distinctive these rites actually were remains uncertain. As John Price observed to the Bristol masons in 1747, `every
society has peculiarities of one kind or another which are not to be
48

Lane, Masonic Records, 11; Gould, History, iv. 399 ff.

Chetwode Crawley (ed.), Caementaria Hibernia, Vol. i, part iv, pp. 29; part v; C. Adams,
`The Freemasons' Pocket Companions of the 18th Century', AQC, 45 (1932), 165203; Frere
(ed.), Grand Lodge, 979, 117; FMH, HC, 8/F/38, 456.
50 Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 2012; FMH, HC, 8/C/2; 8/F/21, 21a; 8/F/59; 13/A/5; see
above, p. 231.
49

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

334

Freemasons

revealed to men of different communities'.51 As well as gild

inuences, there was a strong interest by early leaders, like the antiquary William Stukeley, in the hidden knowledge and cabbala of
ancient peoples such as the Druids, Egyptians, and Jews (Stukeley
was involved in setting up the Egyptian Society as well). There was also
a fashionable scientic following for geometry and architecture, as
practical subjects at a time of large-scale urban rebuilding, and also for
their symbolic codes dating back to the Renaissance and ancient times.
Thus, in 1724 we nd widespread public interest in a large-scale
German model of King Solomon's Temple; this was exhibited at
the Haymarket in London, where it was visited by George I. Masonic
passwords and signs appear to have developed from the 1730s, partly
in response to exposure pamphlets, and also probably to stop entry to
meetings by members of irregular lodges. 52
Masonic initiation ceremonies are detailed in several tracts. The new
brother had a proposer or `godfather' who prepared him for admission, removing all metal from his person, then blindfolding him. After
his submission to the master, `the brethren form a circle round him
with their swords drawn', pointing to his breast. `The lights, the glitter
of the swords, the fantastic ornaments borne by the grand ofcers, the
appearance of all the brethren in white aprons, all this together makes
a dazzling sight.' Having exposed a breast (to conrm his gender), he
was then taught various masonic signs. At the same time, British
freemasonry never developed the baroquely elaborate hierarchy of
ritual degrees which became widespread in Germany, France, and
other parts of Europe. The Moderns and later Ancients had only
three levelsapprentices, fellow craftsmen, and masters. The Scot
Andrew Ramsay seems to have been responsible for introducing a
wave of new degrees to the continent, but Scottish freemasonry was
unaffected. The Ancients in mid-century claimed that the Moderns
had abandoned earlier masonic rituals and science in favour of socializing, and that they were the only true guardians of ancient masonic
rites, but the ritual differences between the two orders were limited. In
the 1770s, however, the Ancients did advance the Royal Arch as a
51
Grand Mystery of the Free Masons Discover'd ; Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 146, fo. 122; A. Oliver
(ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen Loyalist (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), ii. 71617; A. TudorCraig, Catalogue of Portraits and Prints at Freemasons' Hall (London, 1938); A Master-Key to Freemasonry (London, 1760); Price, The Advantages of Unity Considered, 19.
52
S. Pigott, William Stukeley: An 18th-Century Antiquary (New York, 1985), chs. 34, p. 118;
Knoop and Jones, Origins, 136, 13840; Lepper and Crossle, History, 48, 51; A. C. F. Jackson,
`Masonic Passwords', AQC, 87 (1974), 10619.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

335

higher level of freemasonry, albeit with only limited success before

1800. There is no evidence that the Illuminati, a secret, radical variant
of freemasonry, was imported from the continent in the last part of
the century.53
Whatever the theory about masonic rituals and `science', in practice
lodges spent only a small amount of their time on ceremonial activity.
Complaints recur of a lack of knowledge and interest among the
membership. In some lodges only a few masons knew all the ceremonies and could ofciate, leading to an oligarchy of cognoscenti. At
other lodges, rituals were carried on in a separate room, away from
those brethren who `have no desire to attend and improve themselves'; some lodges held separate schools of instruction to discuss
ritual matters. The situation was often dire in colonial lodges. A
leading Indian mason complained in 1790 about `the scientic being
excluded from the lodges, no lectures being ever given and nothing
. . . but the outward form of making etc'. 54 Endless disputes broke
out, because `for want of a thorough knowledge of the craft [lodges]
commit a great many errors'. At the same time, when the Pythagorean
lodge at Richmond, Yorkshire, was established only `for the cultivation of [scientic] lectures' and not for sociable or charitable activities,
its support quickly withered away. According to John Robinson, too
many brethren regarded lodges as `a pretext for passing an hour or
two in a sort of decent conviviality, not altogether void of some
rational occupation'. Another writer was blunter, calling masons a
`parcel of idle people who meet together only to make merry and
play some ridiculous pranks'. 55
Arguably, the arcane mysteries of freemasonry were more signicant for generating public interest in the order than for the regular
activity of masonic lodges. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to dismiss
masonic meetings as no more than social junketings. The underlying
themes of masonic literature were improvement and enlightenment,
with a stress on merit as the measure of men, education, and the joys
53
Master-key to Free-masonry, 1320; L. A. Seemungal, `The Rise of the Additional Degrees',
AQC, 84 (1971), 30910; M. L. Brodsky, English Freemasonry in Europe, 17171919 (n.p.,
1994), 89, 424, 55; Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of Grand Lodge, 39, 129. But see the
alarmist claims of J. Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of
Europe (London, 1798), 11, 12, 15, 202.
54
W. W. Covey-Crump and G. F. Nobbs, Bicentenary Anniversary of the Scientic Lodge No. 88,
Cambridge (Cambridge, 1954), 12; M. J. Pigott, A Short Survey of the London Lodge No. 108
(London, 1911), 910; Oliver (ed.), Curwen Journal, ii. 699, 721; FMH, HC, 17/B/1.
55
FMH, SN (Ancients), 837A; HC, 6/F/5; Robison, Proofs, 2; The Country Journal or The
Craftsman, 14 Apr. 1737.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

336

Freemasons

of fraternal association; in sum, a utopian world detached from political, religious, or ascribed social status. These themes appear elsewhere
in the associational literature of the eighteenth century, but freemasons
articulated them more consistently and loudly. It was not just a theoretical discussion. There is considerable evidence, at least for the
early eighteenth century, that masons were actively concerned with
`mental improvement'. Several of the early grand ofcers, like Lord
Paisley, belonged to scientic and philosophical circles and may have
encouraged interest in these subjects at the lodge level. A masonic
tract in 1729 spoke of `most lodges in London and several other parts
of this kingdom [having] a lecture on some point of geometry and
architecture'. Such activities were not conned to obvious masonic
themes. During the 1730s the Old King's Arms lodge in London heard
lectures ranging over military architecture, the circulation of the
blood, optics, the structure of muscles, and the chemical process of
fermentation. 56 Medical subjects also gure in the lectures of other
lodges, while Bristol freemasons sponsored a lecture on astronomy, at
which a large, transparent orrery was exhibited. Upholding the banner
of intellectual improvement, a group of Irish freemasons in Portugal
held `debates on mathematics, or any other art or science such as
medicine, architecture and so on'. More practical, one London lodge in
George II's reign combined lectures on geometry with instruction in
ring cannon and small-arms exercise. During the 1780s a lodge at
Maidstone published and distributed material on the latest resuscitation techniques pioneered by the Humane Society, and offered rewards
for recoveries. 57 Both public improvement and self-improvement were
clearly vital strands in the social discourse of Hanoverian freemasonry.

iv
In spite of these attractions, it was in the area of philanthropy that the
movement had its greatest impact. `Charity is the basis of our order',
56
Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, ch. 2 ; J. Moseley, A Sermon Preach'd before the Antient and
Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons (Gloucester, 1751), 28; Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 113; D. A. Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut (Princeton, NJ, 1977), 14, 15, 25;
C. Bathurst, A Speech Deliver'd to the Worshipful and Antient Society of Free and Accepted Masons
(London, 1729), 25; Calvert, Old King's Arms Lodge, 712, 75.
57
Read's Weekly Journal, 26 Feb. 1731/2; Farley's Bristol Journal, 21 Mar. 1789; also Gloucester
Journal, 5 Jan. 1795; S. Vatcher, `A Lodge of Irishmen at Lisbon, 1738', AQC, 84 (1971), 78;
Read's Weekly Journal, 18 Aug. 1739; Maidstone Museum, Blake Collection (unlisted); also
G. Smith, The Use and Abuse of Free-Masonry (London, 1783), 38990.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

337

one grand ofcer declared.58 For the Moderns in particular, it served

not merely to gain members and public attention, but also to control
the institutional life of the order. Charitable activity was multivarious,
from the informal gifts and help of individual lodge members, to the
more formal aid of local lodges and the relief dispensed on a growing
scale by the grand lodges.
Though difcult to quantify, local lodge relief, both to members
and outsiders, was on a substantial scale. One lodge in the 1770s
claimed it had spent 40 in recent years relieving brethren. Local
beneciaries might include the sick, the widows of members, those
adversely affected by bad weather, brethren imprisoned for debt,
and others suffering losses from res. Members could obtain loans
to tide them over in time of difculty. To avoid embarrassment,
donations were made `in the most private and delicate manner'.
Mutual aid was so important that at least one London lodge under
George II was originally organized as a friendly society, with xed
benets for sickness, imprisonment for debt, retirement, and
funerals. 59 Towards the end of our period special masonic benevolent societies were established, as at Norwich. Help for itinerant
or outside masons might also be considerable. A Newton Abbot
lodge complained of its funds being depleted `by means of our
charities to poor travelling masons'. In Kent during the 1780s,
distressed foreign masons were helped to pass from one lodge
to another. 60
Local lodge charity was also disbursed more widely, to the local
poor and needy causes at home and abroad. A Plymouth lodge gave a
hundred bushels of coal to industrious poor families in the town,
while the Palatine lodge at Sunderland donated money to the local
shery to supply the poor, as well as relieving families of sailors killed
ghting the French, and contributing to the cost of a local lifeboat
after a shipping tragedy. At Wapping, the Old Dundee lodge voted
21 for the widows and children of those slain in the battles of
58

The Freemasons' Magazine, 1 (1793), 271.

FMH, HC, 2/D/3; Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 1945; FMH, SN (Moderns), 954B;
A. R. V Nelson-Smith, Lodge of Regularity No. 91, 17551955 (London, n.d.), 257; By-Laws and
Regulations of the Lodge of Love and Honour, No. 75 . . . Falmouth (Falmouth, 1932), 30;
W. Wonnacott, `The Friendly Society of Free and Accepted Masons', AQC, 29
(1916), 10758.
60
NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e, Box 2; see also at Newcastle: Newcastle upon Tyne
Lodge No. 24: Bi-centenary (Newcastle, 1966). FMH, SN (Moderns), 541; Smith, Use and Abuse,
380 (sic).
59

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

338

Freemasons

Minden and Quebec, plus other donations to French prisoners of war

and victims of re in Barbados.61
Charity was an equally important function of the grand lodges. In
November 1724 the Modern grand lodge proposed setting up a socalled General Bank of Charity, perhaps on the model of the Italian
Monte di Pieta, and by the following autumn the grand charity had been
established, with lodges giving money to it on a voluntary basis. In
1729 it was proposed that all new lodges pay into the fund, and the
following year the committee of charity was established, which
assumed a powerful administrative role in the order. 62
In 1776 the Modern grand lodge claimed to have spent (since its
formation) over 7,000 on charitable aid, and its annual expenditure
approached 300. The smaller Ancient grand lodge disbursed considerably less (about 92 in 1790), often given in small sums. As with
the local lodges, there was a mixed bag of beneciaries: those affected
by losses in trade, the unemployed and bankrupt, brethren ruined by
re, the sick, and those injured at work. One man was given money to
redeem his pawned work-tools, another to pay off his debts and set up
in business; the Ancients donated 2 guineas to a brother imprisoned
for a strike against his master. Payments to refugees from Minorca and
the American colonies were common in the 1770s, while the Irish
formed the largest category of petitioners to the Ancient grand lodge
later in the century. 63 Finally, the English grand lodges contributed
generously to the relief of masons abroad: to brethren in the allied
army in Germany in 1760, the victims of re in the West Indies, and
loyalists who had ed to Nova Scotia.64
Like other associations, the grand lodges displayed broader philanthropic concerns. In the late 1730s the Modern grand lodge proposed
a scheme for apprenticing poor boys to masters, rather like the old
county societies. Towards the end of the century there was a growing
interest in education. In 1788 the Prince of Wales lodge, led by
Bartholemew Ruspini, took steps to inaugurate a school for the
daughters of poor masons, and by 1792 the Royal Cumberland
masonic school had been established in New Road, London. In
61
Exeter Flying Post, 5 Feb. 1784; 200th Anniversary Festival of Palatine Lodge, No. 97
(Sunderland, 1957), 1011; Heiron, Old Dundee Lodge, 194.
62
Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 60, 64, 11516, 1289, 138, 233.
63
The Free-Masons' Calendar (London, 1776), 45; FMH, Athol Stewards Lodge Minutes
176495 (unpaginated); Minutes of the Committee of Grand Charity 176185 (unpaginated).
64
The Free-Masons' Calendar (London, 1775), 40; FMH, Minutes of the Committee of
Grand Charity, 176185 (Nov. 1777).

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

339

1798 the Ancients began a charity for the education of boys, while
Irish freemasons had their own Female Orphan school the next year.
Taking local and grand lodge charity together, English masonic charity
by 1800 may have amounted to more than 10,000 a year. No wonder
that concern was expressed from early times that people were joining
the movement simply to exploit its largesse. 65

v
Philanthropy was not the only area in which the grand lodges and
their ofcers attempted to intervene. From the 1720s the Modern
grand lodge began to regulate and interfere in local lodges on
various matters, though many lodges continued to go their own
way, with minor genuections to London's authority. But the early
years of George III's reign marked a sea-change for Modern freemasonry. Thereafter, despite resistance at the local level, grand lodge
endeavoured, with mounting success, to impose a centralist regime
on local lodges through the return of membership lists and rising
dues to grand lodge. The Ancients moved more slowly in the same
direction.
For a time after its foundation the Modern grand lodge was
primarily concerned with the installation of grand ofcers, the organization of the grand feasts and processions, and rather tentative contact
with local lodges, often helping them to surmount local difculties
(though it does seem to have acted to suppress the hybrid masoniccum-musical Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas Apollini of
London in 1727). 66 The advent of the grand charity gave grand lodge
greater leverage over both local lodges and their members. In 1735 it
was decided that no master could serve on the charity committee
unless his lodge had paid its contribution to the grand charity. This
was particularly signicant, because this committee not only dealt with
a growing volume of petitions for relief, but was busy expanding its
authority over a large sphere of masonic business. After 1735 all
petitions for charity had to be vetted by the grand secretary before
65
Hughan, Early Records, 8; Bodl., Rawlinson MS C 136, fo. 186; Frere (ed.), Grand
Lodge, 1045, 11920; FMH, Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 17701813 (June 1792);
Lepper and Crossle, Grand Lodge of Ireland, 3034; Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge,
2501.
66
Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 578, 789, and passim; BL, Additional MS 23202;
R. F. Gould, `Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas Apollini', AQC, 16 (1903), 11228.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

340

Freemasons

they could be considered by the committee. Increasingly, the charity

committee refused relief to members of irregular lodges.67
Two developments are clear in this initial phase. First came the
elevated status of the grand masters, who from 1721 were always
peers. In the early eighteenth century, however, virtually all of these
notables served for just one or two years and few attended meetings.
In consequenceand this is the second pointleadership devolved
on junior grand ofcers, men like the deputy grand-master Martin
Clare, a schoolmaster, who served for a number of years. After 1723
the position of grand secretary was recognized, and this post, along
with that of grand treasurer, became more and more crucial, assuming
a wide range of responsibilities. 68
Up to the 1750s the Modern grand lodge presided over a large
network of afliated local lodges, as well as sizeable numbers abroad.
However, the power of grand lodge remained quite limited, conned
to expelling lodges and denying members of non-subscribing lodges
access to the grand charity. In 1751 grand lodge's authority was dealt a
severe blow by the establishment of the Ancient order. The Modern
grand lodge responded to the challenge, initially, by adopting some of
the innovations of other grand lodges, including the warranting of
military lodges and the granting of certicates to itinerant masons.
Then, in the 1760s, it launched a campaign to expand its power and
jurisdiction through the incorporation of the order, a move which also
aimed to give the Moderns a powerful primacy over the Ancients. The
plan was rst mooted under Earl Ferrers, grand master in 17623, but
nothing was done until the Duke of Beaufort assumed the ofce in
1767. The initial idea of incorporation by royal charter was probably
inspired by recent grants to other fashionable bodies, including the
Society of Antiquaries (1751) and the Incorporated Society of Artists
(1765), and plans for the Royal Academy, chartered in 1768. 69
The campaign for a charter was launched at the committee of
charity in February 1767, and at once sparked opposition, probably
fanned by the Ancients. Even so, a draft charter was circulated to
all Modern lodges, and they approved it by a large majority. Later
that year Beaufort revived an earlier proposal for the building of
67
Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 245, 267; FMH, Proceedings of the Grand
Lodge, 17701813 (Apr. 1736, Dec. 1741).
68
Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 26671; R. F. Gould, `Masonic Celebrities No.2Martin
Clare', AQC, 4 (1891), 338; G. W. Speth, `The Foundation of Modern Freemasonry',
AQC, 2 (1889), 90; Songhurst (ed.), Minutes of Grand Lodge, 267, 2989.
69
Eyre and Sellors, Grenadiers Lodge, 98; for other charters, see above, p. 97.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

341

Freemasons' Hall in London, which was to be funded by contributions from the grand ofcers and new levies on local lodges (including
a registration fee of 2s 6d for new members). However, when a noisy
special meeting of grand lodge decided to petition the king for a
charter, the London Caledonian lodge brought a legal challenge in the
Privy Council. 70 A bitter pamphlet war followed, in which the opposition complained of the `late arbitrary measures' of the grand ofcers
and the heavy cost and dubious value of a charter. The atmosphere
was not helped by Beaufort's high-handed removal of John Salter, a
deputy grand master, in 1768 and his replacement by a supporter of
incorporation. Other issues also lurked in the background. One,
probably, was concern about growing government inuence over
the society, with Beaufort and his allies said to be of the Court party.
Another factor was ideological opposition to charters, for as one critic
declared, `incorporations are detrimental and prejudicial; witness the
ourishing trade of Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester', towns unencumbered in this way. 71
In late 1769 divisions in the Modern order were exacerbated by
attempts to remove the existing trustees for masonic funds (mostly
opponents of incorporation) and to replace them with the grand
ofcers, whom it was feared would use the money to nance incorporation. Beaufort's further proposal to appoint a general inspector
for metropolitan lodges was similarly construed as a device to put
pressure on dissident lodges. In 1770 the grand secretary, James
Heseltine, threatened a lawsuit in Chancery against the trustees, and
repeated threats were made to expel recalcitrant lodges like the
Caledonian. 72
By early 1770 the bitter feuding within the order had jeopardized
any prospect of obtaining a royal charter, and it was decided instead to
promote a parliamentary bill to secure incorporation. Resistance continued, however. The bill received two readings in the Commons in
February and March 1772, but a protest meeting at the Devil tavern,
Temple Bar, generated a large, hostile petition to Parliament (clearly
with the support of the Ancients), and erce attacks in the Commons.
70
I. Grantham, `The Attempted Incorporation of the Moderns', AQC, 46 (1933), 11727;
FMH, Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 17701813.
71
FMH, HC, 8/F/10a, 10b, 14b; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 109; Grantham, `Attempted
Incorporation', 132 ff.; A. Newman, `Politics and Freemasonry in the 18th Century', AQC,
104 (1991), 3940; S. C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy, 17681968 (London, 1968),
72
Grantham, `Attempted Incorporation', 148, 15263.
423.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

342

Freemasons

In April the promoters gave up the bill, incorporation was abandoned,

and by the end of that year Beaufort had resigned as grand master.73
Pressure for more centralist control did not disappear, however. In
December 1772 Heseltine, the increasingly powerful grand secretary,
announced that the building of Freemasons' Hall in London would `be
prosecuted with vigour'. For all the likely expense, such a plan could
hardly be opposed, because of the need for better premises and the
symbolism of the enterprise. Needless to say, the only way the building could be funded was through the enforcement of those levies on
local lodges sanctioned by grand lodge in 1768. In 1773 lodges were
required to return lists of members, together with the names and fees
of new brethren, on pain of exclusion from grand lodge. Numerous
lodges were ejected or threatened with expulsion for failing to
comply. 74
By the mid-1780s the Modern grand lodge had managed to assert
its authority over most local lodges, forcing the regular return of
newly registered members and the payment of dues to London. In
the years up to 1800 extra levies were imposed on lodges to clear off
the debts caused by the work on Freemasons' Hall and neighbouring
properties. However, registration and levies were only two of the
tactics used by grand lodge to extend its control. Although provincial
grand lodges and masters had been introduced earlier, from the 1760s
such arrangements were set up across the country. The most active
provincial grand lodges sought to expand and regulate masonic
activity; in some areas they served as an intermediate tier of command
and advanced London views in the localities. Particularly inuential
was Thomas Dunckerley, who became provincial grand master for
eight counties from 1767 to 1795 and was indefatigable in promoting
freemasonry and the position of grand lodge in the shires, exploiting
his reputed status as a natural son of George II. 75
London's control was buttressed by two further developments.
First, after the 1760s Modern grand masters served for extended
terms. Following the Duke of Beaufort's mastership from 1767 to
73

Grantham, `Attempted Incorporation', 16393, 197; FMH, HC, 8/F/14a; 10/A/30; 8/

B/4; Virginia Gazette, 7 May, 18 June 1772; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 11112.
74
Grantham, `Attempted Incorporation', 194; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 114; FMH,
Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 17701813 (Apr. 1773, Feb. 1776); SN (Moderns), 362;
HC, 1/E/10.
75
FMH, Proceedings of the Grand Lodge, 17701813 (May 1779, Jan. 1783, and passim);
HC, 1/F/11; 2/D/10, 24; 3/E/1217; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 1078; A. Parker, Historical
Survey of the London Lodge No. 108, 17601960 (London, 1960), 1014.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

343

1772, Lord Petre and the Duke of Manchester each held the post for
four or ve years, the royal Duke of Cumberland for eight years, and
the Prince of Wales for twenty-three years. This was part of a general
masonic trend: the Ancients had only two grand masters between 1775
and 1800, while in Ireland Lord Donoughmore acted as grand master
from 1789 to 1813. Secondly, there was a parallel tendency for senior
ofcers to serve for extended periods: in the case of the Moderns,
Rowland Berkeley acted as grand treasurer between 1766 and 1785,
while James Heseltine was grand secretary in the years 1769 to 1783,
and then grand treasurer until 1804; both men were closely involved in
the incorporation campaign and the building of Freemasons' Hall. All
these developments conrmed the transformation of Modern freemasonry into a well-organized, federal association, with a great deal of
its power concentrated in the hands of grand lodge. 76
The Ancient grand lodge established in 1751 was always a smaller
organization, but despite originating, in part, as a reaction to the
policies of the Moderns, the Ancients moved steadily in the same
administrative direction. By 1753 they had established a charity fund,
with monthly contributions by London lodges and payments for new
members; next year the charitable committee was set up (later called
the stewards' lodge). Although the social background of Ancient
members may have been inferior to that of the Moderns, there was
a determined effort by the Ancient grand lodge to make admission
selective; in 1761 the entrance ne was raised to 2 guineas, with `an
intent to keep out such persons as were thought too indigent to
belong to so decent and honourable a society'. This regulation proved
difcult to enforce, and instead newly admitted brethren were obliged
to prove that they `lived in reputable or at least tolerable circumstances'. As with the Moderns, steps were taken to gain greater
control over local lodges, through the exclusion of those failing to
pay dues or make quarterly returns to grand lodge. An additional
sanction was exclusion of non-contributing lodges from access to
the benets of the charity fund. 77
At rst the Ancient grand lodge experienced considerable nancial
problems, but, after the election of the rst noble grand master in
1756, recruitment and momentum increased. In 1772 the grand
76
Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 2723, 275; Lepper and Crossle, Grand Lodge of Ireland, 254;
A. F. Calvert, Grand Lodge Secretaries (London,1918), 1519.
77
Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of the Grand Lodge, 40, 59, 67; FMH, Transcript Minutes
of the Ancient Grand Lodge, 17521811, fos. 120, 130; Minutes of the Athol Grand Lodge,
vol. 2, p. 39; vol. 3, p. 49.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

344

Freemasons

master, the Duke of Atholl, could boast that `our noble and ancient art
is ourishing . . . from the rising to the setting sun'. A key gure in
this success was the second grand secretary, Laurence Dermott.
Indeed, it is arguable that the Ancient grand lodge was effectively
his creation. An Irish mason, Dermott not only created the administrative structures of the order, but was highly inuential in establishing
its ceremonial and scientic basis, publishing Ahiman Rezon and writing various masonic songs. Dermott's dominance caused resentment.
In 1757 there were complaints that `his whole drift was to keep the
society in ignorance and with his singing and tricks to lull them on
until they had accumulated a considerable sum of money and then to
rob them'. But Dermott hung on to power, and eventually became
deputy grand master. 78 By the 1780s the Ancients were rmly established as the second masonic order in England, enjoying good
relations with the Irish and Scottish grand lodges, and deploying
similar promotional strategiesfeasts, processions, and newspaper
publicityas the Moderns. 79
Tension with the Moderns, already fuelled by the latter's attempts at
incorporation, became acute as the Ancient order expanded. In 1774
the Ancient grand lodge ordered the exclusion of any lodge meeting
with a Modern warrant. Three years later the Moderns retaliated by
forbidding members to recognize any Ancient lodge. In 1778 the
Ancients set up a provincial grand lodge at Madras in direct competition with the Moderns. As already noted, relations at the local level
were generally more relaxed and co-operative: in some towns Ancient
and Modern lodges marched together in processions and shared
members. 80
Certainly, the role of the grand lodges in the growth of Georgian
freemasonry should not be exaggerated. The strength of the movement remained in the plurality and diversity of its lodges and membership. Nonetheless, central leadership gave the masonic movement a
major advantage over most other kinds of association in the period,
helping in the establishment of new local lodges, providing support

78
Dashwood (ed.), Early Records of the Grand Lodge, 46, 57, 61, 64, 88; FMH, Minutes of
the Athol Grand Lodge, vol. 2, pp. 47, 49; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 95; FMH, Minutes of the
Athol Grand Lodge, vol. 3, pp. 2778, 289, 295.
79
FMH, Minutes of the Athol Grand Lodge, vol. 2, pp. 123, 147, and passim.
80
FMH, Minutes of the Athol Grand Lodge, vol. 3. pp. 9, 149, 151; Proceedings of the
Grand Lodge, 17701813 (Apr. 1777); W. G. N. Gorn, Sun Lodge, No. 106, Exmouth: A
History of the Lodge (Exmouth, 1963), 2; FMH, SN (Ancients), 1320.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

345

when they ran into difculty, organizing national promotion, and

generally ensuring the continuity and stability of the movement.

vi
British grand lodges also played a signicant part in the export of
freemasonry to the empire. By the mid-eighteenth century new lodges
were springing up virtually as soon as the British ag was raised. In
Halifax, Nova Scotia, a masonic lodge was inaugurated straight after
houses were constructed in the town. North America was the most
important region for colonial freemasonry, with over a hundred lodges
warranted in the East Coast colonies before the Revolution, but British
settlements in the East and West Indies also shared in the movement.
Lodges appeared in Bengal as early as the 1720s, and by 1793 we nd
seventeen lodges listed there. 81 Jamaica had seven Modern lodges in
1772, with over 300 members, and at the close of the period many of
the smaller Caribbean islands supported several lodges. Even remote
settlements could claim some activity. Thomas Perkins was made
Provincial grand master of all the Mosquito Shore in Nicaragua and
set up two lodges, though forced to admit that funds were `very low
which prevents anything but hearty good wishes being sent' to
London. Most colonial lodges, at least up to the American Revolution,
seem to have been located in port cities or administrative towns. 82
Colonial freemasonry was promoted in a number of ways. First,
there was the activity of prominent masons migrating from the British
Isles, men like Roger Lacey, a former grand steward of the London
grand lodge, who helped found a new lodge at Savannah in 1735, and
rose to become provincial grand master of Georgia. Secondly, the
many military lodges played a signicant role in the colonies by admitting local civilians to the order. Lastly, there was the stimulus and
publicity provided by newspapers, and the support and assistance of
the home grand lodges. These not only issued warrants for local lodges
and sanctioned the establishment of provincial grand lodges, but tried
to sort out local disputes, and supplied much of the ceremonial
impedimenta (chairs, jewels, books, and the like) for lodge meetings. 83
81
L. Dermott, Charges and Regulations of the Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted
Masons (Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1786), p. viii; Lane, Masonic Records; FMH, HC, 17/B/16d.
82
FMH, HC, 22/B/3; 23/E/6.
83
R. W. J. H. Estill, The Old Lodge: Freemasonry in Georgia . . . (Savannah, Ga., 1885), 10;
S. C. Bullock, `The Ancient and Honorable Society: Freemasonry in America, 17301830'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, 1986), 36; The Free-Masons' Calendar 1776, 28;
FMH, SN (Ancients), 1118; HC, 23/A/8; 23/B/8; 23/D/1.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

346

Freemasons

Colonial lodges faced many of the difculties of their mainland

counterparts, but often in a more acute form. Predictably, there was
strong demand for membership from migrants, but the very high
levels of colonial mobility caused serious problems. One Bengal lodge
wrote to London that `the residence of persons in this country is very
precarious and . . . all societies here are consequently subject to great
uctuations, presenting in progressive and sometimes rapid succession their rise, decline, and extinction or renovation'. Nova Scotia
masons complained that several of their lodges were `thinly numbered,
occasioned by the removal of many brethren from the province'.
Merchants and those in government service were frequently on the
move: others experienced vertical migration to the grave. The Antigua
grand master complained of being `seized with a severe fever' which
had incapacitated him; but he at least survived, unlike many of his
colonial brethren. Military hostilities were equally disruptive, the
Maratha wars in India, for instance, causing `great uctuations in
masonic affairs', as ofcial business diverted members from meetings
and regiments went on campaign. Communication with the home
grand lodges was fraught with difculty, particularly for the Indian
masons. In 1793, for example, the Bengal grand lodge protested of
writing several times to London but never getting a reply. 84
What of the membership? Colonial brethren were young, more so,
probably, than in England. At the great lodge on Antigua the median
age at admission was 23, while the stewards' lodge at Fort St George
in India admitted several brothers as young as 16. Colonial brethren
may have been more elitist than their domestic counterparts. Before
the accession of George III those joining in the American colonies
seem to have been primarily merchants, captains, colonial ofcers, and
military men. In the 1780s over two-thirds of the membership of two
Quebec lodges belonged to similar elite groups; in Antigua the proportion was over three-quarters; at Fort St George the stewards' lodge
was wholly elitist. 85
Though masonic activity in the colonies, as in Britain, offered
sociable entertainment, mutual support, and philanthropy, its main
function seem to have been to create and reinforce the British ruling
cadre. Membership helped to overcome feelings of isolation and social
84
FMH, HC, 17/C/5; Minutes of the Athol Grand Lodge, vol. 3, p. 374; HC, 23/A/1;
17/A/44; also 17/A/19; 17/B/18; also 26a.
85
FMH, HC, 23/A/11, 18/A/12; Lipson, Freemasonry, 46; D. R. Gilbert, `Patterns of
Organization and Membership in Colonial Philadelphia Club Life, 17251755' (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1952), 14850; FMH, SN (Moderns), 467, 476.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

347

uncertainty, and brought together residents and immigrants from

diverse backgrounds to form a local elite core. In the American
context, the growth of freemasonry up to the 1760s can be viewed
as part of the general process of Anglicization affecting the plantation
elites. 86
However, the social selectivity of colonial freemasonry proved
difcult to maintain. In India by the 1780s we nd a growing inux
of artisan members, with the result that William Hickey, an incorrigible
snob, refused to speak to some of the brethren of the Calcutta No. 2
lodge, and eventually decamped to join a more elitist lodge; within a
few years distinct artisan lodges were emerging. This opening up of
freemasonry may be linked with the growth of the British population
in Bengal, the long-term organizational thrust of freemasonry, and the
rise of the Ancients. The upper classes appear to have responded by
setting up their own exclusive bodies; for instance, the `heads of the
town' at St Johns in Newfoundland set up their own select lodge,
much to the chagrin of ordinary masons. 87
The Ancients played a major part in the transformation of American
freemasonry. Already by the 1750s there was growing artisan support
for the order in the major urban centres. At Philadelphia, a new,
mainly artisan lodge was formed but ran into conict with the Modern
provincial grand lodge, and, in reply, resorted to a warrant from the
Ancient grand lodge in London, establishing it as a provincial grand
lodge. Acting vigorously, by 1774 it had warranted at least fteen new
lodges in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and beyond. There was a
similar development at Boston, where the Ancient lodge of St
Andrew's recruited members from outside the elite, and in 1768
became a provincial grand lodge. Ancient support was encouraged
not just by anti-elite sentiment but by the wave of Irish and Scots
pouring across the Atlantic at this time, for whom the rites of the
Ancients were akin to those of their home lodges. The Irish and
Scottish grand lodges also warranted lodges in Celtic areas of
settlement. 88
86

Bullock, `Ancient and Honorable Society', 701.

A. Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey (London, n.d.), iii. 3467; FMH, HC, 17/B/
15; FMH, SN (Ancients), 880.
88
Bullock, `Ancient and Honorable Society', 1034; id., `The Revolutionary Transformation of American Freemasonry, 175292', WMQ, 3rd series, 47 (1990), 34769; W. A. Huss,
`Pennsylvania Freemasonry: An Intellectual and Social Analysis, 17271826' (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Temple University, 1984), 279; Lipson, Freemasonry, 4950; P. Crossle, Irish
Masonic Records (n.p., 1973); Draffen, Scottish Masonic Records.
87

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

348

Freemasons

Despite the British connection, freemasonry beneted rather than

suffered from the American Revolution. Admittedly, the Moderns
were seen as too identied with the old colonial elite and loyalism,
and their lodges faded away. But the Ancient lodges were adopted as
American institutions and new military lodges were established in the
revolutionary army. Freemasonry became a conspicuous part of camp
life, with lodge meetings and the singing of patriotic songs; George
Washington, an early mason, actively supported the Ancient order, and
from the 1780s it rapidly expanded as ofcers returned from the war.
There was accelerating support in the interior towns, with their
burgeoning and often highly mobile professional and middle classes.
Freemasonry, always sensitive to political realities, eschewed any
pretence of a national organization, which would provoke antiFederalist sentiment. Instead, the old provincial grand lodges and
their jurisdictions were consolidated into state organizations. Like
the ethnic societies discussed in Chapter 8, the freemasons clearly
made the successful transition from a colonial past to an American
future. 89

vi i
Freemasonry, then, was an object lesson in associational achievement
during the eighteenth century. It deployed effectively and coherently
all the essential levers of recruitment, marketing, and organization. It
provided a wide range of formal services, not least mutual aid, for its
largely respectable membership. It attracted and exploited its fashionable social patronage. Above all, it used its federal structure to growing effect, through the enhanced role of the grand lodges. It is
possible that the rivalry of the Modern and Ancient grand lodges
weakened the movement in the last years of period. 90 More likely,
competition between the orders stimulated organizational innovation
and pushed the movement to reach out to a wider section of the
middling and artisan classes.
Overall, masonic inuence on British voluntary associations was
considerable in the late eighteenth century, setting an organizational
pattern from which many types of club and society borrowed. Increasingly, masonic links provided a spinal element in social networking,
89

Bullock, `Ancient and Honorable Society', 148, 153, and passim; Lipson, Freemasonry, 56
60, 61, 111.
90
FMH, HC, 3/E/37; Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 1245.

5.11.99 16:26 09 Chapter 0394

Freemasons

349

helping to underpin contacts and communication in business, politics,

and local administration. By 1800, however, there were signs that
freemasonry was becoming less open, more private. There was a
growing trend towards local lodges renting or building dedicated
premises, instead of gathering in public drinking houses. Government
action against seditious societies led to the Unlawful Societies Act in
1799, which required the registration of lodges at quarter sessions. In
the United States, freemasonry experienced growing criticism from
the churches. In Britain, there was internal pressure to end the creative
rivalry between Ancients and Moderns, and this was nally achieved
in 1813. 91 By then the formative age of freemasonry was surely over.
91
Todd, Phoenix Lodge, 35, 559; FMH, SN (Ancients), 1113; Fere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 121
2, 1248; Lipson, Freemasonry, 64 and passim; Huss, `Pennsylvania Freemasonry', 437.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

10

Benet Clubs

In 1801 Sir Frederick Eden estimated that there were 7,200 friendly
societies in England and Wales, with about 648,000 members. Two
years later poor law returns to Parliament recorded 9,672 societies and
more than 704,000 participants. These gures almost certainly underestimate the incidence of clubs and scale of membership. Even so, they
suggest that about 40 per cent of the working population in London
were members of a friendly society, while at Oldham in Lancashire half
the adult male inhabitants belonged to the town's fteen clubs, and the
position was similar in South Wales. Moreover, unlike most other types
of voluntary association, which were almost wholly based in towns, a
growing number of box clubs sprang up in the English and Welsh
countryside. 1 Over the border in Scotland nearly 400 friendly societies
had been registered by 1800 (again a serious under-count), major
clusters occurring in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, but clubs
also appearing in lesser towns and some Lowland villages. Already in
1779 Glasgow's eighty or so clubs claimed to represent 12,000
members, and in 1800 the eighteen societies at Dumfries had over
2,000 brethren.2 In contrast, Ireland returned only seven societies at
the end of the century, the incidence probably affected by the political
upheavals in the country, as well as by growing economic problems; in
1831 the gure was a more respectable 281 clubs, although getting on
for half were concentrated in the Dublin area. 3
1

P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England, 18151875 (Manchester, 1961), 45;

L. Schwarz, `Conditions of Life and Work in London, c.17701820' (unpublished D.Phil.
thesis, University of Oxford, 1976), 1924; J. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution
(London, 1974), 217; D. Jones, `Did Friendly Societies Matter? A Study of Friendly Society
Membership in Glamorgan, 17941910', Welsh History Review, 12 (19845), 334.
2
PP, 18312, XXVI, Return of the Number of Friendly Societies . . . in Great Britain, 35 ff.;
I. MacDougall, A Catalogue of Some Labour Records in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1978), 230; SRO
(GRH), RH 2/4/383, fos. 7578; 2/4/86.
3
PP, 18312, XXVI, Return of the Number of Friendly Societies . . . in Ireland, 335 ff.; A. D.
Buckley, ` ``On the Club'': Friendly Societies in Ireland', Irish Economic and Social History, 14
(1987), 434.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

351

Lists of registered societies for England indicate that their main

growth came during the last third of the eighteenth century. Of
Gloucestershire clubs registered under the 1793 Friendly Societies Act,
only four were founded before 1760 and sixteen in the 1760s, but fortysix between 1770 and 1790, and sixty-eight in the last decade of the
century. At Worcester there was a similar trend, four clubs being established before 1770, but three times that number in the nal decades of
the period. The Scottish picture was comparable: two-thirds of those
societies whose records survive were founded in the years 1770 to 1800.
Arguably, these gures understate the proportion of earlier societies,
with their lower survival rates than later ones, but the pattern would
seem to correlate with other evidence for town and countryside.4
Denitions of the functions of benet societies have tended to be
narrow. The 1793 Friendly Societies Act identied benet societies as
bodies raising `separate funds for the mutual relief and maintenance of
the . . . members in sickness, old age and inrmity'. Most historians
have focused on their role as artisanal organizations. Edward Thompson
portrayed them as a mechanism for protecting and sustaining the
economic and social status of artisans, helping to forge working-class
consciousness and identity. In a recent study, Eric Hopkins has
emphasized their activity as self-help organizations for the working
classes in the growing industrial towns. The reality, however, is more
complicated. As David Neave and others have indicated, benet
societies recruited not just from artisans, but in country areas from
husbandmen and labourers as well. Indeed, nearly half (49.5 per cent)
of those clubs listed for England and Wales in 18034 were located
outside towns, compared to 20.1 per cent in bigger towns, and 30.4
per cent in small market towns. There was also a minority of middleclass benet societies, and both the upper and middle classes were
frequently involved in the establishment and running of clubs. Again,
unlike many other kinds of society, one nds a number of female box
clubs (and even a few mixed ones). 5
4
Gloucs. RO, Q/RS f2; Worcs. RO, Worcester City Records, A 23, Box 1; for a similar
pattern at Scarborough: T. Hinderwell, The History and Antiquities of Scarborough . . . (York,
1811), 254. MacDougall, Labour Records, 230.
5
Statutes at Large, XVI, 38894; E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
(Harmondsworth, 1968), 457 ff.; E. Hopkins, Working-Class Self-Help in 19th-century England
(London, 1995), ch. 1; D. Neave, Mutual Aid in the Countryside: Friendly Societies in the Rural East
Riding, 18301914 (Hull, 1991); also M. Fuller, West Country Friendly Societies (Reading, 1964). PP,
18034, XIII, Abstract of the Answers and Returns Relative to the Expence and Maintenance of the
Poor.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

352

Benefit Clubs

In the century before the 1793 legislation the format of benet

societies was apparently quite varied. As well as functioning as trade
clubs, benet societies doubled as ringing clubs, learned and music
societies, and masonic lodges. There is further evidence for their
setting up charity schools or acting as religious societies. It might be
argued, then, that the 1793 Act not only dened and restricted the
legal activities of societies narrowly, but, since it generated the bulk of
the archival material for eighteenth-century benet clubs, has skewed
our knowledge of their operations. 6
The 1793 Act and its massive documentary output has probably led
to an exaggeration of the importance of friendly societies in the
spectrum of Georgian associations. This is particularly a concern
when we are dealing with artisan and lower-class socializing, where
the detailed evidence for other types of society is meagre. In towns at
least, benet clubs were only part of a mixed array of respectable
lower-class activity, alongside money and annuity clubs, burial clubs,
clothing and clock clubs, various popular sporting bodies, such as
cutter or rowing clubs, and smoking and social clubs. In 1793 a
number of the rules wrongly submitted to quarter sessions for registration belonged to convivial `alehouse clubs', where members went
just to drink, chat, and sing. 7

i
Of the benet clubs established before the mid-seventeenth century, a
number of the earliest appear in Scotland, among them the United
General Sea Box of Bo'ness (before 1634), and the Sea Box Societies
of Pittenweem (1633) and St Andrew's (about 1643); these provided
relief for poor mariners and their families. 8 One of the few early
English examples was the Brotherly Meeting of the Masters and
Workmen Printers, which was formed in London about 1621 and
had an annual feast and sermon (after 1628) that continued into the
late seventeenth century. Soon after the Restoration, however, general
friendly societies emerged in England, as, for instance, the Civil Club
6
NNRO, S.O. 78/1; J. Sawyer, `Some Extracts from the Journal and Corrrespondence of
Mr John Burgess . . . `, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 40 (1896), 154; Rules and Orders . . . of
the Musical and Amicable Society . . . (Birmingham, 1818); see above, pp. 72, 337; Portsmouth
RO, 536A; Tower Hamlets Library, London, Bethnal Green MS 1050; Lancs. RO, DDX
7
See above, pp. 12930; HMC, Various MSS, VI, 213.
1130/7.
8
NLS, Deposit 259/1; St Andrew's University Library: B3/7/45 ; MS Deposit 51 (I am
indebted to Ms C. Gascoigne for these references).

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

353

established in the metropolis in 1669. During the 1670s Roger

L'Estrange could note that `a mechanic tradesman . . . in the evening
about six o'clock . . . goes to his two-penny club and there stays for
his 2d till nine or ten', though doubtless not all of these were box
clubs.9
Later writers, like Eden, suggested that benet clubs were descended from earlier gilds, and there are a few examples to support
this. One may be the Brotherly Meeting of Masters and Workmen
Printers; another example comes from Essex, where the woolcombers' gild at Coggeshall in the 1680s established a purse or fund
for supporting needy brethren, on the model of a similar fund at
Colchester. In the eighteenth century several London trade companies
set up their own friendly societies, but in most instances clubs
emerged as distinct entities to ll the trade and social vacuum left
by arthritic or defunct trade gilds 10. During the later Stuart period
there were growing numbers of trade-based societies. Thus, the textile
workers in the South-West were increasingly well organized: in 1700
woolcombers at Tiverton formed a benet club, and soon after
clothiers at Tiverton, Taunton, and near Bristol were complaining
that weavers too had set up clubs, with common seals, tipstaffs, and
colours. As well as offering relief to members, these bodies issued
certicates to itinerant workers and tried to stop non-members entering the trade. During the 1720s it was said that `the weavers have many
clubs in several places in the West of England'. 11
Such clubs were not conned to the textile trades, however.
Tiverton had a benet society for labourers in husbandry (1704),
and, shortly before, the Newcastle keelmen working the colliers for
London `agreed to raise a fund for the support of aged or distressed
keelmen'. By the 1720s benet clubs had sprung up in Newcastle,
Norwich, and other English towns. 12 In Scotland, several trade societies appear from the late seventeenth century, at Edinburgh, Dalkeith,
9

The Brotherly Meeting of the Masters and Workmen-Printers. Began November 5. 1621 (London,
1680); Rules and Regulations of the Civil Club (London, 1859); Oxford English Dictionary (2nd
edn., Oxford, 1989), iii. 366.
10
F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, 1797 (repr. London, 1966), i. 590; Leeds University,
Brotherton Library, MS 10 (unfoliated); Guildhall, MSS: 8278/1; 3076, pp. 1412 ff.
11
M. Dunsford, Historical Memoirs of the Town and Parish of Tiverton (Exeter, 1790), 205;
Commons Journals, XV, 312; XX, 648.
12
Dunsford, Tiverton, 206; Tyne and Wear RO, Acc. 1160/1, p. 19; Eden, State of the Poor, i.
617, 618; Articles of the Civil Female Society (Newcastle, 1809); NNRO, Rye MS 18 (i), p. 3;
Maidstone Museum, Ephemera, `Articles of the Amicable Society of Freemen'; J. Wilson, The
Songs of Joseph Mather (Shefeld, 1862), pp. xivxv.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

354

Benefit Clubs

Musselburgh, and elsewhere.13 Compared to the situation with

middle- and upper-class societies, London's ascendancy is much less
evident, but after the Glorious Revolution the capital had expanding
ranks of trade-based and other kinds of benet society. One of the
most advanced was the Amicable Society of Coach and CoachHarness-makers, rst established by a group of journeymen in about
1694 but subsequently admitting masters; by 1705 it had 155 members.
The society offered funeral benets, along with help for poor widows.
Everyone paid into a general fund, but additional funds offered higher
benets, including instruction in reading, writing, and casting
accounts. There were twenty-four ofcials (stewards, treasurers, auditors, and supervisors), four from each of the main metropolitan
districts where members worked. By the 1720s the journeymen tailors
had set up a network of houses of call in the metropolis. London also
had various ethnic friendly societies at the start of the eighteenth
century, while general benet societies steadily became more common. In the 1730s William Maitland observed that box clubs `both of
men and women . . . are very numerous' in the capital `for the relief
and mutual support of the poorer sort of artisans'. Benets covered
sickness, burial, and aid for widows. He also noted that the metropolis
had friendly societies in London `promoting of business and a good
understanding' among middle-rank tradesmen. 14

ii
Middle-class clubs constituted only a small minority of friendly
societies, but their presence cannot be ignored. A fairly typical example was the Amicable and Fraternal Society established in London
in 1752, which comprised City tradesmen and professional men. The
entrance ne rose quickly to 8 guineas by 1760, though the benets
were correspondingly generousas much as 35 on a member's
death; by the 1780s the society had assets of 1,300. Another London
association was the Amicable and Brotherly Society, established about
1738. Among its tradesmen members were a substantial merchant and
a cornfactor, and in 1787 it had over 1,000 invested in several public
funds. Newcastle likewise acquired a number of middle-class benet
13

MacDougall, Labour Records, 12, 24, 25.

The Constitution, Articles of the Amicable Society of Coach and Coach-Harness-Makers (London,
1704); The Case of the Master Taylors residing Within the Cities of London and Westminster . . .
(London, n.d.); see above, p. 301; W. Maitland, The History of London (London, 1739),
6823.
14

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

355

societies. The Liberal Society of Tradesmen (1793) admitted only

principals or masters in their trades and charged 2 guineas for the
privilege. As well as offering sickness and death benets, it had a fund
to make members loans of up to 20 in case of nancial hardship. Its
members included a number of butchers, grocers, other shopkeepers,
and professional men. Two years later a Benevolent Society was
established of various `gentlemen, merchants, owners and masters
of ships'. Members paid 5 per cent of the prots per voyage or per
month. Benets covered losses due to shipwreck and seizure by the
enemy, as well as conventional assistance for sickness, old age, and
death; a similar society was inaugurated at nearby South Shields. By
the later eighteenth century numerous English provincial towns had
one or more middle-class benet societies of this kind; those in
market towns recruited members from neighbouring parishes. 15
Linkages between these societies and the gilds appear negligible. A
more potent inuence may have been the growth of lower-class
friendly societies. In 1750 an advocate of a scheme for relieving the
widows and children of lesser clergy praised the model of benet
clubs set up by `the lowest rank of mechanics'. Certainly, the basic
format of many middle-class benet associations was similar to that of
artisanal clubs, though, as we have seen extra privileges, such as loan
funds, were tailored to the needs of the better-off. Whether or not one
accepts the idea of a trickle-up inuence, there can be little question
that middle-class societies of this type clearly addressed the problems
of nancial instability among middle-rank tradesmen and shopkeepers, which probably grew rather than diminished as the economy
expanded in the late eighteenth century. Yet the total number
remained low. Part of the explanation may be that the middle-classes
were wary of a type of association that was often prone to division and
instabilitydue to the absence of proper actuarial calculations underpinning the tariff of benets and payments. Another factor may have
been the wide range of alternative opportunities for better-off people
to protect themselves and their dependants against nancial hardship.
The spread of re insurance and life assurance policies among the
propertied classes helped to reduce other threats to business survival.
15
Amicable and Fraternal Society: Summary of its History (n.p., 1890), 6, 8, 9; Guildhall, MS
9383/1; Articles, Rules and Regulations for . . . the Liberal Society of Tradesmen (Newcastle, 1793);
Copy of the Articles of the Benevolent Association in Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1795); Copy of
the Articles of the Benevolent Society, in South-Shields (South Shields, 1794); e.g. Hants. RO, 44 /M
69/H2 (28) (New Alresford Provident Soc.)

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

356

Benefit Clubs

Respectable folk might belong to dissenting congregations, which also

offered some measure of mutual support. No less important was the
army of other voluntary associations offering aid. Thus, we nd the
growth of single benet societies, such as those offering annuities for
old age or widows; some were run on a voluntary basis, others as
commercial enterprises, but all attracted middle-class backing. In
addition, many other kinds of association favoured by middling
groups had a mutual aid function, most obviously the freemasons,
but also professional and similar bodies. 16 The middle-classes did not
disdain friendly societies or dismiss them as the province of the lowerclasses: they simply did not need them as much as artisans.

iii
Among the varied array of lower-class benet societies, the evidence
points to three dominant categories. First and most numerous were
the artisan societies described by Maitland, and principally located in
towns. Frequently promoted by publicans and sometimes by employers, they generally answered the nancial and social needs of skilled
workers and small masters. London data for clubs registered in the
years 1793 to 1800 suggest that a quarter were trade-based, and the
rest were `open' associations, though trade societies may have been
more reluctant to register at quarter sessions. In Scotland, records for
societies established before 1800 suggest a higher proportion of tradebased societies, perhaps half the total, though some of them were
open to members of other trades. 17 While some artisanal clubs were
found outside towns in the industrializing regions, most rural societies
belonged to a second class, of agricultural benet societies, their
members drawn from a mixture of craft and agrarian occupations,
often coming not from one but several neighbouring villages. Such
clubs had a good deal of upper-class patronage and involvement in
their running. Thirdly, we nd a limited group of female benet clubs,
16
The Student or, The Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany, 1 (1750), 1325; e.g. B. Drew,
The London Assurance (Plaistow, 1949), esp. chs. 45; C. Brand, A Treatise on Assurances and
Annuities on Lives (London, 1775); though life policies had speculative as well as providential
purposes (cf. G. Clark, `Life Insurance in the Society and Culture of London, 170075',
Urban History, 24 (1997), 1736). J. D. Marshall (ed.), The Autobiography of William Stout of
Lancaster, 16651752 (Manchester, 1967), 89, 1567; [J. Rowe], Letters relative to Societies for the
benet of Widows and of Age (Exeter, 1776), 1, 89.
17
For English trade clubs see C. R. Dobson, Masters and Journeymen (London, 1980);
J. Rule, The Experience of Labour in 18th-Century Industry (London, 1981). MacDougall, Labour
Records, 230.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

357

some of which dated back to the 1730s, if not before. A substantial

proportion were town-based, considerable numbers being founded by
publicans or in response to the needs of wives of skilled workers; but
some were set up by the upper-classes, especially in the 1780s and
1790s, and had moral reform purposes.
The contribution of publicans to the spread of box clubs needs little
exegesis. In addition to general support, landlords provided nancial
help, in the same way as for masonic lodges, often paying start-up
costs or giving long-term credit. In return, club funds might be
deposited with the landlord or (in the case of the growing number
of tied premises in the south and east of England) with the brewer
who controlled the house. 18
The attitude of the upper-classes towards societies needs more
discussion. On the one hand, there was widespread concern at the
spread of trade-based societies and the threat of combinations and
strikes. Already under Anne, Parliament had received a urry of
petitions by magistrates and clothiers against clubs in the textile
regions, and in 1717 a dispute involving clothing clubs at Tiverton
and elsewhere was suppressed with force by the local bench. Eight
years later the woolcombers' club at Alton in Hampshire was prosecuted in King's Bench for trying to enforce a closed shop against a
large clothing manufactory with over 150 employees. In subsequent
decades trade clubs were regularly denounced and sometimes prosecuted for strike activity, particularly at times of economic crisis. On
the other hand, plenty of evidence exists that employers accepted and
even supported the trade activity of artisan clubs. One reason was that
the decline of gilds from the later seventeenth century, and the rapid
expansion of the urban economy, with competing demands for labour,
meant that employers needed a reliable mechanism for ensuring a
exible ow of skilled workers. As one writer declared in 1745:
the business of a master tailor being very precarious, sometimes very full of
work, at others nothing at all to do, the master tailors, in order to be secure of
having a sufcient number of journeymen always ready to answer their
occasions, did long ago amongst themselves contrive to encourage the
journeymen to assemble daily at certain public houses of call.

Trade clubs and even strikes were an essential part of the process of
labour organization and negotiation with employers in a deregulated
18

J. Bourne (ed.), Georgian Tiverton: The Political Memoranda of Beavis Wood, 176898, Devon
and Cornwall Record Soc., ns, 29 (1986), 8; P. Clark, English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200
1830 (London, 1983), 235; see above, ch. 7.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

358

Benefit Clubs

labour market. There were other concerns as well. Employers like

John Wilkinson, who had set up an ironworks near Wolverhampton
and brought together a team of skilled workers, sought the incorporation of the benet society there, to protect his workers, the members,
from harassment by poor law overseers. 19
Involvement by the afuent classes was often direct. At Norwich,
several of the benet clubs had gentlemen as treasurers; at Upton
upon Severn in Worcestershire, the treasurers of the local box club
were local bankers. Further north, at Bolton, a group of clergy and
gentlemen, `persons of property and inuence', joined weavers' clubs,
probably as honorary members, to ensure their better regulation.
Elsewhere, we nd box clubs receiving handsome donations from
wealthy townspeopleat Tiverton they contributed to the cost of
club festivities and processions. Often the anniversary sermon was an
occasion for the parish minister to harangue members (and their
families) with denunciations of disorder and drunkenness. 20 Such elite
involvement makes it difcult to regard artisan clubs as straightforward manifestations of lower-class consciousness.
Female clubs, likewise, attracted the patronage of the better-off. At
Norwich, the Friendly Society for the Benet of Poor Women was run
by a committee of afuent recommending members, who paid a
higher subscription and who dictated the admission of poorer
members. The Friendly Female Society at York was dominated by a
largely female committee of honorary members obsessed with social
discipline. Even when not running the organization, upper-class
patrons might steal the show on feast day. At Honiton, the procession
of the lace-makers' society was headed by the fashionable patronesses
of the society `each having a white rod, the top made up of owers'. 21
Upper-class interference was strongest in the countryside. In 1796
19
Commons Journals, XV, 31213; The Post Man, 2830 Nov. 1717; PRO, KB 1/3, part i
(Easter, 1725) (I am grateful to Tim Wales for drawing my attention to this document);
Derby Local Studies Library, MS 16184/ BA 331.2; A Letter to a Member of Parliament on the
Importance of Liberty . . . (London, 1745), repr. in Labour Problems before the Industrial Revolution
(New York, 1972), 19. A. Aspinall, The Early English Trade Unions (London, 1949), 33 and
passim; Greater London RO, MJ/OC 11, pp. 3356; Commons Journals, XLIII, 167.
20
NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e, Box 1 (Ark Soc.); Box 4 (Union Society);
Articles of the Friendly Society at Upton-upon-Severn (Tewksbury, n.d.), p. 14; Star, 23 June 1791;
Hull Advertiser, 13 Dec. 1794; Bourne (ed.), Georgian Tiverton, 989; E. Whitehead, The Duty of
bearing one another's Burdens (Manchester, 1774), 45.
21
NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e, Box 2 (Friendly Soc. for the Benet of Poor
Women); York City RO, Acc. 50/1 (unfoliated); A. Oliver (ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen
Loyalist (Cambridge., Mass., 1972), i. 458.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

359

the Earl of Carlisle established a benet society at Castle Howard for

tenants and others born on the estate; the club's president and
treasurer, John Forth, was the earl's agent. Also in the East Riding,
the success of the box club at Etton owed much to the handsome
nancial contributions of Sir John Legard and other local landowners. In Cumberland, a series of societies about Workington
were established through the patronage of the wealthy Curwen
family; elsewhere farmers took a leading role. 22 Some clubs trooped
around their villages collecting donations from the local elite, who
might also pay the membership dues of poor men. Gentry helped
draft club rules and attended club feasts; clergy served as ofcers;
and honorary membership by the well-off was common: in one
Northamptonshire village, for instance, well over a third of the
club members came into this category. 23 As well as seeking to
buttress their local social standing, gentry, farmers, and other
worthies were increasingly concerned about moral reform and the
need to curtail the soaring cost of parish relief by promoting box
clubs. Agricultural improvement societies in the late eighteenth
century, ruled by landowners, actively encouraged the establishment
of village friendly societies, as did the London Society for Bettering
the Condition of the Poor: all were anxious to propagate self-help
and frugality among country people. 24
Upper- and middle-class involvement in the development of eighteenth century benet societies was clearly signicant and continued
well into the next century. Nevertheless, the rapid increase of box
clubs owed much to their being `genuinely popular forms of self-help',
enjoying wide support from skilled workers, better-off villagers, and at
least some women. 25

22
Castle Howard, 11/1/17 (I owe this information to Dr A. Duncan); D. Neave, East
Riding Friendly Societies, East Yorkshire Local History Series, 41 (1988), 10, 12; Eden, State of the
Poor, ii. 1014; P. Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 16891798 (Oxford, 1991),
p. 374.
23
PP, 1825, IV, Select Committee Report on the Laws respecting Friendly Societies, 94; J. Beresford
(ed.), The Diary of a Country Parson: The Reverend James Woodforde (London, 192431), iv. 2930,
114; Notts. RO, DD 311/3, p. 128; Leics. RO, DE 3214; Gloucester City Library, RF. 354.20;
R. Lucas, Three Sermons On the Subject of Sunday Schools . . . (London, 1787), 114.
24
Lincs. RO, Dixon 7/6/3; Fuller, West Country Friendly Societies, 67; J. R. Poynter, Society
and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 17951834 (London, 1969), 94.
25
Cf. S. Cordery, `Friendly Societies and the Discourse of Respectability in Britain, 1825
1875', JBS, 34 (1995), 415; M. Bee, `Providence with Patronage: The Royal Berkshire
Friendly Society', Southern History, 16 (1994), 1014. Poynter, Society and Pauperism, 36.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

360

Benefit Clubs

iv
Artisans joined because they could afford the cost. Foreign visitors to
England drew attention to the relative prosperity of English skilled
workers, especially in London. Writing in the 1760s, for instance, the
Frenchman Grosley exclaimed at the `daily gains of the artisans [so]
that people might be thought very rich in comparison of the Parisians'.
This chimes with statistical data for the rising living standards of
skilled workers until the last decades of the eighteenth century. For
a London building craftsman in the 1790s, membership of a box club
probably took no more than 5 per cent of his weekly wage. 26
Foreigners were impressed not just by the prosperity of English
artisans, but by their education: they owned books, read newspapers,
and were concerned with serious issues. Skilled workers went to club
meetings for convivial drinking, sing-songs, sports, and games, but
they could also discuss business, politics, and other matters. In `The
Weaver', written about 1720, the Norwich craftsman talks of going to
`jovial clubs', some doubtless benet clubs, to talk of trade and public
news, including foreign wars and elections. As well as being interested
in the world around them, skilled workers, like their better-off
counterparts, sought to shape their relationship to that world through
associations. 27
Even in an era of relative prosperity the risk of nancial failure
remained high. While the middle-classes were vulnerable to bankruptcy, small masters, petty artisans, and so on suffered from a tidal
wave of debt litigation in local courts, quite often leading to imprisonment. Economic uctuations, the growth of consumer spending, and
family misfortunes all played their part in pauperization, but as the
eighteenth century advanced there was growing recognition of the
impact of sickness. At the start of the nineteenth century the London
Society for the Suppression of Mendicity reported that sickness and
accidents were six times more important than business failure as
causes of distress for ordinary people. Virtually all benet societies
tried to address this problem by offering help during sickness, alongside death benets for widows. The latter was also crucial because, as
one writer noted in 1770, whole families were often implicated in the
26
P. J. Grosley, A Tour to London (Dublin, 1772), i. 71; see above, pp. 1545; calculated
from L. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living
Conditions, 17001850 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 170 ff.
27
C. Williams (ed.), Sophie in London (London, 1933), 176; T. Bewick, A Memoir of Thomas
Bewick, ed. I. Bain (Oxford, 1979), 75; NNRO, Rye MS 18 (i), pp. 23.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

361

calamitous circumstances occasioned by the death of an industrious

husband.28 Benet societies also provided help for old age, which the
London Mendicity Society counted as the second most important
cause of pauperization after ill-health. At one Halifax `friendly and
mechanical society', all the members reaching 60 years received 2
shillings a week benet; at nearby Bradford the pensions began at
70 years; but in general, club provision was modest here, possibly
because of the heavy potential cost. Yet, taken as a whole, club
expenditure on these different forms of relief was relatively high. In
the 1790s Eden estimated that London's clubs each paid out annually
about 80. At Shefeld the outlay by the town's fty-ve clubs was
said to be 3,500 in 17867 (about 64 per club). 29
Only a small number of benet clubs seem to have paid relief in
time of unemployment, despite the problems caused by cyclical and
seasonal downturns in the labour market and trade stoppages. Tradebased clubs may have afforded greater help: they gave members
certicates and money to leave the area to go tramping in search of
work, assisting those who became sick and giving support to the
family, while further relief came from allied clubs en route. At Alton
in the 1720s the woolcombers' club gave 5 shillings and printed tickets
to itinerant members, which entitled them to work `in all clothing
towns where the woolcombers had formed themselves into clubs'. At
Birmingham, a craftsman on the tramp and out of work in the
carpentry trade got a good bed, supper, two pints of ale, and breakfast
at the club's public house. By 1800 up to seventeen trades may have
been organized in national or regional club networks. 30
The role of trade clubs should not be exaggerated. In England, at
28
M. Finn, `Debt and Credit in Bath's Court of Requests, 182939', Urban History, 21
(1994), 213, 221; Sixth Report of The Society Established in London for the Suppression of Mendicity
(London, 1824), 17; An Abstract of the Deed of Settlement of the Benevolent Society at Stafford . . .
(Wolverhampton, 1770), 12.
29
Calderdale District Archives, Halifax, HPC/A 44; Leeds Public Library, Articles to be
Observed by the Members of the New United Society (Bradford, 1789); Eden, State of the Poor, i. 461;
W. Ward, The Substance of Mr Ward's Speech at the Town-Hall in Shefeld . . . 1791 (Shefeld, 1791),
7; see also Farley's Bristol Journal, 22 Mar. 1788.
30
See below, p. 378; NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e, Box 1 (Friendly Society of All
Trades); The Tiverton Wool-combers Defence (London, 1750), 10; for the classic account of
tramping see E. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men (London, 1964), ch. 4. PRO, KB 1/3, part i
(Easter, 1725); see also the woolcombers at Aberdeen: SRO (WRH), CS 96/1943; Rules and
Orders to be Observed by a Friendly Society of Journeymen Carpenters and Joiners (Birmingham, 1809),
8; H. Southall et al., Nineteenth Century Trade Union Records: An Introduction and Select Guide,
Historical Geography Research Series, 27 (1994), 36; R. A. Leeson, Travelling Brothers
(London, 1979), 927.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

362

Benefit Clubs

least, they formed only a limited minority of friendly societies in our

period. Like most societies, they had relatively short lives, and their
involvement in sustained action against employers was limited and
opportunistic, mainly exploiting economic upturns to advance the
wages of their skilled members, if necessary at the expense of other
workers. For most of the time they worked closely with employers to
smooth uctuations in the labour market. Only when skilled trades
came under growing pressure from the late eighteenth century did
they become more organized and confrontational, as they tried to
defend traditional work practices through strikes and blacking, and to
ght off the growing challenge of employers' organizations. After the
1793 legislation skilled workers sometimes set up secret union organizations, separate from their benet clubs; in the process, perhaps,
becoming more politicized. 31
One nds some instances of political activity by benet societies
from an early stage. In the 1730s a London club expelled a member for
informing against spirit sellers under the Gin Act, a measure widely
viewed as discriminatory against the lower classes. In the 1750s
Tiverton clubs demonstrated together to demand the vote in parliamentary elections. But most trade clubs were primarily concerned
with protecting their own interests, and there is little evidence of
them being involved in the radical Wilkesite agitations of the 1760s.
Increased political activity during the last years of the century frequently had a conservative or sectional bias. In 1779 Glasgow benet
clubs petitioned en masse against Catholic toleration; in 1795 Coventry
clubs petitioned the Commons over the collapse of the city's ribbon
trade; and four years later those in Dumfries protested to the king
against the high price of corn and its export to England, declaring they
had `been forced by the pressure of the times to commission corn
from a foreign market'. For all government fears about the radicalization of benet clubs, more of them rallied to the loyalist cause during
the French wars than turned Jacobin. 32
Thus, the great majority of artisans and skilled workers joined
eighteenth-century benet clubs, whether trade-based or not, primarily to gain economic protection in time of personal difculty, leavened
31
T. R. Mandrell, `The Structure and Organisation of London Trades, Wages and Prices
. . . 17931815' (unpublished M.Litt. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1972); I. J. Prothero,
Artisans and Politics in Early 19th-Century London (Folkestone, 1979), 38, 40, 41; Rule, Experience
of Labour, chs. 13; Bourne (ed.), Georgian Tiverton, 120.
32
Read's Weekly Journal, 17 Dec. 1737; Dunsford, Tiverton, 239; SRO (GRH), RH 2/4/383,
fos. 7578; 2/4/86, fo. 251; Commons Journals, L, 539; Hull Advertiser, 19 July 1794.

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

363

by modest socializing and, in a minority of cases, additional activitiesmusical, learned, and the like. Economic protection was also
the overriding concern of village and female clubs. Part of the explanation for the high incidence of rural societies was upper-class
patronage; another factor was the nature of rural demand. As in
towns, benet clubs provided an important centre for social entertainment, constituting an obvious extension of alehouse socializing. In
more prosperous communities, especially in the pastoral or industrializing regions, they were a major focus for communal sociability. In the
West Country, for instance, club feasts were prominent village events,
with their processions and ceremonies, replacing or merging with
more traditional communal festivities, now on the wane. In Scotland,
in a weaving community near Kilmarnock, a benet club established
during the 1760s functioned as a neighbourly co-operative, with the
managers buying and selling victuals to the membership. Elsewhere, in
the many arable areas where real wage rates were deteriorating before
1800, communal activity was less important, as members came from a
wide spread of neighbouring parishes. 33 Here the prime concern was
to obtain benet during sickness or difculty, in order to avoid, or at
least supplement, the exiguous relief of the poor law. Migrants may
also have seen membership as a means of insulating themselves and
their families from the restrictions of the Settlement Acts (and the risk
of removal), though their position was not nally secured until the
benet society legislation of 1793.
Club membership offered freedom `from the uneasy apprehensions
of being burdensome to their parish' and ending up in `a melancholy
poor-house'. Others stressed the society's role as a buttress against
`the churlish bounty of an unfeeling overseer'. The diary of Joseph
Mayett, a Buckinghamshire agricultural worker who joined a club at
Quainton, records little about its social activity, probably because he
could not afford to drink there, but shows how during periods of
sickness he could obtain 15s a week in relief, and that he only went on
to the meagre parish rolls under intense pressure. Members tended to
comprise somewhat better-off villagers, small craftsmen, service
workers, and smallholders, as well as labourers. 34
33
Fuller, West Country Friendly Societies, ch. 5; R. Campbell, Provident and Industrial Institutions
(Manchester, n.d.), 21617; Rules and Orders to be observed and kept by the Benet Society, held at
Setche (Lynn, 1797); Berks. RO, D/ETy Q5/1/1.
34
J. Innes, `The ``Mixed Economy of Welfare'' in Early Modern England', in M. Daunton
(ed.), Charity, Self-interest and Welfare in the English Past (London, 1996), 145; Northumbria RO,
NRO 2900/1, p. iv; Warrington Public Library, P 1177, p. 3; A. Kussmaul (ed.), The

5.11.99 16:27 10 Chapter 0394

364

Benefit Clubs

Recruitment to female benet societies remained small-scale

throughout the period. According to the 18034 returns, only 5 per
cent of all benet clubs were female, and in these the average membership size was only two-thirds that of male clubs. Allowing for regional
variations, the limited level of support was clearly linked to low and
erratic wages for women. Low earnings meant that for any female club
to succeed payments had to be `moderate'. At Wisbech's female
friendly society early resignations by new members were common,
due to the difculty of paying the fees. Another problem was the
venue: James Cowe advised that meetings of such clubs should be in
private houses, partly to avoid the cost of drinks in a public house, but
also to overcome the conventional reluctance of women to enter such
premises, except with their husbands or on customary occasions. At
York, we hear of the difculties of female benet societies, where
women may `be adverse to frequent a public house being a thing
blameable to their sex'. The attitude of husbands was critical: thus,
one Mrs Beales resigned from the Wisbech society due to `her husband
objecting to her being a member'. 35 Another problem affecting
recruitment concerned the receipt of benets. Principal advantages
of membership included payments before and after childbirth, when
the cost of medical care and the loss of the woman's wages affected
family budgets; payments were also made during sickness and after
death. Despite their distrust of such bodies, husbands were frequently
the main beneciaries, since legal disabilities prevented women receiving payments in their own name. Burial benets were clearly attractive
to husbands. One London newspaper in the 1730s carried the story of
how, after his wife died, her husband, an ex-sailor, went to her club,
received 2 in death benet, sold her body to a surgeon for 2 guineas,
and went off to sea on the proceeds. A further problem was the high
illiteracy rate of many lower-class women; hence the ofce of clerk
was invariably held by a man. 36
These difculties may help to explain why upper-class women were
involved in setting up and running female societies. Yet clubs of this
Autobiography of Joseph Mayett of Quainton (17831839), Bucks. Record Society, 23 (1986), 86, 93,
95; Rules of the Society at Setche; NLW, Glansevern 1171; Devon RO, 818A/ PZ 92.
35
PP, 18034, XIII; levels were somewhat higher in industrial areas with higher female
wages: A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class
(London, 1995), 36; J. Cowe, Religious and Philanthropic Tracts (London, 1797), 88; Cambridgeshire RO, R 88/35; York Courant, 22 Mar. 1768.
36
Eden, State of the Poor, i. 630; Read's Weekly Journal, 4 Sept. 1736; R. S. Schoeld,
`Dimensions of Illiteracy, 17501850', Explorations in Economic History, 10 (19723), 4456.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

365

kind undoubtedly provided respectable lower-class women with

important opportunities for socializing, recognition, and mutual
support. Female clubs were a formal extension of the customary
practice of groups of women meeting together in the street or drinking house for neighbourly socializing. Feast days were occasions for
the celebration of feminine virtue, as when the young women of a
Welsh club went in procession on their anniversary plainly clad but
extremely neat, or when West Country lacemakers paraded through
town streets carrying bouquets and walking between arches adorned
with owers. 37

v
Low wages were a serious problem for benet societies, especially
female and rural ones, hampering recruitment and retention. Other
problems were the same as for most early modern associations, not
least erce competition with other societies. We have already noted
the alternative attractions of leisure and money clubs, but competition
between box clubs was also intense, as rival recruitment campaigns
strove to offer the most advantageous terms. To prevent people
playing one club off against another, most had rules against members
belonging to other clubs. A further difculty arose from the tension
between age-groups, enamed here by self-interest. Younger members resented the nancial burden imposed on the box by older, sick
members, and used every excuse and tactic to exclude them from the
club. If everything failed, younger members might resort to closing
the club down and setting up a new one. Members of a Birmingham
club which `had long existed, but being frightened at their two
brethren likely to continue sick for life . . . put a period to the society',
despite rules to the contrary. The resulting case was heard in the local
court of requests, where, for all the efforts of lawyers on behalf of the
majority, the commissioners determined that `a box loaded with sickness cannot warrant dissolution'. 38
However, disputes concerning payment of benet did not concern
just older members; any frequent beneciary was liable to attack.
Joseph Mayett, on the box at Quainton with an injured hand, was
37
Clark, Struggle for the Breeches, 389; Cambridgeshire RO, R 88/35; Farley's Bristol Journal, 6
June 1789; Oliver (ed.), Curwen Journal, i. 458.
38
York Courant, 22 Dec. 1767, 23 Feb. 1768; about half the metropolitan and West Riding
societies had rules against membership of another box club. W. Hutton, Courts of Requests
(Birmingham, 1787), 925.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

366

Benefit Clubs

charged with being an impostor because he carried the communion

bread and wine at church, and was threatened with expulsion. A sick
member of a London society was kept under pressure for several
years, was offered money to leave, and was eventually subjected to
litigation. 39
Contributing to the tension within societies were the usual organizational problems, aggravated by the limited education of many
members. In Wales in the 1750s we hear that `disputes frequently arise
in several societies or clubs owing to their not having set rules to be
punctually observed for their government'. In other disputes, bad
record-keeping and abuses by ofcers and publicans were to blame.
Actuarial deciencies were crucial and specic to the difculties of
benet societies. By the 1760s actuarial principles were increasingly
well established, but they remained widely neglected or ignored, not
just by artisan clubs but by middle-class societies as well. In the 1760s,
for example, a society was instituted in London for the benet of
lawyers' widows under the management of several judges and other
leading practitioners. Subsequently, the scheme was referred to
experts, and on their advice the society was wound up. In 1776 it
was said that many of the new annuity societies were unsound. A few
years previously the lawyer Francis Maseres had formulated tables of
annuities for the poor, but a bill incorporating them in a statutory
framework was rejected by Parliament. Various other schemes were
published, but lacked a statutory basis. The 1793 Act failed to require
an investigation of the actuarial basis of society benets, and it was left
to legislation in 1819 to try to remedy this. Even so, witnesses before
the Parliamentary Committee on Friendly Societies in 1825 claimed
that there were few solvent societies. 40
Competition with other clubs, combined with the relatively low
wages of many prospective members, had a disastrous nancial effect.
To attract sufcient members to get clubs off the ground, organizers
offered terms which guaranteed insolvency in the long run. Clubs `at
rst consist entirely of young persons, between 20 and 30 years of age,
and, consequently, during the rst 10 or 20 years the funds have
increased very fast; societies have been led to require subscriptions
much too moderate for the allowances they make for sickness and
funerals'. Accounts of a club at Hawkhurst in Kent conrm the truth
39

Kussmaul (ed.), Mayett Autobiography, 901; Guildhall, MS 9383/1.

NLW, Bronwydd 2144; J. Rowe, Letters relative to Societies (BL Call No.: G 8530 bbb. 18
(3) MS notes at end); PP, 1825, IV, 67, 1213, 27, 28 and passim.
40

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

367

of Eden's generalization. Established near the start of George III's

reign, it prospered initially, accumulating assets of 545 in 1780. From
this time, however, the situation started to deteriorate, with membership falling (by 14 per cent over one eighteen-month period), partly
because of deaths, but also because members became aware of the
mounting nancial decit and so voted with their feet. Expenditure
was now running at close to 83 a yearsubstantially more than
membership incomeas a result of the increasing number of widows
on the club books. Though interest from club investments helped, the
long-term position was untenable, and in 1786 the society was dissolved and the assets divided. As well as suffering from the structural
problems caused by life-cycle trends, societies could be ravaged by the
sudden illness or death of several members. In 1772 the middle-class
Amicable and Brotherly Society in London, which had 750 in its box,
suffered the death of six members within twelve months, at a total
cost of over 300 in benets. The situation in some cases was
exacerbated by societies doubling as money clubs, where a major
part of the assets were divided up each year among the membership,
leaving benets to be paid mainly from incomeanother recipe for
nancial disaster. No wonder that many friendly societies had short
lives, especially those in the countryside. 41
Although their tariff of benets was often too generous, societies
tried to reduce the risk of insolvency in a number of ways, none of
them damage-free. First, the qualifying period for new members to
receive benets might be prolonged, in some clubs for up to four
years. This had the inevitable effect of discouraging recruitment.
Secondly, if nancial pressures became acute, the box itself might
be closed for months at a time, refusing relief to members in need and
causing bitter complaints. At Newcastle the closure of the box of the
Keelmen's Society in 1742 led to `a very sore and great outcry as many
members during their sickness, when in very great wants, could not
have the due and usual supply, though at the point of starving, by
which means the company is greatly . . . shamed throughout the
town'. A more constructive, though less common, tactic was to offer
members a no-claims bonus. Too often clubs resorted to depriving
sick members of benet or driving them out of the society, often after
41
PP, 1825, IV, 31; Eden, State of the Poor, i. 619; Kent Archives Ofce, P 178/25/23;
Guildhall, MS 9383/1; Rules of A Society Entitled the General Provident Society . . . (Birmingham,
1800), 4; Rules and Orders To Be Observed and Kept by the Members of a Society . . . Handsworth
(Birmingham, 1800). I owe the last point to Professor Peter King.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

368

Benefit Clubs

a great deal of unpleasant wrangling.42 There was also the problem of

how to invest club capital to generate sufcient income. Some societies issued loans at interest to members and local worthies; others
bought property; and by the 1790s they made growing investments in
government stock.43
Problems of nancial management not only threatened the longterm solvency of societies, but also compounded the administrative
difculties typical of early modern associations, such as disputes with
landlords, divisions among ofcers, and discord among members. In
April 1742 the committee of the Keelmen's Society met at Newcastle,
but nothing could be decided `by reason of the noise and disturbance
of some and their fractiousness'. Soon after, a society burial was the
scene of further unseemly rows, as one member called another `the
greatest rogue in the company'. The frequency of disputes encouraged
recourse to legal remedies, but the general absence of ofcial sanction
for voluntary associations made this difcult. In 1736 the Court of
Exchequer heard a dispute brought by a Spitalelds weavers' club
against its landlord for the recovery of 30 lent him from the box.
After listening to legal arguments, the court held that `they were not a
legal society, whereby they may sue or be sued, that they ought to be
discouraged, and that such clubs were beneath the dignity of the
court'. Other Westminster courts like King's Bench were also dismissive about the legal standing of associations in general. By the late
eighteenth century some of the new generation of urban courts of
requests appeared more willing to hear cases involving friendly societies, but only a small minority of the growing number of clubs may
have beneted. 44 In consequence, pressure mounted to obtain some
form of ofcial recognition for societies.

vi
That expensive form of recognition sought by bigger societies, royal
or parliamentary incorporation, was clearly not an option available to
benet societies. In mid-century a number of societies, like other
voluntary associations, attempted instead to obtain legal backing
42
See below, pp. 3789; Tyne and Wear RO, Acc. 1160/1, p. 89; NLW, Maybery 4340;
Guildhall, MS 9383/1.
43
NLS, Deposit 259/1; Kent Archives Ofce, P 178/25/3; NNRO, S.O. 62/1; see above,
pp. 2601.
44
Tyne and Wear RO, Acc. 1160/1, pp. 91, 93; Read's Weekly Journal, 12 June 1736;
Parliamentary History, XXI, 107; Hutton, Courts of Requests.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

369

through enrolling their deeds in the Westminster courts. In 1765 the

society for the benet of lawyers' widows had its rules recorded in
Chancery; two years later the Laudable Society of Annuitants, recently
formed at the King's Head tavern in the Poultry, followed suit. Other
London societies went through the same procedure in King's Bench,
while the Benevolent Society at Stafford had its deeds enrolled in
Chancery in 1770. Unfortunately, the legal costs were probably fairly
high, limiting this device mostly to middle-class associations. The only
affordable option for artisanal clubs was to draw up trust agreements
for ofcers, but the problem of enforcement remained, and only a
minority seem to have done this. 45
By the late eighteenth century pressure was growing for statutory
recognition. In 1786 the Leeds Benevolent Society solicited the support of other local societies to petition Parliament for legislative
approval of their rules, but to no avail. A few years later the acquittal
of the treasurer of a box club charged with embezzling its funds
provoked more concerted lobbying in the capital. In early July 1790
the Hand in Hand society at the Queen's Arms tavern, Newgate
Street, announced that, as a result of the judgment, it would apply
to Parliament for statutory sanction, and called on other societies to
back them. By the end of the month twenty other societies had given
their support and a fund was set up to petition Parliament. In
September a Cheapside club reported two successes in the courts
(against a defaulting member and a fraudulent ofcial), which might
serve as precedents for other clubs. 46 Three months later a general
gathering of club representatives at the Queen's Arms set up a joint
body, the United Benet Societies, with monthly meetings to lobby
the authorities; its secretary was John Emms, the secretary of the
Hand in Hand society and a lawyer in Doctors' Commons. Societies
within the Bills of Mortality were invited to send delegates and
subscriptions to the Queen's Arms society, and provincial clubs
were urged to join in the petitioning. In 1791 the Queen's Arms
society obtained counsel's opinion from Sergeant Adair, which conrmed that unless clubs had taken sureties from their ofcers, they
had little redress in the courts. The following year they published
Adair's opinion alongside a general exposition of the legal and
45
Rowe, Letters relative to Societies, p. 1 and MS notes; Rules, Orders and Regulations of a
Friendly Society called the British Assurance Society (London, 1795); An Abstract of the Deed of
Settlement, 34 ; NLW, Bronwydd 2144.
46
York Courant, 21 Nov. 1786; St James Chronicle, 31 July-1 Aug. 1790; 1820 Nov. 1790;
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 10 July, 4 Sept. 1790.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

370

Benefit Clubs

nancial problems facing benet societies, despite their recognized

role in reducing poor rates. The society appealed for the support of
MPs and parish ofcials to obtain parliamentary action. In northern
England, clubs at Bradford joined in the campaign, petitioning for
statutory recognition. 47
By the early 1790s the authorities were receptive to the idea of
legislation. From mid-century there had been various upper-class
schemes to put benet societies on a statutory basis. In 1757 legislation provided for a compulsory fund for the London coalheavers to
relieve the sick and arrange benets for funerals and widows. More
ambitious, in 1769 a local act established friendly societies in every
Devon parish, run by a committee of stewards elected by ratepayers.
Provision was made for a graduated scale of payments and benets
for men and women, with each subscriber receiving 20 at marriage,
plus 20s on the birth of a child. Unfortunately, the generous nature of
the benets generated acute difculties for societies, parish rates had
to bail them out, and the Act was repealed in 1773. Several further acts
were passed in the late 1780s to give statutory sanction to local
societies at Glasgow, Sunderland, and Newcastle. 48 More important,
in 1786 John Acland, a Devon cleric, resurrected the earlier statutory
scheme as the basis for a projected national friendly society, which
everyone would be required to join, except for landowners; nonsubscribers were to be badged drone in large letters of red cloth.
The following year John Rolle, the Devon MP, brought in a bill for a
similar scheme, with the aim of reducing the poor rates and improving
the state of the poor, but nothing was done. Further compulsory
schemes were presented in the last part of the century. Other
upper-class commentators, however, emphasized the need to maintain
the voluntary principle. Eden, for example, pointed out that a compulsory scheme was effectively a form of taxation on the lower
classes. 49
Increasingly an upper-class consensus emerged, which recognized
the need for a statutory framework for benet societies. For most
47

Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 4 Dec. 1790; Queen's Arms Tavern, Newgate-St, February
24, 1792 (London, 1792), 1, 34; Commons Journals, XLVII, 490; Langford, Public Life, 172.
48 Eden, State of the Poor, i. 6056; J. Acland, A Plan for Rendering The Poor independent on
Public Contribution (Exeter, 1786), 26; W. S. Steer, `The Origins of Social Insurance', Trans.
Devon Association, 96 (1964), 30417; Public General Acts, 13 GIII c. 18 (1772); Commons Journals,
XLI, 2923, 841, 976; XLIII, 201, 545; XLVII, 419, 447, 747.
49
Acland, Plan, 1024; Eden, State of the Poor, i. 3734, 472 n. ff., 603; Poynter, Society and
Pauperism, 378; Parliamentary History, XXVI, 1,05964.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

371

landowners and MPs the prime concern was not friendly societies as
such, but reducing the burden of public provision, particularly the
soaring cost of parish relief in country areas. As a result of the growth
of population in the late eighteenth century, together with agricultural
improvement and the decay of rural industries (due to competition
from the industrializing regions), rural poverty exploded. Friendly
societies were seen as an ideal solution for curbing parish expenditure
and encouraging self-help among the lower orders. Upper-class advocates of box clubs invariably stressed their role in the reduction of
parish rates. Whether they did this in practice is debatable. Taking the
incidence of paupers relieved through parish relief from the 18034
returns, the highest proportions were in those areas with the highest
level of rural societiesfor example, East Anglia, the South-East, and
South-West. 50
The upper classes also had a parallel agenda, at least from the 1780s:
the belief that friendly societies not only promoted self help but also
moral reform among the poor. For James Cowe, the increase of
poverty at the end of the eighteenth century was only partially due
to the falling value of agricultural wages; it was more the result of that
`growing spirit of laziness and improvidence' among the lower orders.
Here friendly societies had an important role, in tandem with Sunday
and parish schools. One writer coupled advice on setting up Sunday
schools with that for instituting parish clubs, using as his model the
Female Society at York, known for its strong interest in social
discipline. 51
By 1793 attitudes towards friendly societies were coloured by fear
about their potential for economic and political disorder. This was
heightened by the spate of strike activity among trade clubs: thus,
Acland complained of how such bodies led to `mutinous secessions of
labour'. There was further anxiety over the spread of radicalism,
inspired by events in France. Patrick Colquhoun made the point
somewhat later when he spoke of `numerous societies of ill-informed
individuals, open to seduction, and heated by political frenzy'. However misconceived, ofcial anxiety was increasingly evident in the early
1790s, leading to the proclamation against seditious meetings in
1792. 52
50
D. Marshall, The English Poor in the 18th Century (London, 1926), 749; for general
antipathy to public provision see Innes, `Mixed Economy of Welfare', 1589, 165; Cowe,
Tracts, 689; B. Wigley, A Box-Club Sermon (Leicester, 1782), 10; PP, 18034, XIII.
51
Cowe, Tracts, 489, 57, 63; Hints for the Institution of Sunday-Schools And Parish Clubs (York,
52
Acland, Plan, 5; Gosden, Friendly Societies, 158.
1789), pp. i ff., 38 ff.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

372

Benefit Clubs

The Friendly Societies Act of 1793 was primarily a response to

these upper-class preoccupations. On 22 April 1793 the Commons
gave leave for George Rose, secretary to the Treasury, William
Wilberforce, the leading moral reformer, and Thomas Stanley, the
Lancashire MP, to bring in a bill for the encouragement and relief
of friendly societies. It quickly received two readings and was referred
to a committee chaired by Rolle, the supporter of legislation in 1787.
After some amendment, the measure enjoyed a swift passage through
the Lords, and received the royal assent on 21 June. Whether the
Queen's Arms society had any direct inuence on the shaping of the
bill is unclear, though another society did claim to have won the
insertion of a clause concerning the arbitration of disputes. 53 It is
conceivable, however, that grass-roots lobbying gave the legislation
impetus through Parliament.
The 1793 Act sought both to promote and to regulate benet societies, but with the balance towards the latter. Though the measure gave
authority for the formation of societies (which was hardly in contention),
its main advantage was to buttress the legal power of club ofcials to
contest lawsuits and recover debts; in addition, members were exempt
from the possibility of removal under the Settlement Acts. To obtain
these benets, clubs had to register their rules at quarter sessions, which
might annul them. In some places it is evident that the magistrates used
their powers to restrict the activities of a society. Certain areas had a
special committee of justices, which read and revised the rules.54
Two years later Rose and Wilberforce returned to the House of
Commons with a new bill to expand the provisions of the 1793 Act,
giving magistrates control over the framing of rules and better management of funds. A vigorous attack was launched by friendly societies
in the Manchester area, which denounced any interference in their
affairs and claimed that further regulation would mean that `the right
of making and governing by their laws [was infringed], the peace and
harmony of their meetings destroyed'. It is not certain what effect this
protest had, but the 1795 Act was limited in its scope, as were
subsequent measures dealing with friendly societies, mostly concerned
with reforming their actuarial basis. 55
53
Commons Journals, XLVIII, 667, 798, 944, 997; L. Namier and J. Brooke, The House of
Commons, 17541790 (London, 1964), iii. 3734 (Rolle); DNB: Rose, George; Rules, Orders and
Regulations of a Friendly Society, p. xiv.
54 Statutes at Large, XVI, 38894; HMC, Various MSS, VI, 213.
55
Commons Journals, L, 449, 518, 562, 612, 638; Statutes at Large, XVII, 187; PP, 1825, IV,
pp. 621.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

373

Nonetheless, there was considerable opposition to the new

statutory controls, as many societies, at least initially, refused or
failed to register under the 1793 Act. At Wolverhampton only one
out of thirty-four clubs submitted its rules, and none of
Shefeld's fty societies conformed. Eden, in 1796, claimed that
half of the clubs he had surveyed had failed to register, but ve
years later he estimated the proportion at a quarter. 56 There seem
to be clear regional variations in the pattern of non-registration.
According to the 18034 Parliamentary returns, the North-West
had the highest rate of registration (87.5 per cent); industrializing
Yorkshire also did fairly well with 57.8 per cent; in contrast, the
Midlands and South-West had less than half conforming. In some
areas, particularly the countryside, the failure to register may have
been due to the trouble and expense of appearing before the clerk
of peace in the county town, but other clubs (particularly trade
ones) declined to register to avoid magisterial control. Nonregistration remained a persistent problem for the authorities
well into the nineteenth century. 57

vii
The 1793 Act failed to provide the effective legal framework which
benet societies so badly needed. On the other hand, registrations
under the Act, together with the 18034 returns of local clubs by the
overseers of the poor, afford large-scale quantitative information on
benet societiesthe most detailed we have for any type of
Georgian association, apart from the Modern freemasons. The
evidence has to be treated with caution: rst, because of the
problem of under-registration, which may particularly affect certain
kinds of society, such as trade-based ones; secondly, because there
are indications that some club rules were revised by magistrates (in
other cases rules may have been self-censored to avoid conict with
the authorities). Yet, in spite of these problems, detailed analysis of
registered rules, together with the 18034 returns, offers valuable
insight into the complex world of lower-class societies in the later
eighteenth century, and allows us to test and qualify some of the
56

F. Eden, Observations on Friendly Societies (London, 1801), 68; see also Cowe, Tracts, 80.
PP, 18034, XIII; registration was ofcially free but one Abaeraeron club spent 10s 4d
on `enrolling the articles' (NLW, Add. MS 616D); Eden, Observations, 5; Jones, `Did Friendly
Societies Matter?', 3301.
57

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

374

Benefit Clubs

general suggestions made earlier about the formation of associations.58 Those readers of a nervous disposition where early modern
statistics are concerned may wish to skip some of the following
detail, but the general conclusions are new and important.
The 18034 data conrm the marked regional variations in the
geography of societies.59 At rst sight, it would seem that the more
dynamic industrializing and urbanizing regions did best, their clubs
supported by prosperous skilled workers. In the North-West (mainly
Lancashire), there was one club to 710 people, and in the West
Midlands one to 635. By contrast, a ratio of one to 1,077 is found
in the South-East (excluding the metropolis), and one to 1,012 in the
South-West, both areas increasingly affected by industrial contraction
and agricultural difculty. There was no simple polarization, however;
East Anglia, also suffering from the loss of staple industries, supported one club for 728 inhabitants, while expansive Yorkshire had
one of the lowest densities (one to 1,315). It is difcult to believe that
these variations just reect administrative differences in the collection
of the data. The relative prosperity of different regions was clearly
inuential, but only part of the explanation. Upper-class support for
societies may have functioned on a regional basis, encouraged in some
areas by agricultural societies. Organizational factors were at work too,
as is evident from club membership rates. In East Anglia, with its
numerous clubs, the average membership size was only thirty-nine;
the South-East had an average of sixty-six. By comparison, in the
North the average membership of a club was eighty-seven, and in
Yorkshire, with its relative low level of societies, the gure was 127.
What about the distribution of societies within regions? As we
know, just over half of all the enumerated clubs were located in towns.
Predictably, the proportion was higher in the more dynamic urban
industrial regions (60.1 per cent in Yorkshire, 66.5 per cent in the
North), club activity there being buoyed up by prosperous artisan
demand. In the less expansive areas, such as East Anglia and the
South-East, the incidence of urban societies was considerably less,
well below half the total. Here the gures were affected by sluggish
demand from townsfolk, and by the role of landowners and rural
worthies in the promotion of village societies.
58
On a number of occasions Middlesex magistrates crossed out club rules paying benet
for members in prison or those suffering re losses. For another recent study of the 18034
returns see M. Gorsky, `The Growth and Distribution of English Friendly Societies in the
59
PP, 18034, XIII.
Early 19th Century', EcHR, 2nd series, 51 (1998), 48951.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

375

As for the distribution of clubs between bigger cities, smaller

towns, and villages, the pattern is fairly straightforward. Most of the
bigger towns (with more than 5,000 inhabitants in 1811) had from
twenty to twenty-ve clubs, and the average was higher still in the
North-West and West Midlands. Smaller towns usually had three or
four clubs, though the gure was somewhat greater in the expanding
regions. Those villages with clubs had (on average) one or two each.
Up to now we have been discussing male and female societies combined, but, concentrating on the minority of female associations (one
in 20 of all English societies), we nd that the largest clusters were
once again in the expanding regions, such as the North-West (8.4 per
cent of the total), and the West Midlands (6.5 per cent). By comparison, meagre female wages and poor job opportunities created a
virtual desert of female clubs in the South-West and East Anglia.
Club membership rates conrm the pattern: clubs in the industrial
areas had roughly twice the membership of those in agricultural areas.
Such detailed evidence substantiates our earlier picture of benet
societies, which highlighted differences between urban, rural, and
female clubs. What is already striking, however, is the complexity of
the regional variations, even between areas of the country experiencing broadly similar economic developments. Regional and local permutations are exposed even more when we look at the way societies
were administered. For this purpose an analysis was made of the rules
of nearly 600 English societies which registered with quarter sessions
in the period 1793 to 1800. Three different areas of the country were
examined: metropolitan London, Suffolk (in the declining textile belt
of East Anglia), and the West Riding (boosted by rapid industrialization). In the case of London, the evidence distinguishes between
trade-specic and open or multi-trade clubs; there is also a small
group of female societies. For Suffolk and the West Riding, where
the samples are smaller, we have compared the organization of clubs
in the bigger towns with those in smaller towns and rural settlements.
Supplementary data are available from a more limited survey of
Warwickshire societies. 60
Everything suggests that club rules were not paper tigers, but had a
marked effect on the way societies functioned in their communities.
60
Friendly society rules registered by local magistrates under the 1793 Act are now in
PRO, FS 1. Rules were examined as follows: Middlesex and City of London (FS 1/40398):
220 male societies (including 42 trade clubs), 42 female, 6 mixed; Suffolk (FS 1/67196): 174
male societies; the West Riding (FS 1/795874): 143 male societies; Warwickshire (FS 1/
74468): 153 male clubs.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

376

Benefit Clubs

Thus, the regional variations in the size of club membership noted

earlier, though affected by economic factors and the incidence of
societies, were almost certainly inuenced by club rules too. In Yorkshire, where average membership was particularly high, few societies
had any rules governing the maximum size; by comparison, in East
Anglia, where numbers were low, over four-fths of Suffolk clubs had
membership ceilings (usually about forty-one). Quite why the ceiling
was so low in East Anglia may relate to fears over the nancial risks
facing large clubs at a time of mounting economic difculty in the
area.
With regard to club organization, attention needs to focus on the
central issues of recruitment, the range of benets and charges, the
administrative structure of societies, social activities, and social regulation. Like most early modern associations, benet clubs had a bias
towards younger members, encouraged by actuarial factors. Over nine
out of ten male societies in our three counties imposed a maximum
age at entrynormally 35 or 40 years. Female societies followed a
broadly similar pattern. Rules concerning a minimum age of entry
were more variable. In the West Riding, nearly three-quarters of all
clubs had such a rule, but the proportion was much lower elsewhere,
as low as 10 per cent among Middlesex trade clubs. Conceivably, the
reason for Yorkshire's concern was rising pressure from well-paid
teenage workers wanting to join clubs.
Returns under the 1793 Act do not provide, directly, any detailed
information to esh out the occupational composition of benet
societies outlined earlier: complete lists of trades are extant for only
a tiny number of clubs. However, there is indirect evidence for the
extent of economic and social diversity from those trades which were
listed as banned from entry. Middlesex box clubs were especially wideranging in their exclusions. Among the general or multi-trade societies,
virtually all prohibited several groups of workers: in all, eighty-four
different trades were denied admission. Medical and actuarial worries,
doubtless, help to explain the general exclusion of soldiers and sailors
and those working in dangerous lead-based trades like painters and
plumbers, but entry was equally closed to poorer occupations such as
chairmen, tailors, chimney-sweeps, footmen, and servants. Tradebased clubs, which had less need for blacklisting, disqualied
twenty-seven trades, including some of those listed for the general
clubs. Women's clubs were less exclusive, perhaps because of problems of recruitment or greater self-denition of membership. One in
ten had rules against women leading a loose life and also against

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

377

street-sellers and criers; a similar proportion legislated against women

with husbands in dangerous trades.
With growing ethnic communities in the late Georgian capital,
Middlesex clubs, both male and female, regularly denied admission
to the Irish, Catholics, and Jews. Of multi-trade societies, 16 per cent
excluded Catholics explicitly and 15 per cent the Irish; the Jews
suffered less discriminationnegatively identied by one in twenty.
But on top of these direct exclusions, the same groups may have
further suffered from the common requirement that members should
be Protestant and British.
In the provinces there is less evidence for occupational discrimination. In Suffolk only soldiers and sailors were disqualied to any
extent, and the same was true in Yorkshire, alongside those engaged
in mining. This general absence of discrimination may be because the
potential market for clubs was more limited than in London, and
provincial clubs could not afford to be so choosy. There may also have
been different attitudes towards social exclusivity. Not only did the
Middlesex male clubs exclude a large number of specic occupations,
but over half of the multi-trade clubs insisted on a minimum weekly
wage (normally about 15s a week) for prospective members. It is likely
that such a measure screened out most labourers and servants, while
allowing in the majority of craftsmen. 61 Trade clubs had less need for
such a requirement, because of the emphasis on a specic craft, but
about 12 per cent legislated in a similar way. Signicantly, artisan
exclusiveness has been detected in South London societies into the
mid-nineteenth century.62 Outside the capital, only the larger Suffolk
towns seem to have imposed a similar provision, usually for a 10s or
12s a week minimum, which, given the low wages in the region, was a
higher real threshold than in London. The absence of any such rule in
the West Riding towns, both large and small, suggests that their clubs
were more open, less segregated than metropolitan ones; this is
conrmed by the large average size of the membership and the lack
of occupational discrimination.
Another effective way of controlling membership was through admission fees and regular subscriptions. Eden claimed that `for a sum which
seldom exceeds 3d a week . . . no member of a box-club has ever been
sensible of any diminution in his domestic comforts from paying it'. 63
61
62
63

For differential wage rates in London: Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation, 170.
G. Crossick, An Artisan Elite in Victorian Society (London, 1978), 183.
Eden, State of the Poor, i. 3567.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

378

Benefit Clubs

This was a crude simplication, however. From the rules we can observe
wide differences across the country between regions, kinds of community, and types of society. In metropolitan London, with its high wage
levels, charges were greatest for the general or multi-trade societies: the
median admission charge was about 5s (two days wages for a craftsman),
followed by monthly charges of about 2s (and extra for drink). Trade
clubs were marginally cheaper, with admission rates the same, but
monthly costs around 1s 9d. London's female clubs levied lower rates,
in line with inferior wages: admission cost about 2s 6d and the
monthly charges about 1s 5d.
Outside the capital, the price of membership was somewhat closer
to Eden's estimate. In Suffolk's small towns and villages admission
cost 2s 6d, plus around 1s 4d for monthly dues; in the bigger centres
rates were a little higher. The lowest rates obtained in the West Riding:
a standard 2s admission fee and 10d for monthly dues in the bigger
towns, and only 8d elsewhere. Even allowing for lower wage rates in
the North, the picture suggests once again relatively open entry there,
the cost of membership in the South making more of a dent in family
budgets than Eden claimed.
Members normally got what they paid for in terms of benets.
Virtually all societies provided the two main sickness and death
benets for members. Another favourite was payment on the death
of a spouse: eight or nine societies out of ten offered this (except in
Suffolk, where fewer than half the clubs in small towns and villages
made such provision). Beyond core benets, however, there was a
good deal of variation. In the West Riding, only three extra types of
benets were on offerfor blindness, imprisonment, and old age, of
which the last alone was popular. In Suffolk's larger towns payments
were limited to the principal three benets, though elsewhere in the
county we nd payments for gout, smallpox, re, and, most common,
imprisonment. By comparison, many London clubs, particularly the
general ones, made available a substantial package of additional benets: 16 per cent supported members in workhouses; over a fth
relieved re losses; 40 per cent helped members in hospital, and over
two-thirds those in prison. Among trade clubs, only 7 per cent relieved
unemployed members, though the gure may have been higher for
unregistered societies. Female clubs in the metropolis also offered a
fairly broad range of benets. While sickness, death, and a partner's
death remained the standard ones, over half the bodies offered help
for lying-in members and those in hospital.
One nal point needs to be claried here: the qualifying period for

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

379

new members before they could receive benet. Varying according to

the nancial state of individual societies (with a long qualifying period
not uncommon), London clubs proved the most liberal, with twelve
months the average; in the West Riding the waiting period was half as
long again. The greater generosity of the metropolitan clubs has to be
seen in the context of the higher charges they levied on members (and
also, perhaps, their greater selectivity over admissions). Another factor,
no doubt, was the high level of competition in the capital, not only
between box clubs, but with other nancial clubs, as well such as
money and clothing clubs.
Up to now we have tended to stress the economic and commercial
reasons behind the kaleidoscope of regional differences. Club organizations reected a wide range of communal and local pressures,
however. By the later eighteenth century most benet societies, in
line with other types of association, saw power increasingly concentrated in the hands of a limited number of ofcials, including a
president (or headman or master), stewards, assistant stewards, treasurer, trustees, committee, and clerk. But considerable regional variations occurred, as clubs sought to reconcile the need for organizational
stability with the participation of the membership according to local
conditions and customs. Suffolk clubs had the fewest ofcials, possibly because of the smaller size of its societies. While just over half of
the clubs in larger towns had presidents, less than one in ten of the
smaller places did. The ofce of steward was widely established, but
few societies had assistant stewards, trustees, or committees; even the
post of clerk was far from universal. In other words, in Suffolk clubs
business was done by between two and four stewards, chosen from
the membership by rotation. The opportunity to exercise ofce was
limited to a small number of senior members.
West Riding clubs enjoyed a more balanced constitution, with
greater openings for ofce-holding. Few clubs had trustees or assistant stewards, but more than two-thirds had presidents or masters,
all had stewards, and about four-fths had committees and clerks;
treasurers were also quite common. The stewards usually served by
rotation, but other ofces were frequently lled by annual election
from the membership.
London's benet societies were endowed with the widest range of
associational ofces. Almost all had stewards, a half had assistants, a
third had committees, a half had trustees, and virtually all employed a
clerk. The only surprise is that less than a fth of male clubs had
presidents or masters, but to offset this, a number of societies had

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

380

Benefit Clubs

extra postsauditors, vice-presidents, deputies, and inspectors. There

was a high participation rate among the membership (higher than in
other regions), because a large majority of ofcers served for only
three months or half a year (compared to the year elsewhere). In
consequence, the majority of members may have held some kind of
ofce over a three-year period; this was facilitated, no doubt, by the
large reservoir of literate, reasonably well-off craftsmen and small
tradesmen in the capital, willing and able to take on the burdens of
ofce (literacy rates in the metropolis were substantially higher than
those in Suffolk or Yorkshire). 64
Female clubs in Middlesex broadly conformed to the pattern of
their masculine counterparts. Stewards and assistants were the most
common ofces, often held for three months. Committees and trustees appear less frequently than in male clubs, but male clerks were
almost universal. Clerks were important gures in all our clubs, both
male and female, and often served for lengthy terms (in one Berkshire
club for forty years), providing a measure of professional support for
the elected ofcers. In London the clerk was paid an annual salary: in
afuent clubs it could reach 15 a year, but the average was nearer 4.
London clerks sometimes served several clubs, turning it into a parttime job: thus, William Hawes of Ivy Lane, Hoxton, was clerk to at
least four East End clubs (male and female) during the 1780s. 65 In the
provinces, clerks were ordinary members who received a nominal
salary (910s a year). For female clubs, the weak legal position of
women meant that the male clerk, along with the landlord, played a
vital role in the business and nancial aspects of club activity; some
clubs went further, with one in seven having male auditorsoften the
husbands of membersto check the books.
Club members assembled at xed times for meetings, to pay dues,
admit new members, discuss the relief work of the ofcers, drink, and
enjoy the pleasures of fellowship. Unlike more fashionable societies,
meetings were held throughout the year, but once again with signicant local differences. In the metropolis the monthly gathering was the
norm; in the West Riding, outside the main towns, only a bare half of
clubs had monthly meetings, the rest had quarterly ones, probably to
accommodate a more scattered membership. In Suffolk, nine out of
ten clubs in the small towns and villages met monthly, but over a third
64

Schoeld, `Dimensions of Illiteracy', 444; also W. B. Stephens, Education, Literacy and

Society, 183070 (Manchester, 1987), 47.
65 Berks. RO, D/ ETy Q5/1/1; BL, Call No.: CT 61/18, 20, 22, 24.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

381

in the bigger towns met every six weeksa distinct local variant. Data
for Warwickshire reveal an equally complicated picture. Whereas most
of the county had monthly meetings, Birmingham preferred fortnightly ones. The precise day of meetings might also differ between
regions.66
Variations of this type were shaped by local communal customs, as
is evident from club anniversaries, the high point of society calendars.
Nationally, Whitsuntide was the most popular time, but there were
many local permutations. In Middlesex June and July were the usual
months, but in Warwickshire anniversaries were mainly held at
Christmas and Whitsun, while in Suffolk they were more common at
Eastertide. In Suffolk three-quarters of all feasts (including Whitsun
ones) were held on liturgical or communal days, whereas in the West
Riding almost half were held on non-festive or secular daysfor
instance, the rst Monday in August. Not that there was a simple
correlation of industrializing areas and secularism: 83 per cent of
Warwickshire's club feasts took place on liturgical or communal
days, the pattern as pronounced in Birmingham as in the countryside.
In London, by contrast, above two-thirds of feasts occurred on nonfestive days, and Whitsun was notably absent from the club calendar.
Feast day celebrations differed widely across the country. The
traditional arrangements were those described at Hull in the 1790s,
where the different benet clubs heard divine service in the morning,
then `paraded the principal streets . . . preceded by a band of music
and colours ying'. A business meeting was followed by an ample
dinner, club songs, and other jollications; and members wore special
dress. Quite often the anniversary absorbed traditional communal
rituals. At their Whitsun feast, one Norfolk village club went on an
annual perambulation of the parish, its members wearing cockades in
their hats. By the close of the century the most elaborate celebrations,
involving a good deal of pomp and circumstance, were probably held
in the smaller towns and villages. 67 In many bigger cities the service
and sermon were starting to disappear in the 1790s: only a fth of the
Birmingham club rules mention religious services. Indeed, there are
indications that the feast itself was on the wane, in part the casualty of
magisterial action against drunkenness on such occasions, but also,

66

For more on meeting times see above, pp. 2378.

Hull Advertiser, 19 July 1794; Articles of the Falkirk Society . . . (Newcastle, 1783), 4;
NNRO, City Records, Case 21, Shelf e, Box 1 (All Trades Society), Box 4 (Union Society).
67

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

382

Benefit Clubs

perhaps, stemming from the new antipathy of the artisan classes

towards excessive drinking.68
Along with anniversary feasts, one of the most important manifestations of associational solidarity and mutuality was the burial of a
member. Attendance was obligatory in virtually all benet societies,
and regulations prescribed the appearance of members at funerals,
their service as pall-bearers, and the drinking afterwards. At
Worcester, for instance, the United Society of Carpenters and Joiners
enjoined those attending the obsequies to appear `clean shaved with a
clean shirt and a pair of clean, white leather gloves'. 69 Members
processed from the clubhouse headed by the landlord carrying a
club, followed by the ofcers with wands and other members in pairs
according to seniority, and so accompanied the corpse to the grave. In
Suffolk, the cofn was often made by a club member.
Whether in regard to routine meetings, feast days, or funerals,
benet society rules articulate an acute concern with the risk of
disorder and conict, affected, no doubt, by the generational tensions
and recurrent nancial disputes discussed earlier. Whilst common to
most societies, these problems seem to have been particularly serious
for benet clubs. To try to deal with them, societies sought to regulate
every detail of the conduct of members at meetings and other events.
Certain regulations were applied nationwidefor example, against
swearing and blasphemy, and against wagers. Otherwise there was a
kaleidoscope of prohibitions. In the West Riding over half of all clubs
had explicit bans on the discussion of religion or politics; by contrast,
only 15 per cent of London's multi-trade clubs sought to legislate on
this: not, one imagines, because such talk was absent, but because it
was endemic. Drunkenness was a major issue for London and Suffolk
societies, but much less so in the West Riding; there, smoking was
widely condemned, though barely mentioned elsewhere. Criticism of
other members was generally banned, but the use of nicknames in a
derogatory manner seems to have been of special concern to Yorkshire
clubs.
Interpreting the meaning of such rules is fraught with difculty.
Does the inclusion of particular regulations in one area signify that the
problem was especially acute, or only that club activistsand magistrates standing behind themwere preoccupied with the issue? Were
the regulations enforced? Did they have an effect on the behaviour of
the membership? In considerable measure, the elaborate regulations
68

See below, pp. 4512.

69

Worcs. RO, City Records, A 23, Box 1.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

383

of many societies may have expressed the ideal arrangements for

associational management, part of the rhetoric of orderly mutuality,
a formal buttress against internal strains. As in other types of society,
rules were probably enforced in a selective fashion, against troublemakers, and to raise income from nes. By the close of the century,
however, such codes were probably becoming more crucial for the
pattern of associational life, the effect not just of upper-class concerns
with moral reform and the culture of sensibility, but also of changing
attitudes among skilled workers and the like. One Gloucestershire
society declared in 1793 that its regulations were intended for the
`preservation of good manners and discouragement of vice'. A few
years later a Nottinghamshire club reinforced its rules with the injunction that `every member shall endeavour to the utmost of his power to
suppress and discourage vice and profaneness'. However, other lowerclass societies may have been slower to change, preferring to maintain
older traditions of sociability as a way of attracting members. 70
The evidence for societies registered under the 1793 Act sheds
important quantitative light on the way they were organized and
reveals the extraordinary regional and local complexity in the incidence and functioning of societies. The landscape of English friendly
societies was determined both by upper-class involvement and by the
uctuating character of demandwhether from urban artisans, rural
craftsmen, or the farming classes. At the local level, the pattern of
club activity was further shaped and constrained by the extent of
alternative forms of sociability and relief, and by local perceptions
and rhythms of community identity. Profound differences in the
organization of societies can be recognized between metropolitan
Middlesex, more agrarian Suffolk, and the industrializing West Riding.
Metropolitan box clubs appear the most numerous, most expensive,
and most selective, but also the most democratic and open internally;
those in Suffolk were fewer, cheaper to join, less selective, but also
more oligarchic and traditional; while the West Riding clubs were less
numerous but bigger, more accessible than those in London, and less
oligarchic and traditional than those in East Anglia. In these and other
ways our evidence spotlights the vital signicance of cultural and
social localism in Hanoverian England.
On top of regional contrasts, signicant variations existed between
the bigger towns and the smaller centres. At the same time, differences between small town and village societies appear less notable.
70

Articles of the Friendly Society at Upton-upon-Severn, 7; Notts. RO, DD W 54/7, p. 12.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

384

Benefit Clubs

Small town clubs may have been somewhat more open, perhaps, with
shorter periods for holding ofce, but in most other respects only
minor differences appear, and this account has tended to bracket small
towns and villages together. One might argue that such broad similarities reected the rural character of small market towns at this time,
but it is much more likely that agricultural clubs reected the increasingly dominant urban pattern mediated to the countryside via small
towns. 71 Landowners and village leaders sought to deal with the
problems of rural poverty by promoting the strategies and associational arrangements of the urban world. In sum, rural benet societies
conrm rather than question our picture of the essentially urban
nature of British associations in the early modern period.
A nal, evidential point is suggested by the complex regional and
local variations evident from the club rules: that the impact of magisterial controls after the 1793 Act should not be exaggerated. Though
some JPs did make an attempt to regulate the activities of societies,
the wealth of local differences, even varying within counties, suggests
that many clubs maintained a good deal of autonomy. In other words,
to return to an issue raised at the start of this chapter, the material
generated by the 1793 legislation may be less skewed than one might
suspect. The picture presented is not the whole story of English
lower-class sociability by any means, but we do obtain important,
broadly reliable, and often quantiable information about one of the
most widespread types of voluntary association in the early modern
period.

viii
As noted earlier, friendly societies were also increasingly numerous in
Scotland by the late eighteenth century. Records are less complete for
them, though more early documentation is extant than for English
societies. A number of differences appear between clubs north and
south of the border. In Scotland we nd a different array of ofcers
preses (or president), box-masters, key-masters and managers. The
annual feast day appears less signicant, and lists of excluded occupations, so common in English clubs, are largely absent. In other
respects, though, there are organizational similarities: the array of
benets was broadly the same, together with the usual regulations
71
Cf. P. Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1995), 20, 11012,
122 ff.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

385

on disorderly behaviour. Control seems to have been very much in the

hands of the ofcers, with committees having a decisive voice. The
apparently higher proportion of trade clubs was deceptive, since these
quite often admitted members from other trades. However, there
were doubtless local and regional variations, and further research on
Scottish benet societies is patently necessary. 72
Outside mainland Britain, benet societies did not travel well. Box
clubs do not surface in any number in Ireland, apart from Dublin. To
some extent, this may be because of the smaller size of the Irish
artisan class and its inferior economic status, increasingly affected by
the decline of local industries in the later eighteenth century; small
farmers were often doing even worse. The role of alternative centres
of mutual support and socializing associated with the Catholic Church
may also be a determinant. 73 However, if the Irish absence is explicable, the lack of trade and benet societies in the empire, particularly
North America, is more surprising. The relative prosperity of
American farmers, the growing size of the artisan class in the main
towns, the generally higher living standards compared to Britain, are
well documented. Even so, apart from clusters of artisan trade clubs in
New York, organized after 1785 into the General Society of Mechanics
and Tradesmen, benet clubs in general were limited in number and
late to develop. One reason may be the growing array of rival associations, though we should also take note of the power of local cultural
autonomy in the English-speaking world of the eighteenth century. 74
In Britain, the structural problems of friendly societies persisted
into the Victorian era. The nancial vulnerability of local box clubs,
due to actuarial problems, led to a spate of closures in the 1830s, and
opened the door to the rapid growth of masonic-style afliated orders,
like the Odd Fellows, the Foresters, Druids, and Shepherds, which
established new branches and took over old local clubs. This federated
system, with its central funds and arrangements for the transfer of
benets for migrant members, assured the necessary nancial and
organizational stability for collective self-help. Though some benet
72

Based on examination of pre-1800 society rules in SRO(WRH), FS 1 series; also SRO

73
Buckley, `On the Club', 44 ff.
(GRH), GD 1.
74
H. B. Rock, Artisans of the New Republic (New York, 1979), 1289; see also: S. Wilentz,
Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 17881850 (Oxford,
1984), 389; The Charter, Constitutions and Bye-laws of the Newport Association of Mechanics . . .
(Newport, RI, 1792), 9; M. Ferrari, `Artisans of the South: A Comparative Study of Norfolk,
Charleston and Alexandria, 17631800' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, William and Mary College,
1992), 43 and passim.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

386

Benefit Clubs

clubs survived in Victorian Britain, their position was overshadowed

by the new orders.75
This is not to underplay the contribution of benet clubs in
Augustan society. For many small masters, shopkeepers, and skilled
workers in towns they provided one of the main institutions of public
sociability and collective support. Their spread to the countryside,
even if under the auspices of landowners, introduced smallholders,
petty craftsmen and some labourers to more urbanized forms of
leisure and social solidarity. For lower-class women they provided
one of the few avenues for social recognition, outside the home
and the street. However, they were never part of a class movement,
certainly not a working-class movement, and they were generally
hostile to poorer, unskilled groups, such as servants, labourers, and
the Irish. A substantial number of clubs, especially in the countryside,
were enmeshed in traditional structures of upper-class patronage and
clientage. At the same time, they did provide an opportunity for the
respectable lower orders, particularly in towns, to gain experience of
ofce-holding and nancial administration, and to engage in convivial
discussion about business, politics and local events. As such, they
played an important part in the growth of social and political discourse
among British people.

ix
In our case studies of regional and ethnic societies (Chapter 8), freemasonry (Chapter 9), and now benet societies, we have attempted to
shed light on the distinctive institutional arrangements of major types
of British voluntary associationfrom the rather primitive and
ultimately unsuccessful county feast societies, to the increasingly
centralized masonic movement, and so to the more basic, but still
complex, structures of artisan clubs. Other issues have also been
claried. The important evidence for the freemasons conrmed
that, while there was broad streaming of societies according to social
groups, a considerable measure of social mixing occurred on the
margins, with only limited social or class exclusivity. Among the urban
benet societies, we noted some degree of distancing of artisan and
respectable lower-class groups from the poorer orders, but greater
links with the middling and afuent classes. Moreover, as we have
75
Gosden, Friendly Societies, 101 ff.; Jones, `Did Friendly Societies Matter?', 327 ff.; Neave,
Mutual Aid, ch. 2 ff.; see below, p. 473.

5.11.99 16:28 10 Chapter 0394

Benefit Clubs

387

seen time and again, social patterning often varied according to

locality. In this chapter, in particular, we have identied a fundamental
and powerful dimension of British associations in the late seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries: their contribution to the distinctive economic, social, and cultural life of local communities and regions.
Finally, our case studies have shed further light on the export of
British associations to the colonial world. Whereas regional societies
never developed abroad, ethnic societies made the transition to North
America and ourished after the American Revolution. Freemasonry
was even more global in its impact, spreading to most parts of the
British world, and again responding to the new political situation
created by American independence. In contrast, benet clubs rarely
made much of an impact outside Britain. This would suggest that the
process of translation was partial and selective, that local conditions in
the colonies were more important in the long run than the cultural
momentum of the metropolis or the mother country. To understand
the process more fully, we need now to examine overseas associations
and their context as a whole.

8.11.99 08:31 11 Chapter 0394

11

Overseas

From the end of the seventeenth century clubs and societies

advanced across the English-speaking world, making their presence
felt not just in the principal plantations of America and the Indies,
but in remote islands and tiny British enclaves around the globe. The
accelerating pace of change was identied in Figure 4.2 in Chapter 4.
As well as the numerous associations of the old and new empire, we
nd a small number in British expatriate communities in continental
Europe. Under George III the club was the greater British ruling
class at social prayer. By looking at the general dynamics, processes,
and problems of diffusion, and focusing on the special complexities
of the overseas experience, we can shed further light, in turn, on the
core features and functions of British voluntary associations in the
early modern period.
It is already obvious from previous chapters that, for all the
striking exportability of the institution, the overseas pattern of
activity did not simply replicate that in mainland Britain. Though
many types of association travelled well to the colonies, not all of
them survived the passage. Moreover, several types of society originated in the colonies, such as the re companies or clubs, which
spread down the East Coast of North America and even reached the
West Indies. Equally striking, the distribution of clubs and societies
in the colonial world was very uneven. In many parts they were
limited to port cities and administrative towns. Even when they
started to be dispersed more widely through the urban system, as
in the American colonies, one nds signicant regional variations,
and this was coupled with important changes over time. In North
America societies, seem to have been restricted in number and space
up to the mid-eighteenth century, but there was a major take-off
before the Revolution, which was renewed with the establishment of
the new republic. By 1800 the United States, like Britain, was an
increasingly mature society in terms of voluntary associations, unlike
the situation in the remaining empire.

8.11.99 08:31 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

389

i
In spite of a sprinkling of North American societies in the late seventeenth centuryfor instance, at Boston and Jamestownthe dispersed
population, paucity of towns, and modest prosperity of local elites,
meant that associations, like other forms of new-style public sociability,
were of minor importance. As we know from our earlier discussion of
ethnic societies and freemasonry, the rst breakthrough in the American
colonies came during the early Georgian era. Boston, the largest colonial
city in 1740, with about 17,000 inhabitants, extensive import and export
trades, and good communications with England, became a prominent
centre of association activity. As well as early religious societies, masonic
lodges, and ethnic societies, the city acquired a medical society, seven re
companies (171760), a marine society (chartered in 1754), and a society
for encouraging industry.1 Across the river at Cambridge, Harvard
College lodged a noisy crowd of religious, social, learned, and music
clubs.2 Overall, in early-eighteenth-century Boston about 20 per cent of
adult males may have belonged to an association, and at this time it was
regarded as the social metropolis of the mainland colonies. Writing to
William Douglass in about 1728, Cadwallader Colden proposed a society
for advancing knowledge under Boston's leadership, for `the greatest
number of proper persons are like to be found in your colony', in and
near that city. In his tour of the East Coast in 1744 Alexander Hamilton
compared Boston to Glasgow and praised the `abundance of men of
learning and parts, so that one is at no loss for agreeable conversation'.
During his visit he attended meetings of the Scots club and medical
society `where we drank punch, smoked tobacco and talked of sundry
physical matters'.3
1
G. B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American
Revolution (abridged edn., London, 1986), 33; see above, p. 66; D. Lipson, Freemasonry in
Federalist Connecticut (Princeton, NJ, 1977), 46, 489; Boston Weekly Newsletter, 513 Nov. 1741;
also The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Vol. II, New York Historical Soc. Collections,
51 (1918), 146; R. D. Brown, `The Emergence of Voluntary Associations in Massachusetts,
17601830' Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 2 (1973), 71; N. Spooner, Gleanings from the
Records of the Boston Marine Society . . . 1742 to 1842 (Boston, 1879); Boston Gazette, 16 Aug. 1756,
7 Feb. 1757, 1 Aug. 1757.
2
Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications, 24 (19202), 1568; `The Philomusarian Club,
Harvard College, 1728', Colonial Society of Massachusetts Publications, 18 (191516), 802;
C. Warren, Jacobin and Junto or Early American Politics as viewed in the Diary of Dr Nathaniel Ames
(Cambridge, Mass., 1931), 1718; also D. Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British
America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), 21118.
3
Brown, `Voluntary Associations', 65; The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Vol. I,
New York Historical Soc. Collections, 50 (1917), 2713; C. Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's
Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr Alexander Hamilton, 1744 (London, n.d.), 116, 144, 146.

8.11.99 08:31 11 Chapter 0394

390

Overseas

By mid-century, however, Boston had growing urban and commercial competitors. New York's population doubled from about 4,500 in
1690 to 9,500 a half-century later; that of Philadelphia rose sixfold over
the same period (to 13,000). Both these middle-colony ports had large,
fertile hinterlands, whose agricultural products became important for
the West Indian and South European trades, and earned large prots
to pay for imported wares. Both ports also suffered less seriously from
colonial warfare in the rst part of the century, and continued to
expand after 1740, at a time when Boston encountered growing setbacks. 4 New York already had several ethnic clubs by Anne's reign,
and the following decades saw the arrival of masonic lodges and social
clubs. In the 1740s Alexander Hamilton dined at the so-called
Hungarian Club, where the chief justice, city recorder, and other
worthies made a vocation of hard drinking. In the following decade
Andrew Burnaby's claim that `everyone seems zealous to promote
learning' was vindicated by the establishment of the New York Library
Society, along with King's College. The city also boasted `weekly
evening clubs' for discussion and self-improvement. 5
At this time, most visitors found New York less civilized than
Philadelphia, which `is in a very ourishing state . . . the streets are
crowded with people and the river with vessels'. Presiding over the
city's sociable development was the printer Benjamin Franklin, who
introduced to Philadelphia a variety of associations: social and debating clubs like the Junto, the Union Fire Company (on the Boston
model), the Philosophical Society (1743), the Library Company (1731,
chartered in 1742), and the masonic grand lodge, in which Franklin
was a leading light. 6 Associations soon became a major ingredient in
the city's social and cultural life. Six more re companies were set up
by the 1750s, together with three library companies, several masonic
lodges (both Ancient and Modern), an important clutch of ethnic
societies, and several shing companies, seconded by the usual drinking and social clubs, such as the Governor's Club or the club of
4
Nash, Urban Crucible, 1, 33, 7980, and passim; C. Bridenbaugh and J. Bridenbaugh, Rebels
and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin (New York, 1962), 3.
5
See above, p. 302; New York Gazette, 1622 Jan. 1738/9; E. Singleton, Social New York
under the Georges, 17141776 (New York, 1902), 35, 37; Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's Progress,
88; T. Bender, New York Intellect (New York, 1987), 11, 14, 1617.
6
Nash, Urban Crucible, 201; A. Burnaby, Travels through the Middle Settlements in NorthAmerica in the years 1759 and 1760 (Ithaca, NY, 1960), 55; D. R. Gilbert, `Patterns of Organisation and Membership in Colonial Philadelphia Club Life, 17251755' (unpublished Ph.D.
thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1952), 2937, 49, 902, 121, 135, 1423.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

391

Twenty Young Fellows. The well-connected young merchant John

Smith was a regular attender at a weekly club at Widow Evans's, as
well as going to meetings of a re company and a library company; in
1748 he joined Hannah Logan, his future wife, on a trip with the
Schuylkill Fishing Company and `had the pleasantest day in shing
that I ever employed that way before'. 7
Charleston was a good deal smaller than its northern counterparts,
with fewer than 7,000 inhabitants by 1740 (perhaps half white), but it
was another vigorous centre of American sociability. The town's
economy was invigorated, not only by important commerce with
the Caribbean and Britain, but also by its position as a residential
town for wealthy planters desperate to escape the swamps of Carolina's
`low country', and by its role as the principal governmental centre in
the southern colonies. During the 1750s Charleston's summer season
sustained a glittering programme of plays, cock-ghts, concerts, balls,
assemblies, scientic lectures, and race meetings, as well as a plenitude
of society gatherings. 8 Along with a contingent of ethnic societies,
there were charitable bodies like the South Carolina Society (1737) and
the Winyah Indigo Society (1740), a militia society (1732), freemasons
(1736) and Ubiquarians (1741), a hunting club (1757), elite benet
societies (from 1737), a library society (1748), medical circle (1755),
religious society (1755), and a medley of dining and social clubs such
as the Brooms, Segoon-Pop, and Laughing and Smoking Clubs. Under
George II Charleston's associational world compared favourably to
that of most English provincial towns of similar size. 9
Nonetheless, outside these four main centres, clubs and societies
were much thinner on the ground. In Georgia, Savannah, with about
400 houses, supported a couple of ethnic societies, social clubs, a
7
Gilbert, `Philadelphia Club Life', 4586, 10428, 14151, 1769; J. W. Jordan, `The
Fellowship Fire Company of Philadelphia . . .', Pennsylvania Magazine, 27 (1903), 47280;
Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's Progress, 26; A. C. Myers (ed.), Hannah Logan's Courtship
(Philadelphia, 1904), 80, 86, 93, 97, 2234; also Shields, Civil Tongues, 18998.
8
S. K. Schultz, `The Growth of Urban America in War and Peace, 17401810', in W. M.
Fowler and W. Coyle (eds.), The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives (Boston, 1979), 130;
J. M. Price, `Economic Function and the Growth of American Port Towns in the 18th
century', Perspectives in American History, os, 8 (1974), 1613; P. Morgan, `Black Life in 18thCentury Charleston', ibid., ns, 1 (1984), 188; F. P. Bowes, The Culture of Early Charleston
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1942), 8; H. Cohen, The South Carolina Gazette, 17321775 (Columbia, SC,
1953), 712, 7591, 1001; also M. L. Webber, `Extracts From the Journal of Mrs Ann
Manigault, 17541781', South Carolina Historical Magazine, 20 (1919), 5961, 2069.
9
See above, p. 302; Cohen, South Carolina Gazette, 1718, 202; South Carolina Gazette, 512
June, 12 June (Supplement), 1926 June 1755 ; E. H. Jervey, `Items from a South Carolina
Almanac', South Carolina Historical Magazine, 32 (1931), 747.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

392

Overseas

masonic lodge, and the improving Georgia Society.10 In South

Carolina several of the small inland communities had one or two
clubs a piece,11 while further north, through the southern Chesapeake,
clusters of associations were equally small and sporadic. Virginia's
provincial capital, Williamsburg, a chartered town of perhaps 1,500
residents, had some informal drinking clubs;12 Hanover county may
have boasted a short-lived Scottish organization; and the small ports
of Norfolk and Yorktown had their masonic lodges by the time of
George II's death. 13 But there was not much else in the area before
1760.
In Maryland, associational life was healthier. The capital, Annapolis,
possessed a population about the same size as Williamsburg's, but the
urban economy was more developed, as the town's administrative and
residential functions were buttressed by its role in the colony's
buoyant import and export trades. In consequence, it developed a
lively array of sociable activities encompassing race-meetings,
concerts, plays, and societies. 14 Hamilton's Tuesday Club was the
most important, elaborate, and certainly best documented association
in the town, but others included early social clubs, masonic lodges,
and a jockey club.15 Nor was this all. On the Western Shore, according
to the Maryland Gazette in 1745, `there are clubs in almost every county,
well regulated and sorted like birds of a feather, especially that ancient
one of South River'. Minutes of the South River Club survive from
1742, and reveal monthly meetings given over to hard drinking and
dining. Other social clubs gathered at Charlestown (on the Eastern

10
F. D. Lee and J. L. Agnew, Historical Record of the City of Savannah (Savannah, 1869), 32;
H. E. Davis, The Fledgling Province: Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 173376 (Chapel
Hill, NC, 1976), 16973; H. Estill, The Old Lodge: Freemasonry in Georgia (Savannah, Ga.,
1885), 910.
11
South Carolina Gazette, 229 May 1755; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760); E.
McCrady, The History of South Carolina under the Royal Government, 17191776 (New York, 1969),
490.
12
C. Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire: The Political Role of 18th-Century Williamsburg (Williamsburg, 1950); P. Gibbs, `Taverns in Tidewater Virginia, 17001774' (unpublished MA thesis,
William and Mary College, 1968), 989, 102.
13
See above, p. 302; A List of Regular Lodges (London, 1760).
14
E. C. Papenfuse, In Pursuit of Prot (London, 1975), chs. 13; Maryland Gazette, 18 June,
9 July, 12 Oct. 1752, and passim.
15
R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club by Dr. Alexander
Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990); E. Breslaw (ed.), Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis,
174556 (Urbana, Ill., 1988). Maryland Gazette, 24 March 1746/7, 3 Jan. 1749/50; Micklus (ed.),
Tuesday Club, i. 812; J. T. Scharf, History of Maryland . . . (Hatboro, Penn., 1967), ii. 73.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

393

Shore), and at Chestertown, and were joined by a music society in

Talbot County.16
For the middle colonies the most striking development was the
advent of library companies (on the Philadelphia model), at Darby,
Germantown, Hatboro, Lancaster, and elsewhere in Pennsylvania.
Similar bodies emerged in New Jersey, whilst Rye, north of New
York, welcomed a so-called hell-re club, entitled Bold Robin Hood's
Men, probably a jolly boozing society. 17
In New England, the Massachusetts port of Salem (4,000 inhabitants) boasted several societies before 1760, including three re
companies, the charitable Civil Society Club, a masonic lodge, and a
literary club; but elsewhere the incidence was low. According to a
recent estimate, only about a dozen non-religious societies were
established in Massachusetts (outside Boston) up to the 1750s. 18
Thus, the initial onset of associations in the American colonies was
relatively modest in scale, largely concentrated in the biggest towns.

ii
This is, perhaps, surprising. Despite an increase of social stratication
and poverty in the early eighteenth century, the living standard of most
colonists was probably higher than that of their English counterparts,
marked by greater disposable income. Moreover, demand for associational activity ought to have been boosted by the sharp demographic
increase during the period: New England's population trebled between
1690 and 1740, and that of New York colony and Pennsylvania rose
ve and seven times respectively. Many of these new people, particularly in the middle and southern colonies, continued to be immigrants,
16
Maryland Gazette, 24 Mar. 1746/7; Maryland Historical Soc., MS 771; Micklus (ed.),
Tuesday Club, iii. 223; E. G. Breslaw, `An Early Maryland Musical Society', Maryland Historical
Magazine, 67 (1972), 4367.
17
E. V. Lamberton, `Colonial Libraries of Pennsylvania', Pennsylvania Magazine, 42 (1918),
21934; see also S. G. Wolf, Urban Village: Population, Community and Family Structure in
Germantown, Pennsylvania, 16831800 (Princeton, NJ, 1976), 1989; F. B. Tolles, `A Literary
Quaker: John Smith of Burlington and Philadelphia', Pennsylvania Magazine, 65 (1941), 304;
Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Connecticut Archives, Private Controversies, series 2,
items 12447 (I owe this reference to Dr C. H. Dayton).
18
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 130; W. D. Dennis, `The Fire Clubs of Salem',
Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 39 (1903), 47; `Relief Subscription', ibid., 31 (1894),
656; ibid. 58 (1922), 291; H. L. Burstyn, `The Salem Philosophical Library', ibid., 96 (1960),
173; R. D. Brown, `The Emergence of Urban Society in Rural Massachussetts 17601820',
Journal of American History, 61 (19745), 401.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

394

Overseas

probably over a quarter of a million from Europe between 1700 and the
Revolution. Along with this inux, there was a growing volume of
internal movement among the native-born, as young people sought
new opportunities away from the more settled coastal regions.
Migrants were important clients of clubs and societies, and in the
case of English migrants (and to a lesser extent the Irish and Scots)
they quite often had prior experience of associational activity. 19
The failure of this growing, relatively prosperous, frequently mobile
population to generate strong demand for voluntary associations was
due, in part at least, to low levels of urbanization. The urban growth
rate seems to have stagnated in the early eighteenth century, at around
5 per cent, under a quarter of the English rate. Given the general
demographic expansion, such a low rate disguised the absolute growth
of urban populations, but outside the principal urban centres, largely
ports, the great majority of towns remained very small. This was
particularly true in Virginia, where as late as 1760 half of the authorized towns had only a handful of houses and `the other half are little
better than inconsiderable villages'. Even in New England, only a
small number of inland towns had more than 1,000 or 2,000 people.
Elsewhere, through great tracts of newly settled territory urban
centres barely existed at all. 20
Low levels of urbanization meant that the local civic elites, vital
players in the growth of public sociability, were often tiny. Only the
largest centres boasted signicant contingents of merchants, traders,
professional men, ofcials, and gentlefolk; still, Charleston's local elite
in the 1740s numbered just a couple of hundred townsmen, albeit
reinforced by visiting planters. Limited urban growth also constrained
the development of the newspaper press, another vital force for the
growth of public sociability. While the earliest colonial newspaper
appeared (briey) at Boston in 1690, the rst sustained publication
was the Boston News-letter after 1704; Philadelphia had to wait until 1719,
New York 1725, Annapolis 1727, Charleston 1732, and Williamsburg
19
C. Carson et al. (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the 18th Century
(Charlottesville, Va., 1994), chs. 13; C. Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England
and America (Oxford, 1990), ch. 3; Nash, Urban Crucible, 33; H. V. Bowen, Elites, Enterprise,
and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 16881775 (London, 1996), p. 157; B. Bailyn,
Voyagers to the West (New York, 1986), 16, 19, 26.
20
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 133; Burnaby, Travels, 14; for the urban backwardness of the South generally: H. Wellenreuther, `Urbanisation in the Colonial South: A
Critique', WMQ, 3rd series, 31 (1974), 65768; E. M. Cook, `Local Leadership and the
Typology of New England Towns, 17001785', Political Science Quarterly, 86 (1971), 58698.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

395

1736. As with the English provincial press, the rst colonial papers
were primitive in format, with little local copy, and the initial promotion of news and ideas about clubs and societies had to rely on the
growing inux of metropolitan newspapers. 21
Sluggish urbanization slowed the evolution of new-style space for
public socializing. In the big towns, victualling houses multiplied from
the later Stuart era: Boston, for instance had forty-ve licensed
premises in 1681, 134 by 1722, and over 160 by the 1750s. Like their
English colleagues, landlords became more respectable and their
premises larger and more fashionably furnished, with a growing hierarchy of establishments. The Crown coffee-house at Boston had
thirteen rooms, decorated with prints and drawings, while its counterpart at Philadelphia was the Indian King tavern, which, according to
the Virginian Daniel Fisher, had `one of the greatest business in its
way in the whole city, yet everything is transacted with the utmost
regularity and decorum'. It was the prime venue for a multitude of
sociable activities, not least society meetings. 22 Annapolis's larger
premises are well documented by probate inventories, which reveal
houses with up to nine beds apiece, several dozen chairs, pewter and
china, pictures and maps; billiard tables were also increasingly
common.23
Outside these larger centres, drinking premises were fewer and
much more basic. In Massachusetts, a law of 1710 restricting taverns
to one per county was increasingly ignored and numbers rose, as
poorer people set up premises to make ends meet. However, ofcial
and clerical opposition slowed the development of drinking houses,
and it was not until the mid-century that they emerged as `neighbourhood centres of socializing and communication'. Complaints about
the standard of country premises were constant. In New Hampshire,
21
Bowes, Culture, 8; C. Clark, `The Newspapers of Provincial America', American Antiquarian Soc. Proceedings, 100 (1991), 36789; R. P. Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America
(London, 1970), 5056.
22
D. W. Conroy, In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1995), 545, 80, 87, 89, 923, 109, 142; C. R. Howard, `Extracts from the
Diary of Daniel Fisher, 1755', Pennsylvania Magazine, 17 (1893), 2634; for a general discussion
of Philadelphia's drinking establishments see P. Thompson, `A Social History of Philadelphia's
Taverns' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1989).
23
Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis, Anne Arundel County Inventories, INV. 39, p.
175; INV. 9, p. 173; INV. 106, p. 294; INV. EVI, pp. 8892; see also N. T. Baker, `Some Notes
on Taverns in Annapolis, Maryland, during the Colonial Period' (typescript, Historic
Annapolis, 1981). I am grateful to Lois Carr and Nancy Baker for their help with the
Annapolis records.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

396

Overseas

James Birket found the taverns `very indifferent and little frequented
by any but strangers'. In some parts of Virginia, taverns might
comprise only a small hut, the business run as a secondary job by a
craftsman or small farmer. As a result, in the early eighteenth century
social meetings outside the largest towns foregathered in churches,
courthouses, and private houses; clubs increasingly used their own
dedicated premises, earlier than in England. 24
Regional cultural differences may also have had an effect in constraining the growth of certain forms of new-style public sociability,
especially voluntary associations. In New Hampshire, Robert Hale
observed that `their manner of living here is very different from
many other places. The gentlemen treat at their own houses and
seldom go to the tavern'. The Virginians were notorious for their
appetite for traditional social activities such as wrestling and stghting, where `every diabolical stratagem is used including bruising,
kicking, scratching, pinching, biting, butting . . . gouging, cursing,
dismembering . . .', watched by large crowds. 25 In Massachusetts,
public socializing was affected by old-style Puritan Sabbatarian regulations, though the effectiveness of these was diminishing by the 1740s.
Contrasts in social style were perceived even between the principal
towns. For Alexander Hamilton, Philadelphia was more polite than
New York, but Boston `excelled both in politeness and urbanity'. Yet
the regionalism should not be exaggerated. After completing his tour
of the East Coast, Hamilton acknowledged that there was `but little
difference in the manners' of people in the various colonies. 26
One of the main factors limiting the development of voluntary
associations in early colonial America was the multiplicity of alternative forms of sociable activity. Unsurprisingly, in a country where
nineteen out of twenty people lived outside signicant urban settlements, many of them long distances away, traditional rural entertainments continued to predominate, rather as they had in Tudor and
24

Conroy, In Public Houses, 80, 147, 192, 202, 226; J. Birket, Some Cursory Remarks Made by
John Birket . . . 17501 (New Haven, 1916), 910; Gibbs, `Taverns', 412; L. H. Buttereld et
al. (eds.), Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass.,1961), i. 214.
25
`Journal of a Voyage to Nova Scotia in 1731 . . .', Historical Collections of the Essex
Institute, 42 (1906), 219; R. Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 17401790 (Chapel Hill, NC,
1982), 95, 98; H. D. Farish (ed.), Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 17734 (Williamsburg, Va, 1945), 2401.
26
`Bennett's History of New England', Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Soc., lst
series, 5 (18602), 125; J. M. Barriskill, `The Newburyport Theatre in the 18th Century',
Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 94 (1955), 21112; Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's
Progress, 193, 199.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

397

Stuart England. Of the outdoor sports, hunting and shing were the
most popular. Fishing could be both a private venture and a neighbourhood event. Matthew Patten in New Hampshire enjoyed river
shing with friends and neighbours at a shing place they had made,
going several times a month in the summertime. John Adams and
John Rowe of Boston were invited to a shing party at a pond near
Salem, where `half a dozen as clever fellows as ever were born, are to
dine . . . under the shadey trees . . . upon sh and bacon and peas etc.'
In a country still teeming with wildlife, hunting too had a powerful
neighbourly appeal. Joshua Hempstead frequently went wolf-hunting
in the Connecticut swamps, accompanied by gangs of friends and
neighbours, on occasions several dozen, boys and all. 27 During the
summer months barbecues were popular in town and countryside,
some boozy events, others more polite. On the East River near New
York were located several houses where `it is common to have turtle
feasts . . . once or twice in a week', and where thirty or forty gentlemen meet and ladies dine together, drink tea in the afternoon [and]
sh', returning to town in the balmy evening. Winter in the middle and
northern colonies saw sleighing or sledging parties of varying degrees
of sociability. Alexander Mackraby wrote from Philadelphia how in the
snow `seven sleighs with two ladies and two men in each, preceded by
ddlers on horse-back, set out together . . . to a public house a few
miles from town, where we danced, sung and romped and ate and
drank, and kicked away care from morning till night'. 28
House- and barn-raisings, house-warmings, vendues or local sales,
wrestling and ploughing matches, football games, harvest feasts, and
spinning matches and frolics, likewise, promoted communal sociability.
John Ballatine, a New England minister, had a barn built in 1761 and
`made a supper for those who were so kind as to help me'; up to 200
friends and neighbours might turn up at such events. In Pennsylvania,
shortly before going off to join the continental army, Reading Beatty
went to several harvest frolics with heavy drinking and fun and
27
For a recent survey of sociable activity in New England see B. C. Daniels, Puritans at
Play (London, 1995). The Diary of Matthew Patten of Bedford, N.H. (Concord, NH, 1903 ), 110,
11113, 153 ; A. R. Cunningham (ed.), Letters and Diary of John Rowe . . . (Boston, Mass.,
1903), 51; Diary of Joshua Hempstead of New London, Connecticut (New London, Conn., 1901), 29,
60.
28
Burnaby, Travels, 801; J. W. Jordan, `Journal of James Kenny, 17611763', Pennsylvania
Magazine, 37 (1913), 17; see also Bridenbaugh (ed.), Gentleman's Progress, 89; `Philadelphia
Society Before the Revolution', Pennsylvania Magazine, 11 (18878), 286; W. Willis (ed.),
Journals of the Rev. Thomas Smith and the Rev. Samuel Deane (Portland, Maine, 1849), 195, 217.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

398

Overseas

games.29 At Salem on the eve of the Revolution, a favourite diversion

for young women was the spinning bee lasting for a day or more, and
concluding with a sermon. In Maine over a hundred women, married
and unmarried, attended a spinning day, followed by a choir singing in
the evening. Quilting frolics were organized on a similar basis, sometimes with men taking part.30
Especially in the northern colonies, the church remained at the
heart of much traditional socializing, with an almost endless sequence
of services, fasts, thanksgivings, lectures, church association meetings,
funerals, and weddings. Secular activity was a vital feature of church
meetings, local people talking business and community news, while
church associations, bringing together clergy and others from the area,
might involve a good deal of feasting, jollity, and inebriation. Ordinations, too, could be convivial neighbourly occasions, as of course were
weddings. At one marriage in Connecticut in 1754 the party, including
clergy and local worthies, a hundred on horse and others on foot, were
`all day entertained liberally with plum cake and cheese and wine and
other strong drink'. 31
Church events were not the only opportunities for ofcial socializing. Elections, court days, musters, and (in New England particularly)
town meetings were important occasions for local interaction, involving dining, drinking, and public discourse. More than in Britain, the
Commencement or graduation celebrations at Yale and Harvard
became major social events in the northern colonies, which were
attended by parents and kinsfolk of the graduands, alumni, and
clergy. 32
29
AAS, John Ballatine Diary (transcript, unfoliated), 3 Mar., 1 Apr. 1761, 23 Mar. 1764;
J. M. Beatty, `Letters of the Four Beatty Brothers of the Continental Army', Pennsylvania
Magazine, 44 (1920), 200; Diary of Samuel Sewall, Vol. III, Massachusetts Historical Soc.
Collections, 47 (1882), 263; M. Kammen, Colonial New YorkA History (New York, 1975),
1545; AAS, S. Peabody Diary 1767 (unfoliated), 20 Aug.; also Daniels, Puritans, 946.
30
G. L. Streeter, `Salem before the Revolution', Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 32
(1896), 523; Willis (ed.), Journals, p. 362; AAS, S. Peabody Diary 1767, 22 June, 24 Nov.
31
Cf. AAS, Ballatine Diary (unfoliated); D. D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgement:
Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989), 1516; also K. V. Hansen, A
Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England (London, 1994), ch. 6; AAS,
S. Peabody Diary 1784 (unfoliated), 3 June; Willis (ed.), Journals, 201, 203; Hempstead Diary,
624; also AAS, S. Peabody Diary 1767, 5 Oct.
32
Hempstead Diary, 116, 326; S. P. Fowler, `Diary of Rev. Joseph Green of Salem Village',
Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 10(1) (1869), 91; M. Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms:
New England Towns in the 18th Century (New York, 1970); `Harvard College Records: III',
Colonial Soc. of Massachusetts Publications, 31 (1935), 506; A. Mathews, `Harvard Commencement Days', ibid. 18 (191516), 30948.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

399

For all the signicance of these neighbourly and institutional activities,

the family and the home remained the centre of much traditional
colonial sociability, celebrated with kin and neighbourly dinners, drinking
and singing. At home `we have a deluge of company . . . through the
whole summer', Thomas Smith of Maine complained. A Rhode Island
man, Jeffrey Watson, dined with company in his own or other people's
houses up to four times a week. In the southern colonies the planters'
mansions remained the elegant stage for a wide range of sociability into
the late eighteenth century, often embracing newer forms of leisure and
entertainment.33 The predominantly rural nature of colonial society, and
the long distances involved in travelling, all tended to emphasize the
traditional structure of private and public social life. Many of these
gatherings were mixed, involving men and women and a broad spectrum
of social groups. Here the North American colonies followed a generation or more behind their English counterparts.
By the 1750s and 1760s, however, new forms of public sociability
began to have a greater effect on the American colonies, moving out
from the main cities. Massachusetts taverns, not just in Boston but
now across the province, `became settings for the emergence of a new
``public sphere'' ', the venue both for informal drinkings and many
new types of sociable activities. Horse-races were held in smaller, as
well as bigger, towns; in 1759, for instance, the meetings at Port Royal
brought `hither multitudes of the best company in Virginia', the
socializing enhanced by splendid balls. 34 Everything points to a shift
towards a more gender-, class-, and urban-focused sociability in the
American colonies during the two decades before the Revolution. No
less important was the increase in the number, type, and membership
of clubs and societies in the larger towns, and the institution's spread
to the lesser ports and interior towns.

iii
The ascent of new-style public sociability was not without its setbacks,
as in the 1750s when the French and Indian wars disrupted economic
33
Willis (ed.), Journals, 182; AAS, S. Peabody Diary 1767; E. M. Cook, `Jeffry Watson's
Diary, 17401784', Rhode Island History, 43 (1984), 81; Isaac, Transformation, 749; Farish (ed.),
Fithian Journal, 445, 756, 2201.
34
Conroy, In Public Houses, 158; `Letters of Rev. Jonathan Boucher', Maryland Historical
Magazine, 7 (1912), 13; for the best account of American horse-racing, T. H. Breen, `Horses
and Gentlemen: The Cultural Signicance of Gambling among the Gentry of Virginia',
WMQ, 3rd series, 34 (1977), 23957.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

400

Overseas

activity and exacerbated mounting poverty in the northern

colonies.35 On the other hand, new-style socializing was promoted
by the same economic, political, and cultural forces shaping its
development in Britain, and by the mid-century there were also
special factors at work in North America. The growing success of
new sociable activities owed much to their role in the formation of
new elites in the rising cities and towns of the East Coast. Social
stratication steadily increased in pre-revolutionary America, but,
paradoxically, the precise parameters of the upper social order
were becoming more confused and ambiguous. Part of the problem,
as in Britain, was the general devaluation of social titles and the
spread of consumer materialism, which blurred conventional distinctions of status; but there were also the special circumstances created
by the high mobility of the colonial population. New kinds of public
socializing, through their emphasis on manners and elite values,
helped to identify and consolidate the colonial establishment. Occasionally the purpose was explicit, as when Abraham Redwood from
Newport, Rhode Island, proposed that `some of the best repute and
character' should set up a library company there for the diffusion of
`light and truth'. Usually the process was more informal and indirect,
as leading townspeople enlisted other worthies to organize assemblies, draw up a concert and race subscription, or form a club or
society. In New York during the 1750s professional men and
merchants rallied together to set up King's College, as well as a
library society, as a forum for enlightened elite culture on the
European model. 36
To some extent, this can be seen as part of that growing `Anglicization' of colonial society which John Murrin and others have
argued was occurring in the 1750s and 1760s. For Murrin, a vital
factor in this development was the institutional impact of Crown
policy, marked by the introduction of new legal, nancial, and
ecclesiastical links with the mother country and the growth of
political oligarchy on the English model. Certainly, the continuing
small size of the colonial elite and the predominance of merchants,
professional men, and civil and military ofcialsall with economic
links of some kind to Britainmay well have promoted greater
35
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 133; G. B. Nash, `Urban Wealth and Poverty in
Pre-Revolutionary America', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (19756), 55482.
36
See above, ch. 5; Nash, `Urban Wealth', 5504; Laws of the Redwood-Library Company
(Newport, RI, 1764), 3; Bender, New York Intellect, 1112.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

401

dependence on cultural innovations and fashions from across the

Atlantic.37
Such social and cultural values were transmitted to colonial society
in diverse ways. In the case of voluntary associations, these included
colonial membership of British societies, the activity of British
societies in the colonies, and the impact of British newspapers and
magazines. Colonial membership of metropolitan associations owed,
in part, from the general growth of upper-class movement to Britain
as trade increased, wealthier families sent their children to England or
Scotland for education, and Americans started to visit the mother
country in growing numbers as traders, fund-raisers, or tourists. One
of the most active and inuential of the American participants in
English associational life was Benjamin Franklin, who belonged to
the Royal Society, Dr Bray's Associates, and several discussion and
social clubs in London, and regularly attended their meetings whenever he was in England. A number of the societies Franklin established in Philadelphia were clearly inuenced by his London
experiences. Nor was he the only colonial member of British associations. In the principal towns we nd clusters of men who had
participated in clubs in the home country. At Annapolis, members
of the Tuesday Club included Alexander Hamilton, who maintained
contact with his old Scottish club, the Whinbush, and Thomas Bacon,
who had links with the Hibernian Catch Club in Dublin. 38
Either collectively or through individual members, mainland British
societies took an active role in encouraging new associations in North
America. The British and Irish grand lodges warranted several-score
masonic lodges on the East Coast, while earlier in the century London
and Edinburgh moral reform societies encouraged offshoots in the
colonies. By the 1750s the stress was on improvement. In 1754, for
instance, the London society of Anti-Gallicans offered a premium of
50 for making indigo in South Carolina; soon after, a society for
growing indigo was established in the province. Among individuals,
Peter Collinson, the bookseller and fellow of the Royal Society and
37

J. M. Murrin, `Anglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial

Massachusetts' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1966); Bowes, Culture, 8; see also
R. L. Bushman, The Renement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992), 6978.
38
L. W. Labaree et al. (eds.), Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 195993), viii. 3567;
ix. 12, 20; V. W. Crane, `The Club of Honest Whigs: Friends of Science and Liberty', WMQ,
3rd series, 23 (1966), 21033; R. P. Stearns, `Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London,
16611788', WMQ 3rd series, 3 (1946), 20868; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, i. 45; J. B. Talley,
Secular Music in Colonial Annapolis: The Tuesday Club, 174556 (Urbana, Ill., 1988), 56.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

402

Overseas

Society of Antiquaries, busied himself giving advice and support for

the establishment of learned societies in the colonies. In about 1744
he praised the new Philadelphia society as a way of bringing
ingenious men together.39 Another Londoner, Thomas Hollis, wrote
a series of letters to Jonathan Mayhew in Boston urging the setting
up of societies `upon the model of those in London', such as the
Royal Society and Society of Arts, and sent over publications of the
latter for distribution; in response to this barrage Mayhew and some
of his friends joined the Society of Arts. Financial donations were
made from Britainfor instance, to the edgling New York Society
for the Encouragement of Artswhilst Collinson acted as the
London agent for the Pennsylvania library companies. Personal links
were vital channels in the diffusion of knowledge and support for
societies. 40
Imported books played a similar role, encouraging the formation of
new associations and nourishing them afterwards. Charleston's library
society began in the 1750s when a few townsmen purchased books
and pamphlets from England and had the idea of making a library to
show themselves `worthy of their mother country . . . by transporting
from her the improvements in the ner as well as the inferior arts'. As
in the British Isles, London magazines were highly inuential in
shaping colonial cultural fashions. One New England writer
counselled people to read the Spectator in defence of dancing, in order
to counter local religious criticism of new-style public sociability. The
Tuesday Club at Annapolis tried to have its proceedings published in
the Gentleman's Magazine in order to publicize its activities on both
sides of the Atlantic. But newspapers probably had the greatest effect
on the evolution of sociability in colonial America. For much of the
early eighteenth century British newspapers, principally London ones,
made most of the runningaided by dramatic advances in transatlantic communications. By the 1720s metropolitan papers were
read in the main cities of the East Coast. Even the colonial papers,
which nally took off in George II's reign, carried large columns of
recycled copy from the London press. By 1739 there were thirteen

39
See above, ch. 9; South Carolina Gazette, 1825 July 1754; 30 Jan.-6 Feb. 1755; The Letters
and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, Vol. III, New York Historical Soc. Collections, 52 (1919), 69.
40
B. Knollenburg (ed.), `Thomas Hollis and Jonathan Mayhew Their Correspondence,
17591766', Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Soc., 69 (194750), 112, 125, 1323, 136;
Virginia Gazette, 4 July 1766; Lamberton, `Colonial Libraries', 220.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

403

colonial papers, many of which regularly printed news of British

sociable events.41
Yet the process of Anglicization was never simply a manifestation
of metropolitan ascendancy and dynamism. It was also entwined with
regional and local tensions and rivalries, a bright thread of American
history to the present day. In New Hampshire during the early eighteenth century town rulers talked up their links with London and the
English world, in order to distance themselves from their powerful
Massachusetts neighboursas one token of this, setting up a library
society at the small town of Portsmouth in 1750. New York's competition with Philadelphia was one factor behind its foundation of King's
College and the city library company. In turn, Philadelphians regarded
moves to set up a medical society there as a way of establishing their
city's precedence over its northern rivals, to turn it into `the seat of the
sciences and in a physical way the Edinburgh of America'. 42
Provincial rivalries and the growth of associations and other forms
of public sociability also derived from the essential weakness of American
colonial government. True, the middle decades of the century saw
attempts by London to exercise more direct control, but in general,
royal governors, wielding limited powers, faced entrenched opposition
from local political elites, which left them little room for political and
administrative manoeuvre. As in mainland Britain, weak state control
enabled the growth of political and cultural pluralism, as little effective
action was taken to restrict the new forms of sociable activity. Indeed,
the lack of strong government underlined the imperative for a voluntarist response to the needs of a rapidly expanding and increasingly
complex economy and society on the East Coast. Hence the urry of
improvement societies that appeared on the British model from the
1750s to develop trade and manufactures in the different colonies. 43 By
41
The Rules and By-Laws of the Charlestown Library Society (Charleston, 1762), p. iv; see
above, pp. 1745; Providence Gazette, 29 Jan. 1763; Micklus (ed.), Tuesday Club, ii. 296 ff.; I. K.
Steele, The English Atlantic, 16751740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New
York, 1986), 4950, 923, 11314, 141, 158, 165; C. P. McCalla, Early Newspaper Accounts of
Freemasonry . . . From 1730 to 1750 (Philadelphia, 1886), 6, 7, 378; New York Gazette, 27 May-3
June 1734. For an excellent account: C. E. Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in AngloAmerican Culture, 16651740 (New York, 1994).
42
C. E. Clark, `The Second New England: Life beyond the Merrimack, 16901760',
Historical New Hampshire, 20(4) (1965), 322; Bender, New York Intellect, 256; `Letters from
the Penn Papers', Pennsylvania Magazine, 31 (1907), 4523.
43
R. L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), 2467;
J. P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness (Chapel Hill, NC, 1988), 198200; Boston Gazette, 16 Aug.
1756; South Carolina Gazette, 207 Feb. 1755; Providence Gazette, 5 Jan. 1765.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

404

Overseas

1760 there was growing appreciation of the role of voluntary associations in addressing issues, political as well as social and economic,
which could not be resolved via the existing institutional framework of
colonial society.

iv
Within forty years the United States was awash with clubs and
societies of every species. `We have seen with astonishment societies'
formed in America to promote all kinds of activity, Chandler Robbins
exclaimed in 1796. That same decade John Lathrop gave a roll-call of
the many charitable, learned and improving societies in Massachusetts,
and lauded them as testimony to America's new-found populousness
and wealth. For some historians, the springboard for this associational
take-off was the War of Independence. Thus, Richard Brown has
stressed the `proliferation of formal voluntary associations during
the generation or so following the Revolution'. In a similar vein,
Robert Gross has argued that after the Revolution the townspeople
of Concord `discovered the secret of the voluntary association', establishing a range of societies to promote knowledge and virtue, without
which it was deemed the Republic could not survive. 44
However, as we have seen, it was the one or two decades before the
Revolution which marked the real turning-point for American clubs
and societies, both in terms of scale and geography. The upsurge in
the number and types of society was striking. At New York on the eve
of the Revolution one nds the Society of House Carpenters, the
Marine Society, the Literary Society, the patriotic Sons of Liberty, the
Chamber of Commerce, and improvement societies and dining clubs,
in addition to earlier bodies. 45 At Philadelphia there were several more
44
C. Robbins, A Discourse Delivered Before the Humane Society (Boston, 1796), 11; J. Lathrop,
A Discourse before the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society . . . (Boston, 1796), 1316; Brown,
`Urban Society', 38; R. A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York, 1976), 1735. The
`revolutionary' interpretation is also stressed by Gordon Wood in The Radicalism of The
American Revolution (New York, 1992), 3289; he claims there was `nothing in the Western
world quite like these . . . people assembling annually in their different voluntary associations' after independence.
45
The Arts and Crafts in New York, New York Historical Soc. Collections, 69 (1936),
193 ff.; Charter of the Marine Society of the City of New-York . . . (New York, 1781); Subscriptions of
the Literary Society (?New York, 1770); R. Champagne, `The Military Association of the Sons
of Liberty', New York Historical Soc. Quarterly, 41 (1957), 339; Providence Gazette, 14 Jan. 1769;
Virginia Gazette, 4 July 1766; Letter Book of John Watts, 17621765, New York Historical Soc.
Collections, 61 (1928), 144.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

405

shing companies, the ship-captains' charitable society, the clerical

benevolent society, medical society, the Gloucester Hunt Club, the
Jockey Club, political clubs, Ancient and Modern masonic lodges, and
two rival scientic and learned societies, which combined in 1769 to
become the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia for
Promoting Useful Knowledge, boasting over 200 members. By
London standards, the pattern was still very modest, as visitors to
Philadelphia unkindly remarked, but in the colonial capitals at least the
array of organizations was starting to match that of the greater British
provincial cities. 46
From the late 1750s Charleston acquired the St Cecilia Society (for
music), the Fellowship Society, the German Friendly Society, the Beefsteak Club, and a jockey club. There was also the Society for Encouraging Manufactures, the Wilkesite Sons of Liberty, the Society for the
Relief of Widows and Orphans of Anglican Clergy, and numerous
others.47 Secondary urban centres followed suit. In New England, Newport, Rhode Island, gained a number of societies, while Salem hosted the
Marine Society, several more re clubs, a social club, a singing club, and
the Monday Night Philosophical Club.48 Williamsburg, hitherto a minor
centre for society activity, gained a masonic lodge in 1762, a social club
(frequented by George Washington) at Mrs Campbell's tavern, a clerical
benevolent society, several student societies, including the rst Phi
Beta Kappa, and the Society for Useful Knowledge after 1773.49
46
Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh, Rebels, 23, 3349; Rules of the Society for the Relief of Poor
and Distressed Masters of Ships . . . (Philadelphia, 1787), 1; An Abstract of the Proceedings of the
Corporation, For the Relief of the Widows and Children of Clergymen in the Communion of the Church of
England . . . (Philadelphia, 1773); W. J. Bell, `For Mutual Improvement in the Healing Art:
Philadelphia's Medical Societies in the 18th Century', Journal of the American Medical Association,
216 (1971), 1259; M. Whyte, `Baltimore Hunt Club of 1793', Maryland Historical Magazine, 35
(1940), 162; Pennsylvania Historical Soc., MS Am 3141A; P. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 17651776 (New York,
1972), 80; Stearns, Science in the British Colonies, 6379, 662, 6702; `Philadelphia Society Before
the Revolution', 279.
47
O. G. Sonneck, Early Concert-Life in America, 17311800 (New York, 1949), 1618; Cohen,
South Carolina Gazette, pp. 1719, 22, 23; Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 85; M. Ferrari,
`Artisans of the South: A Comparative Study of Norfolk, Charleston and Alexandria, 1763
1800' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, William and Mary College, 1992), 43.
48
Daniels, Puritans, 2057; Laws of the Marine Society at Salem . . . (Salem, 1801); Dennis,
`Fire Clubs of Salem', 78; `A Pre-Revolutionary Salem Club', Historical Collections of the Essex
Institute, 79 (1943), 64; G. F. Dow (ed.), The Holyoke Diaries, 17091856 (Salem, Mass., 1911),
578, 60.
49
J. Carson, James Innes and his Brothers of the F.H.C. (Williamsburg, Va., 1961), 12 ff.;
D. Jackson (ed.), The Diaries of George Washington, Vol. II (Charlottesville, Va., 1976), 2389,
245 ff.; Virginia Gazette, 28 Mar. 1771, 13 May, 5 Aug. 1773.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

406

Overseas

Even lesser places and new towns had a smattering of clubs and
societiesas for example, in Massachusetts, the Thursday Night
Club of Dedham, the re club at Haverhill, and Plymouth's Old Colony
Club. According to one count, twenty-three new associations were
established in the province (outside Boston) during the 1760s, almost
certainly an underestimate. 50
By the early 1770s support for societies came from beyond the
older elite groups. Growing participation by artisans and middle-rank
inhabitants is clear at Philadelphia by the early years of George III,
backed by the rapid growth and high prosperity of the city, now
forging ahead of its colonial rivals. The spread of Ancient masonic
lodges in Pennsylvania and New England relied on the support of
middling groups, just as the growing confrontation with the Crown
from the 1760s and the politicization of urban and provincial life drew
lesser men into patriotic associations such as the Sons of Liberty. 51
The outbreak of the American Revolution inevitably disrupted the
pattern of public sociability in the short term. Impending conict
spawned divisions in some clubs, leading to their ultimate collapse. In
1774 and later the Continental Congress issued prohibitions against
social assemblies and other kinds of public socializing during hostilities, injunctions reinforced by the harsh realities of war. Salem's
Marine Society was suspended from 1776 to 1780, since numerous
members were away at sea, ghting the British. The Society for Useful
Knowledge ceased meeting at Williamsburg after 1775 because of the
hostilities in Virginia. 52 At Charleston, attacked and occupied by the
British, meetings of the Society for the Relief of the Widows and
Orphans of Anglican Clergy were at rst postponed (because
members were busy defending the town) and then abandoned.
Dramatically, the Fellowship Society's minutes record how the regular
Wednesday meeting in May 1779 was put off, `the enemy being then
50
W. P. Cutler and J. Cutler (eds.), Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler
(Cincinnati, 1888), i. 12; Massachusetts Historical Soc. Collections, 14 (1816), 126; e.g. `Records of
the Old Colony Club, Plymouth', Massachusetts Historical Soc. Proceedings, ns, 3 (18867), 382;
Brown, `Urban Society', 401.
51
Gilbert, `Philadelphia Clubs', 86, 122, and passim; S. C. Bullock, `The Ancient and
Honorable Society: Freemasonry in America, 17301830' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Brown
University, 1986), 1278; also id., `The Revolutionary Transformation of American Freemasonry, 175292', WMQ , 3rd series, 47 (1990), 35761; Lipson, Freemasonry, 4950; Maier,
From Resistance to Revolution, 8890.
52
`Records of the Old Colony Club', 383; Barriskill, `Newburyport Theatre', 213;
W. Leavitt, `History of the Essex Lodge of Freemasons', Historical Collections of the Essex
Institute, 3 (1861), 45; Virginia Gazette, 16 May 1777.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

407

before the town's gates and an attack every moment expected',

although the society continued to assemble through the British occupation. In fact, the scale of the disruption should not be exaggerated.
Even when formal meetings were no longer held, it is evident, as in
the case of the Williamsburg Society for Useful Knowledge, that
informal communication was maintained amongst some members. 53
Large armies of colonists away from homelonely, bored by the
longueurs between battles, eager for entertainment and fellowship
provided an ideal stimulus for certain kinds of association. Many
masons identied themselves strongly with the patriotic cause, and
in 1776 the American Union Lodge was created in the Continental
Army. As well as joining the masonic order, army ofcers took the
lead in forming the Society of Cincinnati, which had the objective of
relieving indigent widows and orphans of the victorious army and
maintaining it as a political force in the new republic. Established with
Washington as president-general in 1783, when the army was being
disbanded, the society spread rapidly to all the states. While the
original scheme for a national political organization was quickly
abandoned in the face of erce local opposition, the state societies
became active and inuential, nowhere more so than in New Jersey,
where six of the ten early governors belonged to the society. Open to
relations of army veterans, by the 1790s the association was attracting
an inux of the educated, mobile, and middle classes from across the
United States. 54
This was no exception. Once peace was restored, a rapid acceleration in associational activity occurred, boosted by economic and
political changes. Older clubs revived and expanded and were joined
by a legion of new ones. The endless multiplication of societies in the
old, larger cities was matched by an upsurge in smaller and new towns
in the backcountry. During the 1780s, according to one estimate,
eleven new societies were established at Boston and forty-two in
Massachusetts; in the next decade the comparable gures leapt to
twenty-four and 169. At New York there was an avalanche of new
bodies: the Cincinnati, learned societies, musical societies (the St
Cecilia, Columbian Anacreontic, Harmonical, and Uranian among
53
South Carolina Historical Soc.: Records of the Society for the Relief of the Widows
and Orphans of the Clergy in S. Carolina; Fellowship Society Records, Minute Book 1778
80, p. 135. Virginia Gazette, 16 May 1777.
54
See above, p. 348; Lipson, Freemasonry, 567, 59; M. Myers, Liberty without Anarchy: A
History of the Society of the Cincinnati (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 1619, 256, 38, 434, 4862,
130, 132.

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

408

Overseas

others), political, debating, and ethnic bodies, the Society for Useful
Knowledge, a French society, the Society of Black Friars, re
companies, a Belle Lettre club, a humane society, a small number of
artisan clubs, and above all, philanthropic associations. At the start of
the next century the city's societies `organized for every imaginable
humanitarian purpose: to aid orphans and widows, aged females and
young prostitutes, immigrants, debtors, and negroes; to educate the
children of the poor in charity schools, Sunday schools and free
schools; to promote religion and morality among the destitute; to
supply medical care to the indigent . . .'. 55 Meanwhile, in upstate
New York the small town of Albany, growing rapidly after 1792
(and becoming the state capital in 1800), paraded mechanic, masonic,
library, and improvement societies, amongst others; small towns elsewhere in the state did almost as well. 56 In New Jersey the trend was
similar, with societies springing up at Trenton, Burlington, Wilmington,
and Newark.57
Further south, Philadelphia consolidated its claim to be the cultural
metropolis of North America, blessed, it was said, with `more political
and learned societies than anywhere else in the United States'. As well
as having the American Philosophical Society, which was earning an
55
Brown, `Urban Society', 401; S. H. J. Simpson, `The Federal Procession in the City of
New York', New York Historical Soc. Quarterly, 9 (19256), 41; New York Public Library, MSS
Dept., Calliopean Society Records; G. G. Raddin, `The Music of New York City, 17971814',
New York Historical Soc. Quarterly, 38 (1954), 480, 4835; see also `The Columbian Anacreontic
Society of New York, 17951803', ibid. 16 (19323), 11522; O. E. Allen, The Tiger: The Rise
and Fall of Tammany Hall (Reading, Mass., 1993), 5 ff.; E.P. Link, Democratic-Republican Societies,
17901814 (New York, 1942), 1417; New York Public Library, MSS Dept., Uranian Society
Minutes 17913; for ethnic bodies see above, ch. 8; J. P. Brissot de Warville, New Travels in the
United States of America, ed. D. Echeverria (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 146, 162; New York
Journal, 12 Nov. 1789; Rules And Orders to be observed by the Heart-in-Hand Fire Company . . .
(New York, 1781); Regulations for the Belle Lettre Club (New York, 1795); New York Journal, 18
June 1789, 7 Jan. 1790; R. A. Mohl, `The Humane Society and Urban Reform in Early New
York, 17871831', New York Historical Soc. Quarterly, 54 (1970), 33 ff.; Rules and Regulations,
Adopted by the True Assistant Society of Hatters . . . (New York, ?1795); H. B. Rock, Artisans of the
New Republic (New York, 1979).
56
J. Bolton and I. F. Cortelyou, `The Early Life and Work of Ezra Ames', New York
Historical Society Quarterly, 35 (1951), 245 ff.; J. D. Hatch, `The Albany Institute of History and
Art', New York History, 25 (1944), 31215; Rules and Regulations formed by the United Society of
House-Carpenters and Joiners of the Towns of Lansingburgh and Troy . . . (?Lansingburgh, 1790); The
Constitution of the Social Society . . . 1798 (Schenectady, 1800).
57
Laws and Regulations of the Trenton Library Company (Trenton, 1797); Brunswick Gazette, 4
May 1790; E. R. Turner, `The First Abolition Society in the United States', Pennsylvania
Magazine, 36 (1912), 102; A. M. Gummere, `The ``Friendly Institution'' of Burlington, New
Jersey', Pennsylvania Magazine, 21 (1897), 34951; Articles of Association . . . for the Newark Fire
Association (Newark, NJ, 1797).

8.11.99 08:32 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

409

international reputation, the city could boast a constellation of new

bodiesa dozen or so different typesin addition to that major
corpus of older societies discussed earlier. Societies also started to
appear in the city's suburbs.58 Across the state, important clusters of
associations developed at Germantown, Carlisle, and elsewhere.59
Another important focus of society activity was the growing port
city of Baltimore. By 1800 the Maryland community had over 26,000
inhabitants and enjoyed a ourishing economic and social life, overshadowing that of Annapolis. Amongst its diverse associations were
those for debating, hunting, and opposing slavery, along with the
Social Amicable Society, Jewish Amicable Society, Humane Society,
medical society, re companies, benevolent society, music society,
Female Humane Association, Charitable Marine Society, and artisan
societies, rounded off by the usual ethnic and masonic bodies. 60
In Virginia, the removal of the state capital to Richmond conrmed
the shift in the state's centre of gravity away from the coast, further
encouraged by the expansive regional economy of the backcountry.
Richmond, with nearly 6,000 people in 1800, had a growing suite of
voluntary bodies, about nine or ten different types, including library
and literary societies, Sons of St Tammany, and (more surprisingly) an
58
Brissot de Warville, New Travels, 228, 239, 253; Stearns, Science in the British Colonies,
672 ff.; The Constitution, Laws and Rules of the Philological Society (Philadelphia, 1794), 4, 1213;
Laws of the Philadelphia Society For Promoting Agriculture (Philadelphia, 1788); Maryland Historical
Magazine, 32 (1937), 1011; Virginia Gazette, 27 July 1793; Rules Of the Society for the relief of poor
distressed and decayed Pilots (Philadelphia, 1789); Sunday Schools (Philadelphia, ?1796); Rules and
Regulations of the Society for Political Enquiries (Philadelphia, 1787); The Constitution of the Ciceronian
Society (Philadelphia, 1800); B. Say, Annual Oration Pronounced before the Humane Society of
Philadelphia (Whitehall, Penn., 1799), 10; The Plan of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement
of Manufactures and the Useful Arts (Philadelphia, 1787); The Constitution and Fundamental Rules of
the Pennsylvania Society for Mechanical Improvements (?Philadelphia, 1799); Rules and Orders of the
Society of Victuallers . . . (Philadelphia, 1798); Articles of the Friendship Fire Company of the Northern
Liberties (Philadelphia, ?1796).
59
The Constitution of the Germantown Society for Promoting Domestic Manufactures (Philadelphia,
1790); A Debate Proposed in the Temple Patrick Society . . . (Philadelphia, 1788); Constitution of the
Carpenter's Society, of Carlisle (Carlisle, Penn., 1795).
60
C. G. Steffen, The Mechanics of Baltimore (Urbana, Ill., 1984), 4, 11 ff.; Maryland
Historical Soc., MS 767; Whyte, `Baltimore Hunt Club', 1601; Constitution of the Maryland
Society, for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery . . . (Baltimore, 1789); Maryland Historical Soc.,
Graphics Dept., Hayden Collection, Box 42; MS 584; Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser,
9 July 1790; New York Journal, 28 Jan. 1790; Articles for the Government of the Commercial FireCompany (Baltimore, 1792); Rules and Orders to be Observed by the Baltimore Benevolent Society . . .
(Baltimore, 1796); Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, 56; A Plan of the Female Humane Association
Charity School (?Baltimore, 1800); Rules and Bye-Laws of the Baltimore Charitable Marine Society
(Baltimore, 1798); for ethnic societies see above pp. 3056; Maryland Historical Soc., MS
107.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

410

Overseas

anti-slavery society.61 By the 1790s inhabitants of other, smaller towns,

like Fredericksburg, Petersburg, and Alexandria, kept tedium at bay
with their own, more basic mix of associations, including the
ubiquitous jockey clubs. The rising town of Winchester in the
Shenandoah Valley supported a re company, along with a dancing
assembly and two newspapers. 62
In the lower south, Charleston maintained its position (up to 1800,
at least) as the leading centre of public sociability. A 1793 almanac
catalogued thirty different societies in the town (probably an underestimate). Of those listed, nearly half had been founded in the
previous ten years; one foreign observer was especially struck by
the `many clubs for men who meet to gamble and smoke'. Off the
coast on Sullivan's Island, elite dining clubs were held in the sticky
summer months, the clubhouses ornamented by arcades of evergreen
and myrtle groves. Associations were also important now at Savannah
and many lesser places, such as Dorchester and Augusta. Down the
East Coast, it was increasingly difcult to nd a signicant town
without some kind of association. No wonder that James Tillary, in
1789, could exclaim at `the rage of societies [which prevails] . . . in the
present day throughout these United States'. 63

v
What were the dynamics of this late-eighteenth-century `rage of
societies', and how does the American experience compare with
that of Britain? One fundamental and common factor was the
quickening tempo of urban growth. Between 1760 and 1800 the total
urban population in the United States nearly quadrupled, and though
61
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 131; Virginia Gazette, 25 June 1785; Virginia
Historical Soc., Richmond, MSS 5: 1B 6386.1, pp. 36, 55, 60; 4: AM 515/a/1; Virginia State
Library, Richmond, Archives, MS 24646; Virginia Gazette, 2 Oct. 1793; Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, Research Dept., Southall Papers Transcript; J. C. Fitzpatrick (ed.), The Diaries of
George Washington, 17481799 (New York, 1925), ii. 371; Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser,
5 Feb. 1790.
62
Virginia Gazette, 4 Sept. 1784; Sonneck, Early Concert-Life, 58; South Carolina Historical
Soc., MS 43/49, vol. 1, p. 13; Constitution of the Alexandria Society for the Promotion of Useful
Knowledge (Alexandria, Va., ?1787); W. R. Hofstra and R. D. Mitchell, `Town and Country in
Backcountry Virginia . . .', Journal of Southern History, 59 (1993), 644.
63
Jervey, `Items from a South Carolina Almanac', 7480; E. Cometti (ed.), Seeing America
and its Great Men . . . (Charlottesville, 1969), 56; South Carolina Historical Soc., Drayton
Papers Deposit; Gazette of the State of Georgia, 11 Dec. 1783 and passim, 26 Oct. 1789; `The St
George's Club', South Carolina Historical Magazine, 8 (1907), 8893; J. Tillary, An Oration
Delivered before The Society of Black Friars in the City of New York . . . (New York, 1789), 19.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

411

the massive increase of the national population and the revolutionary

war dampened the urbanization rate, after the 1780s it was rising
again (to 6.1 per cent in 1800). Foreign visitors emphasized the
convergence of the British and American urban worlds. To Henry
Wansey, writing in 1794, `Boston is the Bristol, New York the
Liverpool, and Philadelphia the London of America'; another British
visitor found nothing in New York `but what I might have met with in
any commercial town, in Hull, in Liverpool, or Bristol'. 64
Urban expansion was accompanied by rising afuence among the
upper and middling ranks of urban society, which furnished many of the
members of the new associations. For, as one writer observed, `men
seldom or never form themselves into societies of that kind where ease
and assistance are not eminently enjoyed'. A few voices warned of the
high costs of new-style sociability, but the price seemed worth paying. As
in Britain, expansion led to a more pressurized life: one visitor to New
York spoke of the `hurly burly and bustle of a large town . . . the busy
faces that I met with'. Often the result was a growing sense of social
isolation and social distance: hence the same need for club or society
membership that we detected earlier in English towns.65
Nonetheless, the proliferation of associations was associated not
merely with the processes of social transformation in late-eighteenthcentury American cities, but also with their growing reputation as
centres of improvement and civilization, attracting the well-to-do
from the countryside. Already before the Revolution, a British ofcer
admired Philadelphia as `one of the wonders of the world' for its
population and public streets. Later visitors were no less fulsome in
their praise: in the 1780s Manasseh Cutler from New England gave a
glowing account of the markets, taverns, and public improvements of
Philadelphia, while also enthusing over the genteel civility of New
York. Towards the end of the century Baltimore was similarly commended as `a large handsome place, containing a number of good
brick houses and . . . several good streets well paved'. 66 Though
64
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 133; H. Wansey, The Journal of an Excursion to the
United States (Salisbury, 1796), p. 73; J. E. Strickland (ed.), Journal of a Tour in the United States of
America, 17945 by William Strickland (New York, 1971), 63.
65
Virginia Gazette, 11 Feb. 1773; `Letter of Edward Shippen of Lancaster, 1754',
Pennsylvania Magazine, 30 ( 1906), 8990; `The Tucker Papers', Bermuda Historical Quarterly, 7
(1950), 111.
66
N. D. Mereness (ed.), Travels in the American Colonies (New York, 1916), 41011; Cutler
and Cutler (eds.), Life of Cutler, i. 263, 2712, 285, 3067; `Journal of William Loughton Smith,
17901791', Massachusetts Historical Soc. Proceedings, 51 (191819), 5960.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

412

Overseas

rivalry between the larger cities was hardly new, in the last
decades of the century they competed openly in the provision
of public and cultural amenities, including lavish society premises.
Thus, the New York Belvedere Club, built in 1792 on the banks
of the East River, had a supper room, two dining parlours, cardroom, bar, bedrooms, and a large ballroom with a music gallery. A
little later the New York Tammany Society, previously held in
tavern rooms, acquired its own clubhousethe subsequently
notorious Tammany Hall. In Charleston, a series of beautifully
elegant society houses were erected around the end of the
century. One of the rst belonged to the South Carolina Society,
and had a grand ballroom with double replaces plus a series of
smaller meeting rooms. 67
Even lesser towns began to obtain the necessary infrastructure for
public sociability. At Petersburg, Virginia, with a few thousand
inhabitants (many black), the streets were still narrow, but by the
start of the nineteenth century there was a courthouse, gaol,
churches, a small theatre, and a purpose-built masonic lodge. In
New Hampshire, Portsmouth took pride in its ne assembly house,
its large tavern (with a specially designed masonic lodge room), and
other facilities, which allowed both townspeople and better-off
visitors from the countryside to taste the pleasures of convivial
socializing. 68
To summarize thus far, prosperity, social distancing, and urban
improvement acted as powerful forces promoting voluntary associations in the United States, as in Britain. Originating before the
Revolution, there was a widening circle of support from middling
and artisan groups, who now had more money and dedicated leisuretime to spend on associational activity. In the last years of the century
the middle classes in New York and elsewhere played a vigorous part
in the formation of philanthropic societies. Nothing, however,
indicates that American societies were enthusiastic about including
the poorer classes in their membership, while other marginal groups
fared equally badly. We nd only a small number of associations for
67
R. H. Lawrence and W. L. Andrews, Catalogue of the Engravings Issued by the Society of
Iconophiles . . . (New York, 1908), 13 n., 50; Allen, The Tiger, 78; South Carolina Historical
Foundation, Charleston, Photographic Collection.
68
Schultz, `Growth of Urban America', 131; South Carolina Historical Soc., MS 43/49,
vol. 1, p. 13; J. L. Garvin, `Portsmouth and Piscataqua', Historical New Hampshire, 26 (1971),
16 ff.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

413

blacks, and women were largely excluded from American societies

into the next century.69
For the American elite and respectable classes, clubs and societies
offered many of the attractions and advantages that appealed to their
British counterparts. They served as places to relax, fraternize, and
have fun with kin, friends, and neighbours, away from the pressures of
business, the constraints of female company, or the domestic obligations of a crowded home. Here men could unwind, `picking their
teeth, sauntering about the room, or standing with their bums to the
re'. In a smoke-lled room they could booze and feast, engage in
passably witty conversation, hear the latest news, and meet those of
differing political persuasions. As Franklin declared of his Philadelphia
Junto Club, `I love [the] company, chat, a laugh, a glass, and even a
song . . . [as well as] the grave observations . . . of old men's conversation'. Such societies helped townsmen establish a reputation in
the community, meet business contacts, gain help against economic
hardship, and, in Tristram Burges's words, associate `for mutual
improvement, for increasing our knowledge, and mending our hearts'.
Again, for the great tide of American migrants, societiesnot just
ethnic societies, but many other kinds of associationcontributed to
integrating them into their new communities. In George II's time a
newcomer to Philadelphia remarked, that by spending time at one of
the city's social clubs `I could learn more of the constitution of the
place, their trade and manner of living in one hour than in a week's
observation sauntering up and down the city, . . . besides numberless
other advantages. . .'. Such advantages multiplied with urbanization
and increased mobility. 70
At the same time, rising urban prosperity and urban improvement
changed the social and cultural agenda in North America. During the
early eighteenth century colonial towns were often regarded as being
of secondary importance in cultural terms; the reception of new-style
cultural and intellectual fashions associated with British and European
cities was slow and largely restricted to the colonial elite class.
69

Constitution of the Social Society, 3; for the small number of societies of blacks see, for
instance: Belknap Papers: Part II, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Collections, 5th series, 3
(1877), 12, 383; A Charge Delivered to the Brethren of the African Lodge (Boston, 1792); see
also G. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 17201840
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 21719.
70
Breslaw (ed.), Tuesday Club Records, 463; Labaree et al. (eds.), Franklin Papers, ix. 280; T.
Burges, Solitude and Society Contrasted (Providence, RI, 1797), 19; R. A. Brock, `Journal of
William Black, 1744', Pennsylvania Magazine, 1 (1877), 4045; see also Lipson, Freemasonry, 139.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

414

Overseas

Traditional, largely rural-based forms of socializing predominated

across much of the colonial land-mass. From the mid-century this
started to change, and by 1800 smart urban socializing progressively
swept the board. Respectable townspeople basked in a crowded
calendar of fashionable activities. In spite of the rise of Baltimore,
Annapolis could boast of `balls, routs, assemblies, tournaments,
concerts, plays, fandangoes and every species of amusements'not
least, societies. Richmond at the turn of the century was said to have
`for her size a greater number of more polished, hospitable and well
informed inhabitants' than any town in the union, with large-scale
participation in public socializing and, as we know, associations.
Mirroring English attitudes, rural pursuits came to be seen as tedious
and unfashionable. John Quincy Adams wrote from the countryside in
1786, that `this is a dull life . . . [which] convinces me how grossly the
whole herd of novel and romance writers err in trumpeting up a
country life'. The New Yorker, William Johnson, made the same point
more directly: `the town is the only place for rational beings.' For men,
associations were now regarded as an essential dimension of urban
life. One New Jersey library company was reorganized in 1792 offering
`an inducement to many persons who may wish to pass a few months
[in town] . . . to give a preference to a town which affords food for
the sentimentalist and cultivated mind'. 71
One nal development linked to urbanization must be mentioned:
the growth of the American press. From the mid-century newspapers
broke away from their earlier dependence on European news and
became lively local and regional organs on the British model, carrying
notices, advertisements, and correspondence about societies. On the
eve of war the American colonies had thirty-seven newspapers; by
1800 the United States had 200. Sales were fuelled by the Newspaper
Act, which set postage rates so low that sales were subsidised; during
the 1790s circulation per head of population more than doubled
(doubling again over the next twenty years). Newspapers were
perceived as vital instruments for the creation of national identity
and for the diffusion of knowledge and information, encouraged by
declining time-lags in the communication of news. During the 1790s
the Republican press was inuential in the spread of several score
71
Beatty, `Letters of Four Beatty Brothers', 237; South Carolina Historical Soc., MS 43/
93; D. G. Allen et al. (eds.), Diary of John Quincy Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), ii. 116;
Bender, New York Intellect, 9; J. Sabine, `Books and Libraries in Newark to 1847', New Jersey
Historical Soc. Proceedings, 71 (1953), 2589.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

415

radical clubs, mobilizing the middling and artisan classes. This process
was only temporarily halted by the Sedition Act and subsequent trials
of Republican editors.72
Newspapers were only part of the story. Many other publications
sermons, club rules, tractsbroadcast and justied the importance
and function of societies in the new republic. American magazines
were particularly powerful. The rst volume of the Massachusetts
Magazine, printed by Isaiah Thomas in 1789, included a lengthy
description of a club and its activities, while the New York Magazine
had close editorial links with the Friendly Club, and Boston's Monthly
Anthology with the Anthology Club. As earlier, printers were enthusiastic advocates of societies. Isaiah Thomas was a leading member of
a raft of associations both in Boston and Worcester; during two
consecutive days in June 1809 he attended at least four society meetings, conceivably an associational record for the time. 73
Underpinning the accelerating process of urban growth, with all its
effects, was the rise of a commercial economy. From the mid-century
British manufactures poured into the colonies, the result of soaring
industrial output in the Midlands and the North, sharply falling prices,
and welling consumer demand in North America. Interrupted by the
war, the ood renewed after 1783. That `constant fondness for the
tissues of European luxury', particularly British wares, led to complaints that Americans were `free in their government but colonists in
their commerce'. Fashionable consumer wares, with all their implications for manners and socializing, saturated the dining rooms, the
boudoirs, the way of life, of respectable society. Already before the
Revolution William Eddis at Annapolis was astonished by the `quick
importation of fashions from the mother country . . . very little
difference is in reality observable in the manners of the wealthy
colonist and wealthy Briton'. By the 1790s the phenemenon was
visible at a much wider level of society. In the small towns of upstate
New York luxury wares were freshly imported from London, while
72
F. L. Mott, American Journalism: A History, 16901960 (New York, 1962), 95, 167; Brown,
`Urban Society', 445 ; D. P. Nord, `Newspapers and American Nationhood, 17761826',
American Antiquarian Soc. Proceedings, 100 (1991), 396401; A. R. Pred, Urban Growth and the
Circulation of Information: The United States System of Cities, 17901840 (Cambridge, Mass.,1973),
13, 16, 17, 20, 26; Link, Democratic-Republican Societies, ch. 8.
73
The Massachusetts Magazine: or, Monthly Museum, 1 (1789), 21921; Bender, New York
Intellect, 323; AAS: N. Paine, `Societies, Associations and Clubs of Worcester'; Worcester
Fire Soc., octavo vol. 1; folio vol. 1; B. T. Hill (ed.), The Diary of Isaiah Thomas, 18051828, Vol.
I, American Antiquarian Soc. Transactions, 9 (1909), 70.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

416

Overseas

`modes and customs, manners of living and of ideas, with few exceptions, all are English'. Immigration as well as trade played its part.
According to Benjamin Latrobe, the growing convergence of British
and American manners and behaviour was due `to the perpetual inux
of Englishmen', as well as the `constant intercourse of the
merchants'. 74
All these factors fostered the advent of new-style public sociability
in North America and, above all, of associations. The parallels with
the British experience are striking, but American associational activity
in the later eighteenth century was hardly a form of cultural dependence. While it continued to borrow from British and European
exemplars, it refashioned them in a distinctive, autonomous way,
just as consumer wares imported from Europe were selected and
positioned to create a special American domestic style. 75 Even before
the Revolution, the growth of political societies, though linked to the
British radical discourse on liberties and rights, was determined by a
mounting sense of American identity, as not only political societies but
improvement, medical, and other bodies began to develop transcontinental links.
Clearly, revolutionary politics gave a dynamic new American dimension and direction to voluntary societies. Associations were viewed as
an essential cultural attribute of the new republic, helping to conrm
its credibility in the community of nations. The speaker to one Rhode
Island society in the 1790s called on American associations to `elevate
Columbia to a model for the world'. Powerful agencies for the
improvement of the national economy and society, their role was to
consolidate American independence. Philadelphia in the late 1780s
heard appeals to liberate Americans from `the inuence of foreign
prejudices' through `a society for mutual improvement in the knowledge of government'. Already in 1776 John Adams had introduced a
resolution into Congress that each colony should erect a society for
the improvement of agriculture, arts, and manufactures. The wave of
agricultural societies founded in the 1780s and 1790s was praised by
George Washington as `very cheap instruments of intense national
74
T. H. Breen, ` ``Baubles of Britain'': The American and Consumer Revolutions of the
18th Century', P&P, 119 (1988), 807; Carson et al. (eds.), Of Consuming Interests, 257; AAS,
Robert Carter Papers, Box 1, Folder 1; W. Eddis, Letters from America, ed. A. C. Land
(Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 578; Strickland (ed.), Journal of a Tour, 1778; E. C. Carter II et
al. (eds.), The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 17951798 Vol. II (New Haven, 1977),
75
Carson et al. (eds.), Of Consuming Interests, 592 ff.
374, also 306.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

417

benets'. Improvement became an almost obsessive concern of most

associations, however varied their individual interests.76
Under the republic, improvement societies stressed co-operation
and links between states. The Philadelphia agricultural society, for
instance, maintained correspondence with similar societies and
individuals in the middle states, New England, and South Carolina.
Other societies also stimulated interstate collaborationmost notably
the anti-slavery organizations. However, few American societies after
independence had national or interstate constitutions. The exception
to prove the rule was the Society of Cincinnati. Formed in 1783 with a
proposed federal structure, this quickly ran into the sands, and the
society turned into an aggregate of state societies. In the same way,
when the freemasons broke their links with the British grand lodges,
initial proposals for a national grand master sank without a trace. 77
Rather, American societies under the republic were associated with
provincial state formation and organizationencouraged by longstanding provincial rivalries and anti-federalist sentiment. Masonry
was not only organized on a state basis, each grand lodge claiming
its own autonomous jurisdiction, but masonic rituals and activities
were used to legitimate state institutions, masons being involved in the
dedication of the state capitol at Richmond and the state University of
North Carolina. Associations were also used to dene and control
state territory. Masonic grand lodges, usually based in state capitals
and led by state worthies, issued warrants to growing numbers of local
lodges in interior towns and sought to supervise their activities. State
medical societies, sanctioned by state authorities, regulated the
medical profession in their region, through licensing and disciplinary
action, and through the creation of a network of subordinate district
and county medical societies; in this way, they conrmed and
buttressed the state's administrative hierarchy. 78
More commonly than in Britain, state governments (like their
76

Burges, Solitude and Society, 21; Rules of the Society for Political Enquiries, 1; Buttereld et al.
(eds.), Diary of John Adams, iii. 372; O. M. Gambrill, `John Beale Bordley and the Early Years
of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society', Pennsylvania Magazine, 66 (1942), 41039; J. F. Roche,
`The Uranian Society: Gentlemen and Scholars in Federal New York', New York History, 52
(1971), 129; `St George's Club', 88.
77
Gambrill, `John Beale Bordley', 423; J. F. Reilly, `The Providence Abolition Society',
Rhode Island History, 21 (1962), 37, 424; also J. Conforti, `Samuel Hopkins and the Revolutionary Antislavery Movement', ibid. 38 (1979), 47; see above, p. 100; Bullock, `Ancient and
Honorable Society', 14851.
78
Bullock, `Ancient and Honorable Society', 1656, 272; e.g. The Charter of the NewHampshire Medical Society (Exeter, NH, 1792).

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

418

Overseas

colonial predecessors) regularly gave ofcial recognition to voluntary

associations through incorporation, but this did not imply a high
degree of government control. The political world of the new republic
inherited the decentralized government of its colonial predecessors.
The chartering of societies was a sign of the need to co-opt associational activity to the support of relatively ineffectual provincial and
local administrations. This was particularly important in cities. Rising
urbanization and a high inow of immigrants meant that municipal
authorities faced growing social problems, not least crowds of poor on
the streets, deprived and desperate. New kinds of middle-class ethnic
societies emerged to relieve the problem, and these and other kinds of
philanthropic organization were regarded by the urban better-off as a
key mechanism for social containment and control. In New York,
such bodies `performed invaluable services by supplementing municipal activities . . . attacking the worsening social conditions of the
urban environment'. Indeed, societies assumed a growing range of
public functions, even outside their own basic remit. In 1796 one of
Philadelphia's re companies, alarmed at news of arson attacks in
other towns, agreed that it would patrol the city's streets to prevent
outbreaks of disorder. In Massachusetts, the Society for Propagating
the Gospel among the Indians turned its attention at the end of the
century to distributing school-books to poor whites. Societies cooperated together in public works, while a growing number of the
new philanthropic associations were organized on a public subscription basis, as in mainland Britain. 79
Urban growth and political developments clearly supply an important part of the explanatory framework for the eforescence of
American societies in the last part of the eighteenth century. However,
that crucial relationship between associations and other forms of
public socializing needs to be considered. During the early eighteenth
century a serious constraint on the growth of colonial associations
(and other new forms of sociability) was the vitality of traditional
rustic and institutional socializing. One's impression is that at least
some of these older forms kept their importance in the early republic.
Among neighbourly entertainments, there are numerous references to
shing expeditions and hunting (though with wolves largely replaced
79
R. A. Mohl (ed.), The Making of Urban America (2nd edn., Wilmington, Del., 1997), 67,
313; id., `Humane Society', 312; H. D. Biddle (ed.), Extracts from the Journal of Elizabeth
Drinker (Philadelphia, 1889), 295; The Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and
others in North America, 17871887 (Cambridge, Mass., 1887), p. 19; New York Journal, 18 June
1789.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

419

by deer and birds). Winter sleighing parties remained popular, as did

summer barbecues. Communities and families continued to celebrate
life-cycle events, customary holidays, and neighbourly works (such as
barn-raisings) with heavy drinking and partying, while indoor social
life still, to some extent, revolved around carding- and quilting bees
and more or less informal boozing, dinners, and dances. 80 Institutional
socializing, whether associated with the church, local elections, court
days, or musters, also retained its signicance. Indeed, church sociability probably increased with the religious revivals at the end of the
century. On the other hand, traditional activity was increasingly outanked, continuing to ourish in more remote rural areas, but in
urbanizing districts more and more subsumed within a wide spectrum
of new-style sociability. 81
New activities during the late eighteenth century embraced
assemblies, plays, musical events, and lectures, but, as in Britain,
voluntary associations increasingly predominated. By the 1790s clubs
and societies were taking over the organization of balls, assemblies,
music-making, even barbecues, while horse-racing was largely controlled by jockey clubs. Within a few years temperance societies were
starting to attack that essential component of traditional socializing,
alcohol consumption. 82
In conclusion, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries a standard colonial pattern evolved in North America,
with a fairly narrow range of societies conned mainly to the biggest
urban centres and attracting support principally from the small,
metropolitan-oriented elites. Activity was held back by low levels of
urbanization, physical distance, the small size of the upper classes, and
competing forms of sociability. From the last years of George II's
reign a more advanced form of associational activity emerged, maturing by 1800 with a multiplying number and range of societies and a
80
W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD. Vol. II (Salem, Mass., 1907), 234, 282, 283;
Luigi Castiglioni's Viaggio: Travels in the United States of North America, ed. A. Pace (Syracuse, NY,
1983), 196; Allen et al. (eds.), Diary of John Quincy Adams, ii. 173; C. A. Collins, `James Brown's
Diary (17871789)', Rhode Island History, 6 (1947), 101, 102, 104; W. K. Bottorff and R. C.
Flanagan, `The Diary of Frances Baylor Hill', Early American Literature, 2(3) (1967), 6, 13, 15
and passim.
81
W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD., Vol. I (Salem, Mass., 1905), 2656; `The
Journal of Captain Tillinghast', Rhode Island Historical Collections, 32 (1939), 14, 15; C. S.
Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City (Ithaca, NY, 1971), p. 45 ff.
82
`Journal of John Mair, 1791', American Historical Review, 12 (19067), 79; Sonneck, Early
Concert-Life, 278, 56, 58, and passim; Bentley, Bentley Diary ii. 33; P. T. Winskill, The Temperance
Movement and its Workers, Vol. I (London, 1891), 33 ff., 41, 50 ff.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

420

Overseas

widening geographical and social catchment area. At the end of the

eighteenth century the parallels with Britain, not just in the growing
scale of activity but in terms of the explanatory framework, were
striking, both countries being affected by accelerating urbanization,
rising prosperity among the better-off classes, improved communications and a ourishing information industry, the limited role of central
and local government, and the decline of older systems of sociability.
Such parallels were inevitably reinforced by the growing economic
and, to a lesser extent, demographic concourse of the two countries
after the Treaty of Paris.
Nevertheless, what is also clear about late eighteenth century associations in America is their ability to adapt to and ourish in new
political circumstances, to create their own distinctive world. The
Revolution caused only temporary disruption to associational activity,
and in the longer term had an energizing effect. Established societies
reoriented themselves; new ones emerged to service specic
American needs; societies became closely involved in buttressing an
American sense of identity; many associations became an essential
part of the reformulation of state and local particularism. A distinctly
American matrix of societies was being created. By the close of the
period American associations were already starting to have an impact
on British ones. 83

vi
Across the rest of the English-speaking world, associations conformed more to the colonial model of early Georgian America than
to the later, more mature system. Clubs and societies were mostly
located in ports and governmental towns, and recruited principally
from the British elite classes. The West Indies was a signicant early
centre of colonial sociability, although with variations among the
different island communities. By George II's reign Bridgetown, the
capital of Barbados, had a busy social scene, enlivened by literary,
masonic, and dining clubs, as well as other entertainments like plays,
balls, and cock-ghts. Later in the century it was called `one of the
best towns in the West Indies', and its numerous associations included
the Society of Arts (closely modelled on the London society), a
commercial society, re company, library society, ethnic societies,
musical and literary societies, a number of Ancient and Modern
83

See below, p. 454.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

421

masonic lodges, and even a branch of the Ubiquarians.84 Whereas

Barbados was often regarded as the cynosure of English civilization in
the West Indies, Jamaica, though with a larger total population, had
fewer white inhabitants (12,600 in 1774 compared to 17,600 in
Barbados), and acquired an early eighteenth century reputation for
unruliness and a lack of civility. Increasingly, however, Kingston
caught up in the sociability stakes, staging concerts, plays, assemblies,
and other social events; among late Georgian associations we nd a
medical society, book club, humane society, society of merchants, and
various masonic lodges, though an agricultural society proved
abortive. 85 The third main centre of British sociability in the
Caribbean was the prosperous island of Antigua, with a cluster of
masonic lodges from George II's reign; by the 1780s St John's, the
main port and seat of government, had a re society and several
masonic lodges, together with subscription assemblies and a theatre.
In the rest of the West Indies the presence of societies was spotty,
with a few clubs on St Vincent's and St Christopher's and the inevitable sprinkling of masonic lodges, usually linked to the military.
Off the East Coast of America, Bermuda had a handful of masonic,
literary, and other clubs by the 1770s. 86
In Canada associations made slow progress. Halifax, the capital of
Novia Scotia, had several masonic lodges and a Scottish society by the
1760s. St John's, Newfoundland, supported three Ancient lodges
about 1807, but not much else. The French defeat at Quebec was
84

Caribbeana (London, 1741), i. 19, 287; ii. 28; J. M. Toner (ed.), The Daily Journal of Major
George Washington in 17512 (Albany, NY, 1892), 49; L. Ragatz, The Old Plantation System in the
British West Indies (Washington, DC, 1953), 23; Barbados Mercury, 28 Oct. 1780; `Extracts from
``The Barbados Mercury'' ', Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Soc., 16 (19489), 67,
69, 71, 143, 144, 147; 17 (194950), 107, 1723.
85
R. V. Wells, The Population of the British Colonies in America Before 1776 (Princeton, NJ,
1975), 196, 238; N. Canny and A. Pagden (eds.), Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 15001800
(Princeton, NJ, 1987), 2504; M. Craton, `Reluctant Creoles', in B. Bailyn and P. D. Morgan
(eds.), Strangers Within the Realm (Chapel Hill, 1991), 33840; R. L. Wright, Revels in Jamaica,
16821838 (New York, 1969), 13, 14, 17, 67, 174; A. Spencer (ed.), Memoirs of William Hickey
(London, n.d.), ii. 21, 23, 323, 45; The New Jamaica Almanack (Kingston, 1799), 114, 154;
Ragatz, Old Plantation System, 23, 168; P. Walne (ed.), Guide to Manuscript Sources on the History of
Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (London, 1973), 363.
86
R. H. K. Dyett et al., A Short Historical Sketch of Freemasonry in Antigua (St Johns, Antigua,
1984), 16; J. Luffman, A Brief Account of the Island of Antigua (London, 1788), 11921, 1512,
155; Virginia Historical Soc., MS 1: K 197a 4, 5; H. C. Wilkinson, Bermuda in the Old Empire
(London, 1950), 280, 353; A. J. B. Milbourne, `Freemasonry in Bermuda', AQC, 74 (1961),
1131; Bermuda Archives, Freemasons Traveller's Book, Minutes of Meetings, etc. (information supplied by Dr M. Jarvis).

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

422

Overseas

celebrated by the formation of a military masonic lodge, though subsequent attempts to establish a philosophical society failed; only in the
last years of the century do an agricultural society and one or two other
bodies surface.87 British inuence was more successful at Montreal,
where a visitor in the 1780s praised the entertainments, including a
bachelors' club and Vauxhall gardens, at which he found people playing
bowls and cricket. As the English, Scottish, and American loyalists
struggled their way into Upper Canada, small oases of sociability
appeared: both York and Niagara had masonic lodges along with
assemblies and balls, but conditions were obviously rudimentary. 88
India's associational activity was largely reserved to the three main
centres of British occupationBombay, Madras, and Bengal. Bombay
was the poorest, encircled by powerful native rulers, remote, and with
a small expatriate population: the town of Bombay had only 1,000
white inhabitants at the end of the century. Associations at Bombay
and the other settlement of Surat seem to have been limited to
masonic lodges, though the former also had a well-known Turf
Club. Madras, the oldest of the English settlements and a major
commercial centre under the East India Company, maintained from
the early eighteenth century a bowling green, spacious walks, and
public buildings. Even so, there were only a few hundred English
inhabitants at that time, and masonic lodges were apparently the sole
associations to arrive before the French occupation (174663). After
the French withdrawal, the English population expanded markedly (to
about 3,000 by 1770), and assured a viable level of support for public
socializing. Soon after, it was said that there was `scarce an evening
without some great entertainment, public or private', including
concerts and plays, a philosophical society, jockey club, and the inevitable masonic lodges. Public sociability at Madras was spurred by
open rivalry with Calcutta, despite the recognition in 1783 that `the
inhabitants of Bengal are much more sociably disposed than we humdrum Madrassers'. 89
87
R. V. Harris, The History of St Andrew's Lodge . . . 17501920 (Halifax, NS, 1920), 9, 201, 50
1; The Constitution of Free-Masonry or Ahiman Rezon (London, 1807), appendix; see above, p. 3;
Castiglioni's Viaggio 82; Union List of Manuscripts in Canadian Repositaries (Ottowa, 1968), 39, 588.
88
L. B. Wright and M. Tinling (eds.), Quebec to Carolina in 17851786 (San Marino, Calif.,
1943), 33, 35, 41; J. R. Robertson (ed.), The Diary of Mrs John Graves Simcoe (Toronto, 1911), 120
and passim.
89
P. Spear, The Nabobs: A Study of the Social Life of the English in 18th century India (London,
1963), 25, 11, 30, chs. 2, 4; The Freemasons' Calendar . . . 1776 (London, 1776), 28, 334; Sport.
Mag., 14 (1799), 2413; Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, ii. 194; iii. 176; India Gazette, 15 Mar.
1790; The Madras Racing Calendar (Madras, 17951837).

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

423

Calcutta was already larger than Madras by the early Georgian era.
Following its recapture by the British (in 1757), the town became the
administrative capital of the wealthy province of Bengal and also
(after 1773) of British India. Seconded by its powerful position in
both Asian and European trade, Calcutta increased its population
from 120,000 in mid-century to nearly 200,000 at the end, of whom
perhaps 3 per cent were white. During this period the expatriate
town was completely rebuilt, with many classical-style public buildings, and became the leading overseas arena for British-style sociability and associations outside North America. Here in 1784 the
linguist and lawyer Sir William Jones created the Asiatic Society of
Bengal, in order to promote the study of oriental art, languages, and
antiquities. The society and its transactions, Asiatick Researches, took
Europe by storm, impressed the Americans, and opened up in the
West the whole eld of oriental studies. 90 The Asiatic Society was
only the most prestigious of a congerie of associations: charitable
bodies like the military orphan and free school societies, singing
clubs, school and alumni societies, bachelors', dining, and benevolent
clubs, a Bucks society, and a medley of masonic lodges.91 Alongside a
pageant of plays, races, fetes-champetres, balls, assemblies and concerts,
this gave substance to the claim that `in the elegance of its amusements . . . [Calcutta] will shortly vie with most of the cities even in
Europe'.92
Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the sociable cream was
spread thinly. Gibraltar and Minorca (under intermittent British rule)
had numerous masonic lodges linked with their garrisons. After the
British seizure of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch, several
new societies were established, such as the Sick and Burial Society and
90
P. J. Marshall, `Eighteenth-Century Calcutta', in R. J. Ross et G. J. Telkamp (eds.),
Colonial Cities (Dordrecht, 1985), 88101; id., The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. II (2)
(Cambridge, 1987), 15960, 163; J. P. Losty, Calcutta City of Palaces (London, 1990); O. P.
Kejariwal, The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Discovery of India's Past (Delhi, 1988), 3440, 534,
74; S. N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones: A Study in 18th-Century British Attitudes to India
(Cambridge, 1968), 312, 813, 889.
91
Original Papers relative to the Establishment of a Society in Bengal for the protection of Orphans of
Ofcers . . . (London, 1784); The Bengal Calendar (Calcutta, 1790), 98; C. Lushington, The
History and Present State of the Religious, Benevolent and Charitable Institutions . . . in Calcutta
(Calcutta, 1824), 229 ff., 323 ff.; Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, ii. 162; iii. 204, 2445, 321
2, 325, 326; Star, 23 Apr. 1791; Sport. Mag., 15 (17991800), 130; see above, pp. 345, 347.
92
Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, iii. 180, 207, 211; W. S. Seton-Karr (ed.), Selections
from Calcutta Gazettes . . . Eighty Years Ago (Calcutta, 18649), i. 12, 29 and passim; quote
at p. 27.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

424

Overseas

the smart African Turf Club. A scattering of masonic lodges and other
societies existed in isolated settlements.93
Almost everywhere support was conned to the elite classes.
Though the composition of the elite varied between settlements,
societies depended heavily on those groups associated with British
power: merchants, civil and military ofcials, professional men, and (in
the West Indies), planters or their agents. The Calcutta Gazette articulated the elitist vision of colonial sociability by declaring, in 1789, that
`fashion spreads its infatuating inuence by example: examples originate with the leaders of the Ton and the leaders of the Ton are
always among the people esteemed the highest in distinction'. Leading
merchants were widely involved in masonic lodges and also in
societies at Montreal and Bridgetown. In India, the well connected
lawyer William Hickey was active in a web of societies, while East
India Company ofcials were prominent among the founding
members of the Asiatic Society. 94 At Capetown, the government scal
was a leading gure in several societies, and the governor of Bermuda
had his own club. Typical of professional members was the court
advocate Hugh Keane, a busy member of St Vincent's clubs; the
Bombay Literary Club had a raft of such people, including (in 1812)
three clergy, ve doctors, and seventeen ofcers. In the West Indies,
planters and the like participated in associations, though much of their
social life, pickled in drink, revolved around their plantations. Exceptionally, Calcutta had a number of societies for men from lesser trades;
this may have been a reaction to the formation there of select societies
with rules to exclude tradesmen. Otherwise, voluntary associations in
what became the Second Empire were almost exclusively limited to
small elite cadres. An American visitor to India in the 1790s was rather
dismissive of the quality of sociable activity there. 95
British metropolitan inuence was strong over many of these
93
A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge, 17171967 (Oxford, 1967), 22932; FMH, SN (Ancients),
1408; J. Lane, Masonic Records, 17171894 (London, 1895); The African Court Calendar for the Year
1826 (Capetown, 1826), 28; Sport. Mag., 11 (17978), 31314; The Mauritius Calendar for A.D.
1816 (Mauritius, 1816), pp. 347, 401.
94
Seton-Karr (ed.), Calcutta Gazette, ii. 226; Wright and Tinling (eds.), Quebec to Carolina,
41, 3201; Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, iii. 2445, 291, 314, 321, and passim; Mukherjee, Sir
William Jones, 77, 84.
95
African Court Calendar, 28; Sport. Mag., 11 (17978), 314; Wilkinson, Bermuda, 280;
Virginia Historical Soc., MS 1: K 197a 4 (1792); The Madras Almanac . . . 1812 (Madras,
1812), 221; Luffman, Antigua, 51 ff.; Spencer (ed.), Hickey Memoirs, iii. 3467; `Journal of
Captain John Crowninshield at Calcutta 17978', Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, 81
(1945), 364.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

425

colonial societies. Some, like the masons and Bucks, were direct
offshoots of London associations; others were more loosely connected, among them the Barbados Society of Arts, the Asiatic
Society (modelled on the Royal Society), the Calcutta Catch Club
(linked to the famous London club), and the Jamaica Humane
Society. There were regular reports of London clubs in the colonial
press, while migration ensured an irrigating ow of society
members from the British Isles. As in Britain and the United
States, clubs and societies played a signicant part in smoothing
the path of outsiders and immigrants in colonial communities. They
also served to link together and consolidate small, precarious local
elites, where high mobility (and even higher mortality) eroded the
conventional meaning of status distinctions. As one Calcutta
resident observed in 1789, `supreme councillors and cooks, advocates and auctioneers . . . are all indiscriminately plunged in the
[social] vortex'. The British associational world of heavy drinking,
fellowship, mutual support, and personal advancement was reinforced on the colonial periphery by distance, isolation, and, all
too often, terrible adversity. 96
Much of the explanation for the sparse conguration of public
sociability in the Second Empire is self-evident. The fundamental
difculty in many places was the small size of the expatriate population, particularly those better-off classes interested and able to afford
to participate. Under George III, the Barbados Society of Arts
calculated that there were 30,000 whites on the island (twice the
true gure), but most were poor, so that only `600 families of real
property' were settled in the colony; in consequence, if the Society
of Arts `should rise to 100 subscribers . . . it must be the utmost of
our expectations'. Bermuda had 1,500 adult white males, and of
these only a few hundred belonged to the better-off classes. Of
Bombay in the 1790s we hear how `small . . . the society is',
comprising no more than a couple of hundred upper-class men.
Only in Calcutta was there a somewhat larger pool of prosperous
merchants, professional men, and ofcials, one capable of sustaining
a wider array of societies. Only here was there any number of

96
D. G. C. Allan, `Joshua Steele and the Royal Society of Arts', Journal of the Barbados
Museum and Historical Soc., 22 (19545), 84102; Mukherjee, Sir William Jones, 83; Spencer (ed.),
Hickey Memoirs, ii. 163; iii. 291; New Jamaica Almanack, 114; Seton-Karr (ed.),Calcutta Gazette, ii.
2002, 3712.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

426

Overseas

middle-rank tradesmen and artisans able to join established societies

or form their own.97
There was a way out of this dilemma: recruitment from the local
population. In Canada, some attempt was made to involve French
colonists in the new British societies, but nationalist sentiment,
combined with traditional cultural activities (centred on the Catholic
Church) discouraged participation. A handful of free coloured
societies may have operated in the West Indies, but the growing slave
population, notably in Jamaica and Antigua, generated racist fears and
a concern to create a distinctive English identity: public sociability was
part of the process of constructing a cultural ghetto for the British
community, and in any case, only a modest number of better-off
blacks could afford the membership charges. In India, the more
relaxed attitude of Europeans towards contact with the indigenous
population, particularly the wealthy elite, left open the possibility of
Indian membership of associations. There are one or two instances of
Indian princes being admitted as masons, but these seem to have been
exceptional. One reason was that, even in Calcutta, where there
existed a large and prosperous Indian community of traders and the
like, local peoples remained wedded to traditional religions and
learned activities and showed little interest in European fashionability.
Moreover, the main upsurge of societies in the last years of the
century coincided with a growing Anglicization of the lifestyles of
British merchants and ofcials. Sir William Jones left the question of
the admission of Indians to a ballot of members, but none was
admitted for some time. The Calcutta Free School Society insisted
that children at its school should speak `nothing but English'. Only in
the early nineteenth century do we nd Indian membership of
societies, with the Hindu elite setting up their own associations. 98
Elsewhere, urbanization was a fundamental factor, almost a precondition, in the large-scale advance of voluntary associations. The
rise of Calcutta was clearly impressive, with its development as a
leading commercial and governmental capital in the European style,
97

Allan, `Joshua Steele', 85; Wells, Population, 1801; India Gazette, 3 May 1790; Spears,
Nabobs, 78; see above, p. 347; also P. J. Marshall, Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British
Dominance in India (Aldershot, 1993), ch. 15.
98
e.g., FMH, HC, 18/A/5; but see also the debate over admission, FMH, SN (Ancients),
1342 (Mar. 1812); Marshall, `Calcutta', 989; Spear, Nabobs, 345; W. Jones, A Discourse On the
Institution of a Society for . . . The Antiquities . . . of Asia (London, 1784), 12 ; Marshall, New
Cambridge History, 176; Proposals for the Institution of a Free School Society in Bengal . . . (Calcutta,
1796), 17.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

427

but in other British territories urban conditions were often primitive,

to say the least. Even in the 1790s Halifax, Nova Scotia, was said to
resemble some of the small villages near London on the banks of the
Thames. In Newfoundland, Joseph Banks described St John's as `the
most disagreeable town I have ever met with'dirty, squalid, and
stinking of sh. Hurricanes destroyed much of St John's, Antigua, in
1770 and Bridgetown, Barbados, the following decade. Until the last
part of our period, urban facilities for public socializing, particularly
inns and taverns, left much to be desired, and purpose-built club
rooms had to be erected before associational life could take root. 99
Despite the slow pace of urbanization, the colonial press was an
important vector for the spread of information about associations and
socializing, as in other parts of the English-speaking world. Papers
appeared quite early in the West Indies, and Antigua had as many as
three weekly journals by the 1780s. In India, Calcutta's rst paper,
Hickey's Journal, was suppressed by Warren Hastings in 1782, but the
following decade saw an increasingly established press (though censorship was imposed in 1799). Colonial newspapers carried extensive
reports about fashionable sociability, both local and in the mother
country. They also reported more traditional social activities, though
these seem to have been on the wane by the close of the period.
Churches at Madras and Calcutta were, reportedly, losing their role as
social centres, being replaced by races, balls, and association meetings.
In Indian country districts rural sports such as tiger-hunting remained
popular with expatriates, but in urban areas they were disappearing: in
the 1780s there was a denunciation of people shooting birds in
Calcutta, `a species of such impropriety and disorder . . . in so
populous, so beautiful a place and in such a cultivated assemblage
of society'. While fashionable socializing was in the ascendant among
the colonial elite, a great deal of it occurred on a private basis. 100
The rise of public sociability and societies in the empire may have
suffered from increased ofcial intervention, as London sought to
impose greater control in the wake of the American debacle. In addition to censorship in India, legal and administrative reform led to state
interference and regulation across a broad swathe of colonial society. 101
99
Wansey, Journal, 24; A. M. Lysaght (ed.), Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador,
1766 (London, 1971), 1467; Mereness (ed.), Travels, 379; but see the improvements in
Jamaican towns from the 1770s: Bowen, Elites, 141.
100
Luffman, Brief Account, 142; V. A. Smith, The Oxford History of India (Oxford, 1919),
6467; Spear, Nabobs, 110; Seton-Karr (ed.), Calcutta Gazette, i. 245; ii. 352.
101
Bowen, Elites, 194.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

428

Overseas

These were not the only problems, since associational activity was
frequently disrupted by warfare, high mortality, and mobility. For all
these difculties, by the start of the nineteenth century we can see a
network of clubs and societies, however fragile, planted in most parts
of the empire, organizations which offered an important social and
cultural focus for the expatriate community, created links between the
different colonial elites, helped to integrate newcomers and visitors,
and, not least, proclaimed the settlement's identication with metropolitan civilization.

vi i
The export of public sociability and voluntary associations to the
wider English-speaking world was a striking achievement. Nothing
comparable occurred in any of the other European empires. Clubs and
societies helped to fashion the powerful cultural identity of that
commercial and nancial world of `gentlemanly capitalism' which
has been seen as crucial for British imperial expansion from the
eighteenth century. 102 However, the picture was clearly complex, for
the contours of associational activity reected as much local conditions as the metropolitan dynamic. It was the difculties of distance
and communication, the small size and wide spread of the British
population, the lack of towns and the recurrence of war, which
determined that in many parts of the Georgian empire associations
remained in a colonial or elite mode: limited in number and range,
conned to the biggest centres, identied principally with the ruling,
commercial, and professional classes. There are parallels here with the
picture discerned in earlier chapters for Ireland. On the other hand, in
the American colonies signs appeared before the Revolution of a
decisive shift towards a more developed system of associations,
embracing small as well as larger urban centres, middling and artisan
social groups, in addition to the Anglophile elite. By 1800 the mosaic
of societies in the United States had its own increasingly distinctive
designnot least, the prominence of new ethnic societiesyet the
framework and function of American voluntarism bore considerable
resemblance to the situation in mainland Britain, not through the
success of cultural imperialism, but because economic, social, and
102

P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 16881914

(Harlow, 1993), 15; for a critique of their stress on commercial factors see Bowen, Elites,
1819.

8.11.99 08:33 11 Chapter 0394

Overseas

429

other trends in the two countries began for a while to converge. Most
signicant was the role of associations both as engines of national
integration and improvement, and as mechanisms to distinguish regional and local differences, a key element in conrming the kaleidoscope of local communities, so important in the political and cultural
development of Britain and America into the twentieth century.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

12

Impact

Clubs and societies were clearly among the most numerous, diverse,
and dynamic organizations in late Georgian society. Challenged only
by drinking houses and churches in their level of support, they
ourished throughout the urban system, and came to occupy a central
position in British social life. Whereas diaries of the late seventeenth
century recorded largely traditional social activities, with only minor
reference to clubs and societies, by 1800 association meetings gure
time and again in the pages of private journals. That of the American
Samuel Curwen, who lived in London after 1775, shows him to have
been a keen devotee of voluntary societies. Over two months, in
February and March 1781, he took part almost twenty times in a
society-related event, going to meetings of the SPG, the Je Ne Sais
Quoi Club, and his great love, the masonic order, with its lodge nights
and less formal gatherings of brethren. Though he went in smart
company to auction rooms, taverns, coffee-houses, eating houses, and
church, only private socializing, usually at home with fellow lodgers,
surpassed his society commitments. Another London diarist, the artist
Joseph Farington, noted how during the winter of 17934 he spent
much of his time (apart from private socializing) at meetings of the
Royal Academy, the Royal Academy Club, and the Society of Antiquaries. Particularly striking (as with Curwen) was the amount of time
spent informally with other club members, away from formal meetings, suggesting a wider, ripple effect across social life. Club activities
were even incorporated into the civic calendar, as can be seen from
the journal of Richard Clark, lord mayor of London in 1784 to 1785,
who was entertained at a succession of society dinners and events
throughout the season. 1
Clubbing extended its inuence well beyond the metropolitan smart
classes. During the late 1780s and early 1790s the New England
1

A. Oliver (ed.), The Journal of Samuel Curwen Loyalist (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), ii. 72440;
K. Garlick et al. (eds.), The Diary of Joseph Farington (London, 197884), i. 10467; Guildhall,
MS 3385/12, 6.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

431

minister, William Bentley, chronicled his attendance at a host of

meetingsat masonic lodges, marine societies, the Salem philosophical library, shing parties, re clubs, and the humane society.
Lower down the social scale, the life of the English engraver Thomas
Bewick revolved around societies: as a young Newcastle apprentice his
career was given an important boost by the award of a premium or
prize by the Society of Arts, and when he subsequently moved to
London he joined a weekly club of northerners at the Hole and the
Wall public house in Fleet Street; on his return to Newcastle, Bewick
met up with brethren of a book club, went to a music society, and, as
his status advanced, became a member of Swarley's Club at the Black
Boy (a society of merchants and respectable tradesmen), and also
joined a brotherly society; in his business affairs he did a good trade
producing engravings for clubs and societies. If towns had a limited
cultural impact on the ordinary life of the countryside during the early
eighteenth century, by the later years of the period men like John
Burgess, a village craftsman living near Lewes, not only went to
traditional harvest suppers, fairs, church meetings, and new-style
entertainments like cricket matches and horse-races, but, according
to his diary, belonged to at least two clubs, one of them `for the
improvement of our minds in useful knowledge'. It is difcult to
generalize from individual cases, but taking into account the numbers
of clubs and their likely membership, by 1800 there was probably a
one-in-three chance of an English townsman belonging to a society
(with an even higher proportion in the capital); the ratio was nearer
one to six or seven in Scottish towns; elsewhere the rate was considerably lower. 2
The object of this chapter is to investigate some of the economic,
social, political, and cultural implications of the rise of clubs and
societies in the British world, by drawing on and bringing together
the ndings of previous chapters. As will become evident, the growth
of voluntary societies impacted on many key aspects of British society
in the period, including class and social networking, gender, the

2
W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD., Vol. I (Salem, Mass., 1905), 556, 152, 263,
and passim; T. Bewick, A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, ed. I. Bain (Oxford, 1979), 41, 75, 95, 96,
1023; J. Brewer and S. Tillyard, `The Moral Vision of Thomas Bewick', in E. Hellmuth (ed.),
The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford,
1990), 377; see also the vivid account of Bewick in J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
(London, 1997), ch. 13. D. F. Burgess (ed.), No Continuing City: The Diary and Letters of John
Burgess . . . (Redhill, 1989), 6, 7, 24, 27, 37, 39, 40.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

432

Impact

signicance of localism and regionality, and relations between the state

and the individual.

i
To start with, however, it is necessary to try to evaluate voluntary
associations on their own terms. Attempts to assess the success of
organizations or institutions are notoriously difcult: even for the
twentieth century there are few agreed yardsticks of comparison.
Yet the issue cannot be ducked, because of the avowed, often highown commitment of many societies in their rules, constitutions, and
publicity to specic plansto the propagation of new ideas, the
advance of improvement, or the prevention of deprivation. 3 The
extraordinary array of specialist bodies means we are spoilt for choice.
It is necessary, therefore, to concentrate on a small number of the
more important and active associations: regional and ethnic societies;
social policy organizations like moral reform societies, prosecution
societies, and benet clubs; improvement associations; and scientic
and cultural bodies.
As we know, the regional society seems to have originated in
London and Bristol about the time of the English Revolution. One
of its principal activities was the raising of funds to apprentice country
boys to big city masters. Thomas White, for instance, boasted to the
Warwickshire society in London in 1695, `how many poor children
have been fetch'd from the towns and villages where they were born
and put to honest callings in this city'. 4 To what extent were such
claims true? Details are sparse, but the number apprenticed by metropolitan county feast societies was probably never large. Edmund
Calamy praised the London feast society in 1657 for indenturing thirty
boys, but this was twice the level previously achieved; other societies
may have done less wellthe Warwickshire feast society in 1683
aimed to apprentice just eight poor boys from that shire. Given that
many county societies in later Stuart London met rather sporadically,
and that there were at most about a dozen functioning at any time,
one might calculate that a maximum of 200 boys and probably as few
as 100 a year were indentured by societies of this kind, in comparison
3

See above, pp. 195, 246.

See above, pp. 27580; T. White, A Sermon Preach'd to the Natives of the County of Warwick
. . . (London, 1695), 18.
4

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

433

to the 2,000 or 3,000 apprenticed annually in the capital after the

Restoration.5
For Bristol there is better documentation, at least for the Gloucestershire Society. By 1701 the custom was established of apprenticing six
boys from the shire and ve from the city. If other county societies in
the city followed suit, they may have indentured forty boys a year out
of an annual total of 250 or so Bristol apprentices at the start of the
eighteenth century. This would suggest that the contribution of
county societies to the integration of young people in the urban
community was relatively minor, and that their main concerns were
in other directions. By comparison, ethnic societies, particularly in the
later eighteenth century, were more heavily engaged in large-scale
assistance to migrants. The London Scots Corporation at the end of
the period was relieving and repatriating over a thousand Scots a year;
the Welsh school, linked to the Society of Ancient Britons, was
looking after about sixty children in the capital from the 1770s. In
America, ethnic societies at the major ports aided substantial numbers
of immigrants. In general, however, county and ethnic organizations
clearly had wider secondary concerns, apart from aiding migrants, of
which the most important was elite networking. 6
In the social policy area, the numerous moral reform societies had a
mixed record. Despite their initial attack on all forms of moral abuse,
the societies which sprang up after 1688 soon focused on a limited
agenda, concerned with swearing, prostitutes, and brothels, and Sunday trading. Alehouses, despite their focus for drunken and disorderly
behaviour, received only limited attention, probably because of the
new-found respectability of their landlords and the growing power of
the London brewers. Prosecutions by the societies in the capital rose
steadily from 750 or so `lewd and scandalous' persons in the 1690s, to
863 in 1705, and then sharply to 3,000 or so in 1709, before falling
back to a few hundred in the 1730s. The decline was largely due to
public hostility to the societies' methods (including the use of
5
E. Calamy, The City Remembrancer. Or, A Sermon Preached To the Native-Citizens of London
(London, 1657), 2; London Gazette, 1115 Oct. 1683; M. Kitch, `Capital and Kingdom:
Migration to Later Stuart London', in A. L. Beier and R. Finlay (eds.), London, 15001700:
The Making of the Metropolis (London, 1986), 226.
6
H. Bush, History of the Gloucestershire Society (Bristol, n.d.), 10; J. R. Holman, `Apprenticeship as a Factor in Migration: Bristol, 16751726', Trans. of the Bristol and Gloucs. Archaeological
Soc., 97 (1979), 8592; An Account of the Institution, Progress and Present State of the Scots Corporation
. . . (London, 1807), 12; An Account of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the Welsh Society . . .
(London, 1793), 9.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

434

Impact

informers), not because they were successful. There is no evidence

that their efforts had any lasting effect on social and moral disorder in
the capital or elsewhere.7 The only domestic society to survive the
reaction against the moral reform movement was the Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge (1699), which developed an extensive
institutional structure. Active in fostering local religious societies and
charity school societies, the SPCK provided continuing support for
moral reform during the rst half of the eighteenth century. Later in
the period, however, the society was outanked by new bodies such as
the Proclamation Society and the Society for the Suppression of Vice,
though neither of these was very effective. The Vice Society became
enmeshed in complaints of using dubious evidence in prosecutions,
and suffered sustained public ridicule, culminating in Sydney Smith's
famous description of it as `a society for suppressing the vices of
persons whose income does not exceed 500 per annum'. 8
At best, the moral reform societies served as an ally of local
magistrates; at worst, as an unpopular target for groups opposed to
reform. The assorted societies for the prosecution of felons hardly did
any better. Here, only the Society of Noblemen and Gentlemen for
the Preservation of the Game (1752) had a national organization.
Attempting to promote prosecutions across southern England, it
soon lost momentum and struggled on in an impotent state. The
incidence and activity of local prosecution societies varied greatly
across the country, with few outside England. One of the most
energetic was the Guardians or London Society for the Protection
of Trade against Swindlers and Sharpers. Established about 1776, after
twenty years it had nearly 300 members across the capital, mostly
shopkeepers and tradesmen. The society published regular warning
notices against fraudsters and paid the cost of prosecuting shoplifters
and the like. Elsewhere, the picture was more uneven. In some areas,
such as Essex, 10 per cent of property-crime notices in the local press
7

P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History, 12001830 (London, 1983), 1867; The Tenth
Black List (London, 1705); The Fourteenth Account of the Progress made in Suppressing Prophaness and
Debauchery (London, 1709); R. Drew, A Sermon Preached to the Societies for Reformation of Manners
(London, 1735), 24; R. B. Shoemaker, `Reforming the City: The Reformation of Manners
Campaign in London, 16901738', in L. Davison et al. (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive
(Stroud, 1992), 105.
8
See pp. 656, 4656; M. J. D. Roberts, `The Society for the Suppression of Vice and its
Early Critics, 18021812', HJ, 26 (1983), 1612, 1689; J. Innes, `Politics and Morals: The
Reformation of Manners Movement in Later 18th-Century England', in E. Hellmuth (ed.),
The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the Late 18th Century (Oxford, 1990),
79118; Edinburgh Review, 13 (18089), 335, 342.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

435

were posted by prosecution societies; in Norfolk the gure was as

high as 33 per cent. Manchester's Society for the Prosecution of
Felons boasted in 1788 that it had secured the gaoling of seven
offenders, the whipping of ve, and the transportation of another
thirteen. However, most societies, according to recent studies, generated a meagre level of prosecutions, conning their support almost
wholly to members and failing to concert their activities. Too often the
initial enthusiasm for action soon waned, sometimes because of local
opposition. At most, such bodies had only a modest, supplementary
effect on the detection and prosecution of crime, and never constituted an adequate substitute for public prosecution. Much of their
signicance seems to have been in other, secondary areas: as a place
for local worthies to socialize, and discuss employment policies,
wages, and poor relief. 9
Benet clubs were the most common type of welfare society in
eighteenth-century Britain, covering both town and countryside, artisans and some middle-rank traders, as well as agricultural workers.
Writers like Eden argued strongly for the role of friendly societies in
alleviating the poverty problem and, in particular, diminishing poor
rates. With regard to helping members and their families overcome
immediate short-term problems caused by sickness, bereavement, and
(in the case of trade clubs) trade difculties, the societies may have
been reasonably successful. It is doubtful, however, whether they
could deal with long-term relief problems, such as poverty caused
by the old age of members, structural industrial decline, or agrarian
upheaval. Many societies ran into insolvency once their membership
began to age. Even the overall relief provided by societies should not
be exaggerated. In the 1790s Patrick Colquhoun claimed that
London's friendly societies expended annually 80,000; but this gure
was dwarfed by Eden's estimate of poor-rate levies in the metropolis
of over 245,000. Taking Eden's calculation of 1 a member for
annual club expenditure, the poor returns for 18034 suggest that
friendly society expenditure for England was of the order of twothirds of a million pounds, compared to nearly 4 million for parish
9
C. Kirby, `The English Game Law System', American Historical Review, 38 (19323), 254
5; see above, pp. 1023; A List of the Guardians or Society for the Protection of Trade . . . (London,
1799); St James Chronicle, 235 Mar. 1790; P. J. R. King, `Crime, Law and Society in Essex'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1984), 207, 218, 222, 229, 2312; J.
Styles, `Print and Policing: Crime Advertising in 18th-Century Provincial England', in D. Hay
and F. Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 17501850 (Oxford 1989), 63; BL, Call
No.: 1856 c. 5 (157*); Hay and Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution, 278, 127 ff.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

436

Impact

indoor and outdoor relief; but the last covered rural areas where
societies were fewer. In some provincial towns parish and friendly
society support for the lower orders was more comparable, as at
Shefeld; but exclusive membership rules meant that many societies
failed to address the needs of the most deprived sectors of the population, notably the labouring poor. 10 Nor should we be sanguine that the
growth of benet societies actually increased the total volume of relief
available to the lower orders. Several advocates argued that the growth
of box clubs would allow parish overseers to curtail parish relief, and
they seemed to have done this, whether or not the clubs were able to
step into the breach. In some towns, such as Bristol, the increase in
associational relief (including philanthropic bodies as well as box clubs)
was matched by a decline in old-style charitable endowment. 11
Widening the discussion to consider the effect of the many kinds of
philanthropic and benevolent society ourishing by the end of the
eighteenth century proves equally problematic. Only a proportion of
these were concerned with the relief of the poor, and the limited
nancial data make analysis difcult, but the history of individual
societies suggests once again that their impact was mixed. Thus, the
number of families aided by the Edinburgh Society for the Relief of
the Destitute Sick uctuated sharply from year to year, expenditure
being driven more by income than by deserving demand. Too often,
times of heavy applications for relief (for instance, years of high
prices) coincided with downturns in income as better-off members
reduced support. At Hull, the Stranger's Friend Society declared in
one crisis year that its funds were entirely exhausted, and that it had to
borrow money to meet requests for relief. Confronted with a yellow
fever epidemic in 1800, New York's Society for the Relief of Poor
Widows found that many of its lady patrons had ed the city and only
four of its board remained to distribute help to the needy. 12
10
P. Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (London, 1797), 3812; F. Eden,
The State of the Poor, 1797 (London, 1966), Vol. i, pp. xxv, 461; PP, 18034, XIII, Abstract of the
Answers and Returns Relative to the Expence and Maintenance of the Poor, 714; see above, pp. 3767.
11
See above, p. 371; M. Gorsky, `The Pattern of Philanthropy: Endowed Charity in 19th
Century Bristol', paper at the Economic History Society Conference, Hull 1993 (I am
grateful to Dr Gorsky for letting me refer to this).
12
A. J. Dalgleish, `Voluntary Associations and the Middle Class in Edinburgh, 17801820'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1991), 801; Hull Advertiser, 30 May
1801, 25 Oct. 1806; see also the problems of the Dublin Sick and Indigent Roomkeepers'
Society in D. Dickson (ed.), The Gorgeous Mask: Dublin, 17001850 (Dublin, 1987), 13940; J. C.
Brown Library, Brown University, Constitutions of the Ladies Society established in New York . . .
(New York, 1800), 1416.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

437

Improvement societies, another important group of British associations, also deserve critical attention. Improvement was regarded as
the key to national progress, generating not only economic, but also
social and moral advance; leading improvers were often regarded as
cultural heroes. Ideas about improvement suffused the activities of a
great range of societies. For example, when Benjamin Annable, one of
the leading members of the College Youths ringing society, died in
1756 his eulogy proclaimed: `Till his time ringing was only called an art
but from the strength of his great genius he married it to the mathematics and 'tis now a science.' To assess the practical impact of this
concern, we need to look at the self-styled improvement societies,
such as the Royal Dublin Society, the London Society of Arts, or their
Scottish counterparts. The rst, established in 1731 and chartered
nearly two decades later, seems to have directed most of its energies
at agricultural innovation, through publicity for the latest farming
advances, by setting up a botanical garden (1732) and chemical laboratory (1797), and by instituting chairs of botany and chemistry. Otherwise, the society's work appears marginal, and failed to achieve any
important increase in Irish agricultural output; its most signicant
scientic activity occurred after the end of our period. 13
Admittedly, the economic environment in Ireland was less conducive to improvement than that in England, so what were achievements
of the Society of Arts based in the capital after 1754? Earlier research
on the society suggested that it had a signicant part to play in
promoting industrial and other forms of innovation, but recent
work has turned more sceptical. To take a few examples: society
premiums had little inuence on the modernization of the papermaking industry; schemes for economic diversication in colonies
such as Virginia failed to produce major new crops or dominant
industries; the project for county maps proved unsuccessful, failing
to produce a national coverage of sufciently high quality maps, and
demonstrating instead the need for Board of Ordnance surveys at
public expense. 14 In Scotland, the Honorable Society of Improvers
may have been good at publicity, but its contribution to national
13
S. Wilmot, `The Business of Improvement': Agriculture and Scientic Culture in Britain c.1700
c.1870, Historical Geography Research Series, 24 (1990), 38; E. Morris, The History and Art of
Change Ringing (London, 1931), 526; K. S. Byrne, `The Royal Dublin Society and the
Advancement of Popular Science in Ireland, 17311860', History of Education, 15 (1986),
818.
14
D. G. C. Allan and J. L. Abbott (eds.), The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences (London,
1992), pp. xxi, 141, 154, 156, 212.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

438

Impact

growth is unclear. In the development of the important linen industry,

for example, the society's main contribution was to lobby for the
creation of the state-funded Board of Trustees, which provided signicant nancial and other support; the Board long outlasted the
Honourable Society, whose meetings ended with the 1745 rebellion.
Later in the century the Highland Society, which operated in both
London and Edinburgh, was interested in promoting new shing
developments on the north-west coast of Scotland, but this was
carried out by the associated British Fisheries Society, established as
a statutory body by Parliament in 1786; even here, actual advances at
Ullapool and elsewhere were modest. 15
Among the most numerous of the local improvement societies in
mainland Britain were the agricultural societies and farming associations, with over seventy listed in 1810. The 1790s also saw the
emergence of national agricultural bodies, such as the Smitheld
Club. Once again, the direct outcome from society meetings, publications, premiums, libraries, shows, and projects, seems muted. If associations of this kind became vital in the nineteenth century for the
circulation of information across farming communities, they probably
had a limited role in agricultural improvement during the previous
century, serving rather as observation plots for testing changes in
agrarian practice. To landowners, membership of such societies was
often more important for its social, political and cultural dividends,
helping them to cut a gure in county society or to run for ofce. 16
`A more general encouragement' to the Society of Arts, it was
claimed in 1791, `would be of more service to the commerce of this
country than all the bounties which government can give'. In reality,
however, the aggregate impact of improvement bodies seems distinctly less impressive, quite often held back by an unwillingness to
co-operate with other bodies, internal divisions, and recurrent nancial difculties. Even the commitment to improvement may be deceptive. Many societies associated themselves with civic works in order to
pump-prime their public reputation and standing. For improvement
15

D. D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman, Wash., 1969), 89; A. J. Durie, The
Scottish Linen Industry in the 18th Century (Edinburgh, 1979), 1415, 18, 29, 1635; J. Dunlop,
The British Fisheries Society, 17861893 (Edinburgh, 1978), 237 and passim.
16
Letters and Papers of the Bath Society, 12 (1810), 397402; E. J. Powell, History of the
Smitheld Club from 1798 to 1900 (London, 1902), 13; H. S. A. Fox, `Local Farmers' Associations and the Circulation of Agricultural Information in 19th-Century England', in H. S. A.
Fox and R. A. Butlin (eds.), Change in the Countryside (London, 1979), 46 ff.; Wilmot, Business
of Improvement, 28, 367.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

439

societies, well-publicized support for advances in a particular eld may

have been more vital than the actual outcomes, and the most substantive impact of their activity was probably indirect. First, they
helped to give improvement its fashionable status, and so contributed
to making British society not just sympathetic to economic innovation
but increasingly obsessed by it. Secondly, they encouraged the betteroff classes to be concerned with public issues and to take their
participation seriously. In the 1750s Charles Powell advocated the
setting up of agricultural societies in Wales to `draw the attention of
the nobility and gentry, now too much dissipated in idle and expensive
diversions'. A half-century later Wilberforce praised the achievement
of agricultural bodies, like the Board of Agriculture, for turning landowners away from social frivolity, with all the `immense sums which
might have been lavished on hounds and horses or still more frivolously squandered on theatricals'. Morally improved in this way, the
upper classes, like the middling orders, would remain serious supporters of public improvement into the Victorian era. 17
Scientic societies followed a similar trajectory. In its early decades
the Royal Society played a vital role in promoting scientic interest
and overcoming church criticism. Not only did it become a signicant
medium in the diffusion of medical knowledge, but in many respects,
such as the publication of the Transactions, circulating information in
the provinces and abroad, it served as the model for all later scientic
organizations in the English-speaking world. However, by the early
eighteenth century, with the proliferation of specialist scientic groups
competing for interest and support, much of the intellectual impetus
was lost. The society's two principal achievements of the eighteenth
century, its involvement in nding an accurate method of determining
longitude and in the observations of the transit of Venus in 1761 and
1769, were powered by subventions of the state. Even under the
presidency of Sir Joseph Banks in the last decades of the century,
the society's scientic record was undistinguished, and its prime
function was to promote international scientic co-operation in tandem with continental academies. The latter, though subject to greater
state control, were better funded, and by the late eighteenth century
may have been more vigorous centres of scientic innovation. The
legacy of the Royal Society in the period was summed up by Dr
17

Star, 12 Jan. 1791; see above, pp. 2712; K. Hudson, Patriotism with Prot: British
Agricultural Societies in the 18th and 19th Centuries (London, 1972), 17; Wilmot, Business of
Improvement, 445.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

440

Impact

Johnson's harsh judgement that, while `great expectations were raised

of the sudden progress of the useful arts . . . , the society met and
parted without any visible diminution of the miseries of life'.18
In Augustan Britain scientic organization was increasingly fragmented, as numerous small societies, both in London and the provinces, strove for support and intellectual territory. They were
frequently beset by nancial difculty, while members were often
more interested in a good dinner than in scientic discourse. In the
provinces, older claims that bodies such as the Lunar Society at
Birmingham or the literary and philosophical societies at Manchester,
Newcastle, and elsewhere provided a vital forum for collaboration
between men of science and of industry have been contested by
detailed research. Thus, the Manchester society had a poor record
in terms of technological innovation and was more concerned with
promoting social contacts under the cover of scientic activity; likewise, the establishment of the Newcastle society was linked with
science's ornamental role, the pleasures of social intercourse soon
eclipsing its utilitarian aspects. `The popularisation of provincial
science', in Roy Porter's words, `had more to do with cultural status
than with factories, more to do with adjusting social relations than
with rening engines.' 19
In comparable fashion, the many medical societies which developed
during the Georgian era were clearly valuable for raising the public
prole and status of the profession. Yet there is considerable debate
among medical historians as to whether such bodies actually promoted medical enlightenment. It has been argued that, because of
their voluntaristic nature, the new societies failed to transform
medical practice, which in academic as well as non-academic circles
18
See above, pp. 523, 74; R. Porter, `The Early Royal Society and the Spread of Medical
Knowledge', in R. French and A. Wear (eds.), The Medical Revolution of the 17th Century
(Cambridge, 1989), 2728; J. E. McClellan, Science Reorganized; Scientic Societies in the 18th
Century (New York, 1985), 1522, 53, 14951, 161; H. Lyons, The Royal Society, 16601940
(Cambridge, 1944), 204, 21617, 225; J. R. Philip, `Samuel Johnson as Antiscientist', Notes and
Records of the Royal Society of London, 29 (19745), 196.
19
T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 17601830 (London, 1948), 16, 201; A. E. Musson
and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), 88 ff.; M.
Billinge, `Hegemony, Class and Power in Late Georgian and Early Victorian England', in A.
R. H. Baker and D. Gregory (eds.), Explorations in Historical Geography (Cambridge, 1984), 46
51; A. Thackray, `Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: The Manchester Model', American
Historical Review, 79 (1974), 672709; D. Orange, `Rational Dissent and provincial science . . .',
in I. Inkster and J. Morrell (eds.), Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture (London,
1983), 21214; R. Porter, `Science, Provincial Culture and Public Opinion in Enlightenment
England', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 3 (1980), 302.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

441

remained rooted in traditionalism. There were only a few signs before

1800 of genuinely scientic medicine. On the more positive side, a
number of societies brought together all three branches of the profession, and in other cases intermixed hospital and country practitioners,
creating a sense of medical community and boosting the circulation of
knowledge, including technical advances in surgical and other cases.
All in all, however, the actual results of so much associational activity
in the improvement, scientic, and medical elds appear open to
question. 20
In the cultural world of Georgian Britain two of the key areas of
associational activity were music and art. Music societies and clubs
were an inuential ingredient in music-making, alongside commercial
and private concerts, church and military music, and music festivals.
Provincial clubs, such as that at Nottingham in the 1770s, were
signicant for the promotion of Purcell, Arne, Handel, and Italian
composers like Corelli, in urban musical life. Singing societies in the
south and the growing number of choral societies in the north played
a vital part in the spread and popularity of Handel's oratorios from the
1730s. On the other hand, for all the vitality of music-making, societies
proved to be strong supporters of traditionalism, provoking John
Arbuthnot, for instance, to lambast that `indefatigable society the
gropers into ancient music and the hummers out of madrigals'.
Arbuthnot's targets, the Academy of Ancient Music and the Madrigal
Society, were joined in the late eighteenth century by the Society of
Musicians, the Concert of Ancient Music, and several new clubs
engaged in the active promotion of Handel and earlier composers,
dampening innovation even on the more progressive commercial
circuit: Haydn was accepted in London, but not the adult Mozart. 21
In Dublin, notable for its many music societies, nearly half the operas
performed in the city during the eighteenth century were English
ballad and comic operas, with Gluck one of the few foreign composers whose work was performed. In many of the fashionable catch
20
R. Porter, `Was there a Medical Enlightenment in Eighteenth Century England?',
British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 5 (1982), 519; S. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge:
Hospital Pupils and Practiitioners in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1996), esp. 12, 18,
2503, 262, 277.
21
Notts. RO, M 190; W. Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England
(Oxford, 1992), 82, 1589, 177, 183, 18990 and passim; B. W. Pritchard, `The Music Festival
and the Choral Society in England in the 18th and 19th centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University of Birmingham, 1968), 37 ff.; J. G. Williams, `The Inuence of English Music and
Society on G. F. Handel' (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Leeds, 1969), 1617;
S. McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993), 7, 93 ff., 127, 225.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

442

Impact

and glee clubs, the core repertoire up to the end of the eighteenth
century concentrated on traditional drinking and lubricious songs.
British music-making under George III, much of it associated with
societies, was more noted for its quantity than its quality, and was
remarkable for its failure to encourage and favour new British composers of signicance. As The Oracle complained in 1792, `there is
positively no nation in Europe where music is so generally patronised
and so little professed as in our own'. 22
In art, the impact of voluntary associations may have been more
positive. London's Dilettanti Society led the way in the promotion of
British understanding of Italian and later Grecian art and antiquities,
and played a part in the foundation of the Royal Academy. Beneting
from George III's personal patronage and under the presidency of Sir
Joshua Reynolds, the Academy organized an important series of
exhibitions and a teaching school (albeit a very selective one), and
so helped to professionalize the London art world. On the other hand,
it suffered from bitter internal disputes and a narrow focus of activity,
largely conned to artists working in London and using the medium
of oils. By the start of the nineteenth century the Academy was in the
doldrums, beset by intrigue, and one sees the emergence of new
specialist societies, like the Society of Painters in Water Colours, the
Society for the Study of Epic and Pastoral Design (whose members
included Turner), and provincial bodies, such as the Norwich Society
of Artists. 23
Clearly, there are serious difculties in assessing the work of voluntary bodies, but one's impression is that British clubs and societies,
despite their number and vitality, had a relatively modest and diffuse
impact in their primary elds of activity. This is not to deny their
wider contribution to the promotion of new ideas, of expectations of
improvement and innovation. In science, learning, philosophy, architecture, art, and music, Britain, too long on the edge of European
cultural advances, sailed into the mainstream during the eighteenth
22
T. J. Walsh, Opera in Dublin, 17051797: The Social Scene (Dublin, 1973), 311; J. G. Hooper,
`A Survey of Music in Bristol, With Special Reference to the 18th Century' (unpublished MA
dissertation, University of Bristol, 1963), 2012, 204; McVeigh, Concert Life, 228, 229.
23
L. Cust, History of the Society of Dilettanti (London, 1914), 51 ff., 80 ff.; S. C. Hutchison,
The History of the Royal Academy, 17681968 (London, 1968), 7881; Brewer, Pleasures, 24950,
2589; University of Texas, Austin, Special Collections Dept., MSS, Society for Study of Epic
and Pastoral Design; N. L. Goldberg, John Crome the Elder (Oxford, 1978), i. 5 ff.; also at
Liverpool: R. Brooke, Liverpool as it was during the last quarter of the 18th century 1775 to 1800
(Liverpool, 1853), 389.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

443

century, as Scotland as well as England became signicant centres of

Enlightenment ideas. As the Enlightenment percolated across
Europe, it `involved not only thinkers, philosophers, writers and
others . . . it also involved more or less highly organised associations'. Nowhere was this more the case than in Britain. Compared to
foreign academies, the impact of British societies was often incremental rather than dynamic, but the broad membership of societies
may have promoted a wider, more participatory Enlightenment than
the brilliant but elitist cultural worlds found in France or Germany.
Equally signicant was the wide provincial sweep of associations,
taking new cultural ideas from the great cities to the doorstep of
country towns. 24
How does one explain the relatively limited achievements of
British associations in the period? Those organizational problems
identied in earlier chapters were clearly part of the story. Crucial
was the high turnover and instability of many societies, their short
phases of fashionability and momentum succeeded by a steady
attrition of interest and membership. The absence of adequate
funding was another recurrent problem. Societies, Dr Samuel Salter
declared, `have one common defect . . . they are raised on the
uncertain basis of voluntary contribution, which, even when it is
the most ample and generous, [is] ... liable to be affected and shaken
by caprice'. Aided by only sporadic public grants, the Royal Society
found it difcult to keep up with state-funded foreign academies,
while the Royal Irish Academy, though beneting from government
premises and a modest ofcial subsidy, had its work threatened by
mounting membership arrears. The vast majority of societies lacked
even this meagre public support. Too much of their time was spent
coping with nancial decits and preventing competitors from
poaching members: as the Gentleman's Magazine commented in
1758, `the open competitions between different hospitals [many of
them societies] and the animosity with which patrons oppose one
another' discouraged public support. Again, there were the internal
tensions created by the difculty of reconciling the need to attract a
viable membership with the constraints of social controls and selectivity. Only towards the end of our period did these

24

U. Im Hof, The Enlightenment (Oxford, 1994), 1056 (though Im Hof fails to draw out
national differences); R. Porter, `The Enlightenment in England', in R. Porter and M. Teich
(eds.), The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981), 1116.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

444

Impact

problems start to ease through the growth of public subscription

associations and enhanced institutionalization.25
The moderate achievements of British societies in their specialist or
primary activity may also derive from the fact that, for many of them,
their secondary functions, whether promoting social alignments, facilitating social integration and social networking, or dening gender
boundaries, were no less a priority. In some regards, such functions
were much easier to implement and accommodate within the distinctive structures of voluntary activity.

ii
Various studies have drawn attention to the role of voluntary associations in British class formation from the end of the eighteenth
century. According to R. J. Morris, societies `were the basis for the
formation of a middle-class identity across the wide status ranges and
the fragmented political and religious structure of the potential members of that class'; Morris's ideas have been supported by his detailed
research on early-nineteenth-century Leeds. Mark Billinge's examination of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society concluded
that it was inextricably linked to the local bourgeoisie `ghting for
recognition, identity and power'. In his work on Bradford from 1750
to 1850, Theodore Koditschek suggested that voluntary associations
were `designed as vehicles to meet the social and political needs of the
emerging bourgeoisie'. 26 Such views have not received universal
acceptance, however. At Manchester, it is evident that much of the
initiative for learned bodies like the Literary and Philosophical Society
came, not from commercial or manufacturing groups, but from professional men, especially doctors, who acted, in this period at least,
less as class warriors than as social and cultural brokers between
different social groups. As we know, lawyers as well as medical men
were prominent in establishing societies throughout the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, often because of their close links to the
25
See above, pp. 60 and passim, 234 and passim ; N. Cox, Bridging the Gap: A History
of the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy . . . 16551978 (Oxford, 1978), 64; McClellan,
Science Reorganized, 1617; T. O'Raifeartaigh (ed.), The Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, 1985), 13
22; cited in D. T. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the 18th Century (Princeton,
NJ, 1989), 127.
26
R. J. Morris, `Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 17801850', HJ, 26 (1983),
96; R. J. Morris, Class, Sect and Party: The Making of the British Middle Class: Leeds, 182050
(Manchester, 1990), esp. ch. 7; Billinge, `Hegemony, Class and Power', 38 ff.; T. Koditschek,
Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford, 17501850 (Cambridge, 1990), 293, 294.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

445

landed classes. In the case of the Royal Institution, `the landed interest
retained almost complete control' during the early years of the association. There is plenty of evidence that the upper classes continued to
take an active part in many other English associations as wellin the
Board of Agriculture, the Society for Bettering the Condition of the
Poor, and various local improvement societies. In Scotland nearly half
of the `earth sciences sub-community' of the Royal Society of
Edinburgh between 1783 and 1820 came from landed ranks. Nor
was this unique. Landowners and other upper-class patrons remained
vital for many of Edinburgh's philanthropic, social, and moral reform
associations at the start of the nineteenth century. 27
It is true that there may have been a trend towards more concerted
middle-class participation in societies after the 1780s, as the upsurge
of public subscription associations provided members with appropriate social recognitionnames on membership lists and other publicityat a modest cost, without the obligation to do anything very
active. But there was no general watershed at this time, involving a
broad middle-class or bourgeois takeover of voluntary associations. In
some instances the reverse occurred. Though the Sunday school
movement was started by the upper and middle classes, some local
school organizations may have come under the sway of artisans and
other representatives of the lower orders. In a similar way, masonic
lodges in the North were increasingly dominated by artisan and lesser
social groups, despite the fact that the national grand lodges had
become more elitist. 28
Evidence presented earlier would suggest that there was no
straightforward alignment of British voluntary associations with social
classes or class formation up to the early nineteenth century. During
the later Stuart period and its aftermath clubs and societies promoted
the bringing together of old and new elite groupsgentry, professional men, traders, and to a lesser extent merchants. There was also a
tardier emergence of more middle-rank and artisan bodies. However,
in respect to social recruitment, almost endless permutations were
evident between types of society and between individual societies in
27
Thackray, `Natural Knowledge', 6845, 695, 705; M. Berman, Social Change and Scientic
Organization: The Royal Institution 17991844 (London, 1978), 56, 3246; Wilmot, Business of
Improvement, 37; Dalgleish, `Voluntary Associations', 83, 210, 215, 239.
28
Andrew, Philanthropy, 162200; T. W. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and
Working Class Culture (London, 1976), 2830; for a critique of this view see M. Dick, `The
Myth of the Working-Class Sunday School', History of Education, 9 (1980), 2931; see above,
pp. 3223.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

446

Impact

the same associational order. No less notable were regional variations

in social mobilization, while differences between urban communities,
or types of urban community, were equally vital. The growing predominance of the middle class in voluntary societies at Leeds was
closely linked to its nascent social and economic power in the town, at
a time when the onset of factory-type industrialization contributed to
the eclipse of the old-style gentlemen merchants, often with landed
connections, who had previously run the civic show. Other urban
centres with a continued administrative or social signicance saw older
elites remain in power into the nineteenth century, and this was
underlined, as one can see at Edinburgh, by their leading role in clubs
and societies. In less dynamic provincial capitals, and county towns
with mixed social congurations, a similar picture probably obtained,
at least until the early years of Victoria's reign, when the gentry nally
moved back into the countryside. 29
If voluntary associations lacked the instrumental function suggested
by Morris and others in the creation of a middle-class consciousness,
it seems probable that eighteenth-century clubs and societies were
more inuential in developing linkages inside urban communities,
between social groups, both within and (to a limited extent) across
broad social alignments. Sociable rhetoric, combined with commercial
and other factors, dictated that entry remained, at least in principle,
relatively open and accessible. Only the urban benet clubs, once seen
as the cradle of the working class, were especially stringent and explicit
in their exclusion of poorer members. Other kinds of association
often had more informal controls and barriers to make access difcult
for the socially undesirable, but there was no standard or consistent
line of social exclusion. Where social patterning did occur in societies,
it may be attributed not merely to associational strategies but also to
careful and cautious self-selection by members, weighing costs and
prospective benets. Certainly, voluntary associations in Georgian
Britain never presented an alternative focus to established social
structures. Instead, they assumed and incorporated elements of traditional social arrangements, including status and wealth structures and
patronclient relationships. Artistic and learned societies provided a
eld in which painters and professional men could pursue aristocratic
commissions, while the Royal Society of Edinburgh, its historian
29

Morris, Class, Sect and Party, 2837; R. G. Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants: The Merchant
Community in Leeds, 17001830 (Manchester, 1971); P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of
Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County Town (Stroud, 1995), 10910, 143 ff.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

447

notes, was the institutionalized nexus of a patronage system, where

scientists performed before an audience that included an inuential
body of potential patrons. At the same time, associations could
respond to and facilitate the development of new social patterns. 30
One core activity of many clubs and societies was as commensal
organizations, to help the incorporation of outsiders and lesser social
groups into the social heartland of the urban community. It has been
seen repeatedly how they brought landowners and the rural afuent
into close contact with the urban upper classes. They also provided a
way for respectable and artisan migrants to meet together and gain a
foothold in urban society: regional and ethnic societies were only one
of many kinds of association engaged in this process. Though limited
data survive, in a considerable proportion of societies the majority of
members were probably newcomers or outsiders. One religious
society in London under George II included sixteen members who
had been born in the greater metropolis and thirty-nine who had
originated elsewherethe largest groups from Yorkshire and the
West Country. At a orists' feast at Staines near London over fourfths of those attending were Scots. Migrants were also prominent, of
course, in masonic lodges, which had special mechanisms for facilitating their mobility, but even benet societies, ignoring the settlement laws, had substantial numbers of outsiders: a third of the
members of a Berkshire box club were newcomers, and at one Halifax
friendly society the gure was 40 per cent. Here voluntary associations
featured in that complex range of social, cultural, and commercial
institutions in Hanoverian towns, alongside churches, public houses,
other forms of public sociability, and register ofces, which helped in
the successful integration of a highly mobile population. For John
Britton, who came to London from Wiltshire to work as a poor
apprentice, and `frequented free and easies, odd fellows and spouting
clubs', it was in such associations, he acknowledged, that `I formed my
acquaintances and secured a few real friends'; the rst step towards his
later career as a professional writer. Arriving in Dublin, the American
painter Matthew Pratt exhibited at the Society of Artists and was

30

See above, ch. 6; S. Shapin, `Property, Patronage and the Politics of Science: The
Founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh', British Journal for the History of Science, 7 (1974),
1011.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

448

Impact

introduced to so many people there that he `could have formed an

opening to a good run of business'.31
Migrants were not the only social groups integrated into urban
society through the medium of voluntary associations. Chapter 6
demonstrated how young people ocked to clubs and societies of
all sorts as an organized focus for social contact and advancement, at a
time when trade gilds, apprenticeship, and living-in service were in
decay. Associations did not provide open access to the urban community, but once newcomers had passed through a society's institutional gatewaysnomination, ballotting, initiation, probation, and the
likethey might exploit a range of connections and support not
conned to that association. Rather, in many instances admission
opened the door to a wider network of contacts across the community, frequently formalized by multiple membership of associations,
leapfrogging from one body to another. Many upper- and middle-class
men living in bigger towns belonged to three or four societies, and the
membership of major societies frequently overlapped. In the 1720s up
to 45 per cent of the fellows of the Royal Society were freemasons,
and others belonged to the Society of Antiquaries. In the next decade
numerous members of the Academy of Ancient Music were active in
the SPCK and its associated Georgia Society. Later in the century the
Royal Institution shared many of its leaders with the Board of Agriculture and the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor. Of
the seventy-eight managers of the New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, twenty were trustees of the Free School Society,
twenty members of the Humane Society, twenty-eight members of the
Athenaeum, and eleven members of the Literary and Philosophical
Society; some belonged to several of these organizations. For betteroff people, membership of a cluster of societies offered direct links to
scores of other respectable people, as well as indirect links to many
others. Such linkages might be amplied by family activity: at York,
for instance, the lawyer and tax-collector William Gray, his wife, and
son Jonathan were active in a series of religious, political, learned, and

31
D. Benham, Memoirs of James Hutton (London, 1856), 89 ff.; St James Chronicle, 13 Aug.
1769; see above, ch. 9; Calderdale District Archives, LG 8; Berks. RO, D/ETy Q5/1/1, pp.
812; P. Clark and D. Souden (eds.), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London,
1987), 2806; G.P.G. Hills, `Sidelights on Freemasonry', AQC, 29 (1916), 34852; C. H.
Hart, `Autobiographical Notes of Matthew Pratt Painter', Pennsylvania Magazine, 19 (1895),
465.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

449

moral reform societies, which created a formidable associational axis

in the city and its hinterland.32
In small towns such networking may have embraced the great
majority of upper- and middle-rank townspeople, but in larger centres
it seems likely that several discrete networks or inner communities
operated at the same time. In Edinburgh at the end of our period
there were competing networks of societies, largely dened by their
religious afliations. In London, given the size of the city and the
number of associations, society networks probably had a distinct
spatial dimension, some of them linking different districts, others
conned to a single neighbourhood. The growth of party divisions
in the last decades of the eighteenth century may have been another
factor shaping society networks. Thus, in the 1790s members of Tory
clubs or Reevesite associations often belonged to prosecution societies, masonic lodges, and philanthropic bodies. Conversely, participants in debating or speculative societies were more likely to be
associated with reform or radical clubs. The networking universe
forged by voluntary associations clearly had its limits, but, in the
economically and spatially expansive world of Georgian cities and
towns, the kind of repetitive and overlapping starsh pattern of social
networks and inner communities created by voluntary societies
provided a measure of social solidarity and status recognition for
members and, no less important, acted to counter those pressures
of social fragmentation which were spawned by rapid urbanization. 33

iii
Admittedly, a large part of the British population, even in towns, was
not accommodated in this cosy, networked universe of clubs and
societies. As well as the large numbers of poor excluded even by
lower-class clubs, women were generally absent. This did not mean
that women were excluded from public sociability; indeed, as we
32
J. R. Clarke, `The Royal Society and Early Grand Lodge Free Masonry', AQC, 80
(1967), 112, 114; Weber, Musical Classics, 48; Berman, Social Change, 56, 41; M. J. Heale, `The
New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism', New York Historical Soc. Quarterly, 55
(1971), 1578; see also at Boston: C. Wright (ed.), Massachusetts and the New Nation (Boston,
Mass.,1992), 12337. E. Gray, Papers and Diaries of a York Family, 17641839 (London, 1927),
357, 467, 549, 67, 10611, 115.
33
Dalgleish, `Voluntary Associations'; see above, pp. 2089; BL, Additional MS 16,931,
fos. 7, 13, 19; J. Money, `Freemasonry and the Fabric of Loyalism in Hanoverian England', in
Hellmuth (ed.), Transformation of Political Culture, 243 ff. ; BL, Lysons Collectanea, vol. 3, fos.
1245 (Call no. C 103 k 11).

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

450

Impact

know, they enjoyed increasingly complex sociable lives. While lowerclass women often had an informal but intense social life, sustained by
kin networks and female rites of socializing, spilling into the public
domain of street and neighbourhood, their better-off counterparts
amplied traditional social networking in towns through new commercial leisure activities such as assemblies, plays, and concerts, where
women often predominated in number, if not in inuence. Nonetheless, with different social timetables and different arenas of activity,
respectable women during the eighteenth century developed and
inhabited a separate social territory from men.
It would be unwise to think of gender differentiation in our period
being mapped out by a distinction between a public male world and a
more private, domesticated social function for women. In Georgian
towns at least, the main distinctions occurred in the areas of public life
and social space. Here, by 1800 there are some signs of greater
convergence, as an increasing number of social, debating, and benet
clubs were open to women, and they made a growing contribution to
the multiplying philanthropic and public subscription associations, in
part at least due to greater female prosperity and education. These
developments accelerated after 1800, but into the Victorian era traditional male ascendancy remained overwhelming. The most successful
British organization, the freemasons, continued to exclude women,
while in the 1870s registered female friendly societies contained hardly
more than 1 per cent of registered national membership, and such
clubs were wholly absent from a third of English counties. Only in the
later decades of the nineteenth century did women start to take the
lead in a growing number of British (and American) associations. 34
Yet if the main participation of women in voluntary societies was to
come later, female attitudes and values may have had some effect on
the ethos of British associations before 1800. True, for much of our
period one can argue that the burgeoning world of voluntary associations hearkened back to and embraced elements of the older cultures
of honour (with its stress on masculine conviviality, heavy drinking,
and reputation) and of metropolitan civility (hence the emphasis from
the later Stuart era on manners, learning, and collective improvement).
Up to a point, one can argue that voluntary societies were male oases
of more traditional relationships, away from the new, increasingly

34
P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England, 18151875 (Manchester, 1961), 7,
612; see below, p. 483.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

451

mannered, enlightened culture in towns, which was inuenced by the

growth of sensibility and the public presence of women.35
This is only part of the picture. From the close of the seventeenth
century societies had a growing legion of rules affecting all areas of
sociable behaviourlegislating against drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and bad manners. But these rules were primarily concerned with
the managerial problems of clubs and societies, a formal structure to
keep serious disorder at bay. For much of the period these society
rules were widely ignored, but towards the end of the 18th century
there are suggestions of a growing perception of the unacceptability
of certain forms of traditional male behaviour in public and quasipublic places. One factor may have been the growing inuence of
notions of sensibility, renement, and good manners, encouraged by
the new literary fashion for sentimentality, itself shaped by the
enhanced importance of women in the public world. The increased,
if still limited, presence of women in societies possibly had an effect.
Another inuence, undoubtedly, was the religious awakening and the
fashionable inuence of moral reform ideas by the 1780s. 36
Clubs displayed a greater sensitivity to the problems of heavy
drinking and disorder among members. In 1786 the Bradford Laudable
Society appointed two ofcials `whose duty is to observe the behaviour of the whole number then present [on club nights] to see
good decorum be kept'. Other societies began to discourage drinking
by members. The Odiham Agricultural Society banned the consumption
of wine and spirits at committee meetings, while the Baltimore Marine
Society not only forbade drink at meetings but ordered the discharge
of any common drunkard from the membership. The shift of meetings away from public houses towards private premises probably
reected the same concern. By the start of the ninetenth century
upper- and middle-class societies began to dispense with old-style
regulations, almost certainly because of the improved social tone of
their gatherings. Through hectoring sermons and magisterial action,
the upper classes also began to put pressure on lower-class societies to
come into line. Here the pattern was more mixed. Francis Place
claimed that artisan clubs, like the London Corresponding Society,
35
For a recent discussion of the problematic concept of honour see the articles in
`Honour and Reputation in Early-Modern England', TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 137248;
M. B. Becker, Civility and Society in Western Europe (Bloomington, Ind., 1988); G. J. BarkerBeneld, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in 18th-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), 53, 96,
109, 132, 134, 179, and passim.
36
See above, ch. 7 ; Barker-Beneld, Culture, 224 ff.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

452

Impact

took the initiative in reforming lower-class drunkenness and promoting reading; in bigger towns, box club feasts, with all their heavy
drinking, may have been in decline by 1800. On the other hand,
popular clubs ensconced in public houses retained their penchant for
old-style fellowship much longerwell into the twentieth century. 37
By the start of the nineteenth century clubs and societies, particularly upper- and middle-class ones, increasingly propagated and reinforced new standards of personal behaviour, heralding the
politeness, high seriousness, respectability, and sobriety of the Victorian era. At one level, then, clubs and societies continued to conrm
the sharp gender divisions in British (and American) society, but by
1800 they were also on the way to articulating a greater convergence in
respectable public attitudes and manners between the sexes.

iv
In the kaleidoscopic world of British clubs and societies there were
many cross-currents, at least some of them stemming from the unresolved paradox that organizational pressures and associational aims and
rhetoric made them both incorporating and differentiating agencies.
This duality is once again evident when we examine their contribution
to spatial integration across the British Isles and colonies during the
sevententh and eighteenth centuries, a process in which associations
served, along with war, religion, and much else, to create a new, if
ambivalent sense of Britishness at the end of the eighteenth century (by
the 1790s the word `British' increasingly appeared in society titles).
The key role of associations in facilitating the movement of the
growing numbers of long- and short-distance migrants, merchants,
traders, professional men, and ofcials, is already clear. The masonic
orders, trade clubs, regional and ethnic societies, and many other societies provided both formal and informal support for the mobile classes.
By the late eighteenth century freemasonry was probably one of the
most important social resources for migrants in the British world. 38
37
West Yorkshire Archives Service, Bradford, 10D 76/8/1193; L. P. Pugh, From Farriery
to Veterinary Medicine, 17851795 (Cambridge, 1962), 10; Rules and Bye-Laws of the Baltimore
Charitable Marine Society (Baltimore, 1798), pp. 12, 15; see pp. 3812; BL, Additional MS
27,829, fos. 146, 147.
38
Cf. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 17071837 (London, 1992); C. Kidd, `North
Britishness and the Nature of 18th Century British Patriotism', HJ, 39 (1996), 36182. E.g.
the British Mineralogical Society; British Union Society; United Friendly Society of Gentlemen's British Servants; British Fraternal and Philanthropic Community; Royal British
Bowmen; British Society for the Encouragement of Good Servants.

8.11.99 08:41 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

453

Promoting physical mobility was only part of the picture, however.

Alongside the almost inexorable expansion of commerce, improvements
in transportation, and the expansive impact of the information industry,
clubs and societies played a considerable part (with other kinds of public
sociability) in the restructuring of British territorial space, making it more
socially and culturally integrated. As the Royal Irish Academy declared
during the 1780s, societies promoted `the advancement of knowledge in
regions the most remote from the seat of their establishment'. In
Scotland, social, learned, and debating societies at Edinburgh played
an essential role in importing English ideas of economic and cultural
improvement. In Chapter 11 we saw the role of clubs and societies and
their members in the dissemination of metropolitan ideas, fashions, and
practises on the eastern seaboard of North America.39 What we can see
emerging across the British world, in varying degrees of density and
scale, are skeins of social and cultural contact, which pulled together
upper and middling social groups in a range of communities. One can
identify this most obviously in the case of freemasonry, its hierarchic
organization spreading out from the metropolitan grand lodges to
provincial grand lodges, and so down to local lodges in a multitude of
towns across Britain and the empire. Less institutional, the SPCK built
up an extensive matrix of corresponding or associated clerical, moral
reform, and educational societies. And other smaller networks developed, focused around the pseudo-masonic Bucks, the Humane societies,
missionary societies, and the numerous Wilkesite, and later radical and
anti-reform organizations of the 1790s. Some of these bodies conned
their networks to England or the British Isles; others spread abroad.40
Probably the most successful networking organization was the
Royal Society, whose connections reached out across the scientic
world, not least to North America. Before the Revolution nearly fty
fellows of the Royal Society originated in the American colonies and
West Indies or crossed the Atlantic subsequently, among them William
Penn, William Byrd of Westover, Robert Hunter Morris, governor of
Pennsylvania, Walter Douglas, governor of the Leeward Isles, many
doctors, and the ubiquitous Benjamin Franklin. As important as
ofcial links were the personal ones. Writing letters, receiving reports,
and exchanging information, society members often provided the
39
Trans. of the Royal Irish Academy, 1 (1786), 1; C. Smout, `Problems of Nationalism,
Identity, and Improvement in Later 18th-Century Scotland', in T. M. Devine (ed.), Improvement and Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1989), 119; see above, p. 401 and passim.
40
See above, p. 98 and passim.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

454

Impact

sinuous highway of communication, on to which, other looser or

more informal branches were grafted. Thus James Petiver, like that
other fellow of the Royal Society, Peter Collinson, engaged in an active
scientic correspondence, with contacts in the colonies. Personal and
ofcial links might also be amplied by society propaganda. In this
way controversial American patriotic clubs, like the Sons of Liberty,
which spread down the East Coast in the 1760s, can be viewed as
offspring of the circle of metropolitan radical politics at the time,
eager to copy and deploy the rhetoric, imagery, as well as arrangements of Wilkesite and allied clubs in the capital. In 1770 the Number
45 club at Charleston, ushed in the symbolism of Wilkesite political
theatre, erected a statue to William Pitt the elder, followed by a dinner
with forty-ve toasts, including ones to the British Supporters of the
Bill of Rights as well as to the Sons of Liberty. 41
Given that the greatest constellation of societies (and a high proportion of early societies) was centred on London, it is hardly surprising that the initial metropolitan impact was powerful, but, as the
eighteenth century progressed, we nd other distinct streams of
inuence in the English-speaking world. In addition to Edinburgh's
strong associational and other links with Pennsylvania, students from
Enlightenment Aberdeen went to the colonies to export Aberdeen
`priorities and standards', often via associations such as the Literary
Society of Bombay, founded by James Mackintosh and Charles
Forbes. Irish freemasonry, inuenced originally by London developments, eventually had an effect on the growth of the English Ancient
order, which in turned helped reshape American masonry during the
late eighteenth century. Near the end of the century there was even an
American input, with the Philadelphia society for the abolition of
slavery inuencing the anti-slavery movement in Britain, just as temperance societies were imported from North America after 1800. 42
41
R. P. Stearns, `Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 16611788', WMQ, 3rd
series, 3 (1946), 20968; id., `James Petiver, Promoter of Natural Science, c.16631718,
American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, ns, 62 (1952), 257 ff.; for Collinson see above, pp.
4012; Pennsylvania Magazine, 10 (18867), 95; A Sermon Preached at the Anniversary Meeting of the
Planters' Society . . . (Charleston, 1769); D. E. H. Smith, `Wilton's Statue of Pitt', South Carolina
Historical Magazine, 15 (1914), 258.
42
A. Hook, `Philadelphia, Edinburgh, and the Scottish Enlightenment' in R. B. Sher and
J. R. Smitten (eds.), Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1990), 229
37; J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock (eds.), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987), 5, 43
6; Belknap Papers: Part 2, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Collections, 5th series, 3 (1877), 2; also
J. F. Reilly, `The Providence Abolition Society', Rhode Island History, 21 (1962), 44; P. T.
Winskill, The Temperance Movement and its Workers, Vol. I (London, 1891), 50 ff.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

455

It is crucial, however, to remember that if big cities may propose

cultural ideas and activities, it is usually for local communities to
dispose how much of that message to accept and for what ends.
The spread of associations on the ground was frequently shaped by
rivalries and tensions between towns and between regions. In North
America, the rivalries between Boston, Philadelphia, and New York
acted to promote the introduction of new societies; tensions between
Calcutta and Madras may have had a similar impact in British India.
Again, while the initial wave of American club foundation was linked
with metropolitan inuence, Anglicization, and a degree of colonial
dependence, in the early years of George III's reign the upsurge of
societies was triggered by their growing identication with local
opposition to London. In the 1770s clubs and societies helped to
mobilize the rebellion against the Crown, and during the last years of
the century promoted the denition and design of national and,
especially, provincial state identities in the new republic. 43
This pluralistic picture also emerged in the British Isles. During the
late sevententh and early eighteenth centuries clubs and societies can
be viewed as part of the cultural ascendancy of London as it extended
its inuence over the regions. Offshoots of metropolitan bodies
sprang up across the English provinces, while other associations in
the capital had their clones or afliated bodies, not only in England
and Wales but in Scotland and Ireland as well. On the other hand, we
should not exaggerate the acculturating effect of this metropolitan
world on the British periphery or see clubs and societies as agencies of
internal colonization. By the middle decades of the eighteenth century
the earlier predominance of London as the forcing-ground of associational activity was in retreat. In Scotland, Edinburgh had become the
cradle for a host of new kinds of association: improvement societies,
medical societies, debating clubs, and intellectual clubs, which had
important inuences elsewhere in the British Isles and beyond. The
Honourable Society of Improvers in Edinburgh encouraged the
growth of the Dublin Society after 1730, whose activities served as
one of the models for the Society of Arts in London. Like the British
urban system, the network of British voluntary societies was increasingly polycentric, betraying an almost innite tangle of connections. 44
In this process one can see new forms of social and cultural
43

See, pp. 403, 422.

See above, ch. 3; D. G. Allan, William Shipley, Founder of the Royal Society of Arts (London,
1968), 47.
44

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

456

Impact

differentiation taking place. In Scotland the rise of clubs and societies,

led by Edinburgh but with Glasgow, Aberdeen, and a growing number
of smaller towns following behind, was closely implicated in the
process by which Scotland reforged its identity (after the setbacks
of the late seventeenth century), as an improved, innovative society
which was steadily urbanizing and hastening to catch up with England.
In Ireland, the more limited penetration of societies outside the
principal towns was, as we have seen, affected by low levels of
urbanization, continuing economic difculties, and the important
competition of established bodies, not least the Catholic Church.
Here, associations were predominantly identied with the cultural
world of the educated, urban Protestant minority. Popular Catholic
organizations, particularly in the countryside, continued to take the
form of loose, oath-taking bands rather than formal, English-style
societies. By the end of the period the paucity of associations was
perceived as a cause of economic and political backwardness. In 1794
it was said that this backwardness `warranted the extraordinary
measure of establishing clubs . . . [as] a chain of correspondence' to
mobilize political action. 45
In England voluntary associations played a signicant part in the
remaking of provincial identities during the Hanoverian period. After
an initial owering, county societies were relatively few during the
eighteenth centurya sign, we suggested, of the diminished sense of
county awareness for much of this period. The great resurgence of
county identity was a Victorian phenomenon, as great landowners reestablished their presence and leadership in the shires; this resurgence
was marked by the proliferation of county antiquarian societies from
the 1840s and county cricket clubs from the 1860s. On the other hand,
wider regional identities start to become more important before 1800.
Most of the traditional provincial capitals, such as Norwich, Bristol,
and York, trumpeted their regional leadership through the range and
activity of their societies. By the 1760s Bristol might boast that it had
the biggest concentration of associations in the West of England, and
that these recruited across the regional hinterland. Even so, it faced
considerable competition from nearby Bath, with its growing residential population; for example, Bath became the seat of the most
45
D. Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in 18th-Century Britain (London, 1990), 79; J. Smyth, The
Men of No Property: Irish Radicals and Popular Politics in the Late 18th Century (London, 1992),
33 ff.; Some Thoughts on the General Improvement of Ireland . . . (Dublin, 1758), 7; Belfast Politics
(Belfast, 1794), p. v.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

457

important agricultural improvement society in the South-West.46

Of all the old centres, Newcastle was the most dynamic by the
late eighteenth century, increasingly the hub of an extensive
industrial and mining conurbation in the North-East, which
embraced Sunderland, Tynemouth, and Gateshead. Newcastle's
regional image was advanced through public improvement, town
publications, and, last but not least, associations. One of the most
important was the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society,
many of whose honorary members came from a broad area of the
North-East, while another similar society was the Association of
Protestant Schoolmasters, which again recruited from adjoining
shires. 47
As Newcastle and, to a lesser extent, the other older provincial
capitals exploited societies and their membership to consolidate their
regional standing, so the burgeoning industrial and commercial centres of Birmingham and Manchester were forging new regional ascendancies. At Birmingham, the Lunar Society's members included
Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, and Josiah Wedgwood from Staffordshire, John Whitehurst from Derbyshire, and others from Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Cheshire, as well as a sizeable contingent
from the town itself. Likewise, the prestigious ringing society of St
Martin's Youths attracted members from Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and beyond. In the North-West, the Manchester Agricultural
Society in 1780 recruited large numbers of members from right across
Cheshire and Lancashire, just over a fth coming from Manchester
itself. Needless to say, many other strands contributed to the formation of new regional identities: industrial and commercial links, town
histories, such as Aikin's Description of the Country from thirty to forty miles
round Manchester (1795), communication improvements, and the role of
local newspapers (thus, Aris's Birmingham Gazette mapped out the
extensive territory of the West Midlands). However, societies, with
their regular meetings, steady ow of publicity (including lists of
members and their addresses), and other publications acted as a

46
R. A. Hume, The Learned Societies and Printing Clubs of The United Kingdom (London, 1853,
repr. Detroit, 1966); for cricket clubs: E. W. Swanton and J. Woodcock, Barclays World of
Cricket (London, 1980), 359 ff.
47
P. M. Horsley, Eighteenth-Century Newcastle (Newcastle, 1971); R. Sweet, `The Production of Urban Histories in 18th-Century England', Urban History, 23 (1996), 17388; A List of
the Members of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, 1793 (Newcastle, 1793); Rules of the
Association of Protestant Schoolmasters in the North of England (Newcastle, 1807), 245.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

458

Impact

signicant cultural force in refashioning the provincial landscape of

late Georgian Britain.48
Previous chapters on freemasons and benet societies also remind
us of the strongly localized quality of much associational activity in
Britain. Despite metropolitan and regional pressures, one can recognize the underlying local autonomy of a good deal of British social and
cultural life in the pre-modern period, even in towns; indeed, that
autonomy may have been enhanced at this time, encouraged by rising
local prosperity, urban renewal, the publishing industry, and the emergence of new social groups. Thoughout this book, it has been evident
that voluntary associations were largely an urban phenomenon
benet clubs were the exception to prove the rule. Societies (along
with other forms of public sociability) buttressed the role of towns in
local provincial society. They attracted and entertained the rural elite
from the adjoining countryside, not only conrming traditional links
with the hinterland, but also having multiplier effects on the urban
service and manufacturing sectors. Societies made towns fashionable
and vibrant as centres of the latest ideas of innovation. They became
an important source of civic pride. One paean to Derby's philosophical society declared:
May Derby's sons exalt the liberal Arts,
Employ their genius, cultivate parts.

On a more popular note, when Leicester's bell-ringing society completed a great peal of 10,000 grandsire cators, the senior members
were chaired in triumph through the streets of the town, and a large
subscription collected. Not just big cities but small market towns
beneted: their modest array of societies helped to anchor such
places, with their traditionally ambivalent position between rural and
urban society, more rmly within the urban rmament. 49
At the individual community level, there was an almost innite
48

R. E. Schoeld, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford, 1963), ch. 2; Birmingham

Central Library, Archives Dept., Misc. MS 1426/1/1; Adam's Weekly Courant, 27 June 1780;
J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from thirty to forty miles round Manchester . . . (London, 1795);
P. Clark, `Visions of the Urban Community: Antiquarians and the English City before 1800',
in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983), 1201;
J. Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 17601800 (Manchester,
1977), esp. ch. 3.
49
Derby Local Studies Library, MS 22893/ BA 106; Leics. RO, DE 2641/112; M. Reed,
`The Cultural Role of Small Towns in England, 16001800', in P. Clark (ed.), Small Towns in
Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1995), 135 ff.; see also P. Clark (ed.), `Small Towns, 1700
1840', in P. Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. II (Cambridge, forthcoming).

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

459

variety of associational experience: in the number and types of societies, the kind of support they recruited, and their functions, even in
the organizational arrangements, such as meeting days and festive
occasions. Some towns had particularly large numbers of associations,
disproportionate to their demographic size: Edinburgh, Oxford, and
Charleston were all probably in this category, but for different reasons.
In other instances, in some of the manufacturing centres the incidence
of societies seems below average, likewise reecting local economic
and social structures and the specic character of communal demand.
Similar factors no doubt shaped the distribution of different kinds of
society: hence the patchwork pattern of masonic lodges and the
skewed geography of provincial learned and scientic societies. 50
As the number and variety of societies increased in the course of
the Georgian period, one has a sense that the portfolio of clubs and
societies in a community became an index of its urban identity and
image, as distinctive and important as churches and religious houses
had been for medieval towns. Metropolitan, national, and regional
trends in society formation were, in some measure, `negotiated' by
local communities, which accepted some forms of activity but not
others. Thus, Humane Societies were established on the London
model in numerous English townsmostly provincial capitals and
middle-rank county centres. In some cases (as at Gloucester and
Maidstone) the town's position on a major river or canal and the
society's role in resuscitating the drowned was clearly a factor; but
in other cases there is no obvious explanation for the society's
presence, other than individual energy and local particularism. From
the second half of the eighteenth century a growing number of
societies (albeit a small minority) included the name of their home
town in their title, underlining the importance of urban identication
and local autonomy. 51
This is not to see British towns in cultural isolation, any more than
one can accept earlier interpretations that treated them as dependent
or client communities perpetually dazzled, like country rabbits, by the
headlights of metropolitan fashionability. It is important to recognize
the powerful role, not only in the British urban system but in social
and cultural lifecertainly by the late eighteenth centuryof forces
both for co-operation and integration, and for competition. In this
50

See above, chs. 3, 4, 9, 11.

W. Hawes, Royal Humane Society. Annual Report (London, 1799), 7; Dalgleish, `Voluntary
Associations', 1.
51

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

460

Impact

study there has been a tendency to document more clearly the areas
of co-operation: the ties of collaboration between the Royal Society
and its later Stuart counterparts in Oxford and Dublin; or the
embryonic network of learned societies among the small East
Midlands towns of the early Georgian era exchanging advice,
members, and minutes. But we have also seen glimpses of the
rivalries between societies in the same eld of activity, masonic
and pseudo-masonic, missionary and philanthropic. 52 No less important, towns were in competition to develop their reputation
through associations. As with the rivalry between colonial cities,
tensions occurred between British towns: thus, philosophical societies at Aberdeen and Edinburgh contested intellectual leadership in
the late eighteenth century, while south of the border regional
centres scrambled to create learned and scientic societies. The
variable social and cultural achievements of towns were increasingly
recognized. Near the start of the nineteenth century Richard Phillips,
a local man, ranked the urban attributes of Leicester, Nottingham,
and Derby; the rankings, for manners, literature, music, and so on
were almost certainly related to the differing levels of associational
activity in the three towns. 53
Not only did voluntary associations help to design the distinctive
cultural face of a town, but within the community they gave rise to the
special social networks, often transcending or at least blurring class
boundaries, which served as the economic, political, and cultural
arteries of a particular urban worldnetworks that continued into
the Victorian era. In some places where the reformed municipal
government after 1835 was strong and interventionist, these networks
may have played a secondary role. But in many other towns voluntary
associations, enlarged by the plethora of philanthropic, educational,
and other societies, often church-linked, served as the central pillar of
community life, with important political implications.

52
For a reappraisal of the relationship between London and the provinces: P. Borsay,
`The London Connection: Cultural Diffusion and the 18th-century Provincial Town', Journal
of London History, 19 (1994), 2131; see above, pp. 578, 76, 85, 105, 309 and passim.
53
N. Phillipson, `Towards a Denition of the Scottish Enlightenment', in P. Fritz and
D. Williams (eds.), City and Society in the 18th Century (Toronto, 1973), 1445; R. S. Watson, The
History of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (17931896) (London, 1897),
357; also E. Kitson Clark, History of 100 Years of Life of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society
(Leeds, 1924), 5; C. Grewcock, `Social and Intellectual Life in Leicester, 17631835' (unpublished MA thesis, University of Leicester, 1973), 1819.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

461

v
If rhetoric and rule-books are any guide, many early modern associations saw as one of their principal roles the organization of neutral
public space, as a retreat from the party conict and dissension
fostered by local and national politics and by the religious acrimony
and rivalry that was one of the legacies of the Civil War. Up to a point,
this was successful. Party brawling intruded only intermittently into
club debates, though the tension was sometimes acute, particularly
during national political crises. In London, divisions between Whigs
and Tories at the Turk's Head Club became nigh intolerable at the
time of the American Revolution, so that Dr Johnson growled, `I
should be sorry if any of our club were hanged. I will not say but some
of them deserve it', for their support of the colonists. But only a small
number of societies collapsed over political or religious conict. 54
At the same time, voluntary associations played a signicant part in
the development of political discourse in Georgian Britain. While the
majority of clubs pretended to some kind of political neutrality, a
signicant proportion from the start had an explicit political dimension. Thus, we have seen in London republican clubs before and after
the Restoration, the Whig and Tory clubs during the Exclusion Crisis,
and those well-organized party clubs after the Glorious Revolution, as
well as Jacobite clubs, the Wilkesite clubs of the 1760s, and the spate
of reformist, radical, and counter-revolutionary societies in the late
Georgian capital. Across the provinces political clubs in boroughs,
numerous from the 1740s, mobilized voters at local and parliamentary
elections and on particular issues, usually along local factional faultlines. By the 1780s urban-based political clubs increasingly structured
national party politics. Tory and Whig clubs not only helped to turn
out voters at elections on party tickets, but, through their rituals,
processions, feasts, posters and yers, rework displays, and public
meetings, they engendered a wider sense of political nation, and
fuelled the surge of partisan division in communities. As one newspaper conrmed in 1791: `everything in the political way is now
managed by clubs.' 55
Associations without a specic political agenda might be drawn into
54

G. B. Hill (ed.), Boswell's Life of Johnson (Oxford, 193440), iii. 281.

See above, chs. 24; K. Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in
England, 17151785 (Cambridge, 1995), 703; F. O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The
Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 17341832 (Oxford, 1989), 32633, 340, 345
57; Star, 15 June 1791.
55

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

462

Impact

political activity during periods of national upheaval. The role of

county feast societies during the late 1650s and the Exclusion Crisis
and its aftermath was discussed earlier. During the 1760s numerous
social, masonic, and pseudo-masonic bodies rallied in support of John
Wilkes, campaigning for him, making him a member while in prison,
and feting him on his release. Around the turn of the century loyalist
associations supported the Society against Vice. In Ireland, freemasonry contributed to the growth of the Volunteer movement and
radical societies of the 1790s, while Dublin's many convivial clubs
afforded an organizational springboard for the United Irishmen. 56
Clubs and societies promoted wider political discourse and education too. Book clubs bought political tracts and monthly magazines
full of the latest political reports, and social clubs had small libraries of
similar material. Not only elite but also middle-rank and artisan clubs
kept newspapers, which provided important topics for conversation
among members. Political subjects were prominent in the dozens of
debating societies in the capital and other major towns, and these also
supplied valuable experience of public speaking. In addition, many
learned societies and student clubs included discussion and debate of
moral and political issues. Debate came to be recognized as a precondition for an effective polity: thus, the Norwich Tusculan Society
heard in 1794 that `no benecial change can ever be produced without
a previous general discussion'. Even societies which had injunctions to
avoid political disputation carried on discussing political news sotto
voce, often as part of that general conversation which was the quintessence of club life. At a New England re club in the 1790s `men of
quite opposite political views assemble . . . ; says one . . . the French
are deceitful. In another chair, a whisper, Parson, how some people
curse the French, such as you would not think of . . .' The outcome
of all this was a plurality of opinions and enhanced political
consciousness. 57
In 1788 Melvill Horn, the curate of Madeley in Shropshire, asserted
56
J. S. Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge,
1976), 1948; Roberts, `Society for the Suppression of Vice', 164; D. Dickson et al. (eds.), The
United Irishmen: Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), 170 ff., 2867.
57
J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century (London, 181215), vi. 62 and passim;
Bewick, Memoir, 75; NLW, Bronwydd 2144; D. T. Andrew (ed.), London Debating Clubs, 1776
1799, London Record Soc., 30 (1994); NNRO, Norwich and Norfolk Arch. Soc. MSS, G 2,
p. 199; W. Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley DD., Vol. II (Salem, Mass., 1907), 207; cf.
D. Knoke, `Networks of Political Action: Toward Theory Construction', Social Forces, 68
(1990), 1,04159.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

463

that the many types of association, `everywhere encouraged and

applauded', are `the best means of promoting all the interests of civil
society'. Though Horn's concerns were moral and religious as well as
political, his words anticipate some of the recent discussion of the role
of voluntary societies in the making of modern society. Early in this
debate Jurgen Habermas argued that clubs and other new sociable
institutions played a signicant part in the creation during the eighteenth century of what he called the `public sphere'a world of
bourgeois public discourse, debate, and interactionin contradistinction to the state and private spheres. Such neat distinctions are,
however, difcult to square with the extensive evidence for the interpenetration of the public and private spheres during the Hanoverian
era. Instead, a number of political scientists have put forward arguments for the identication of voluntary associations with modern
notions of civil society, through the creation of new democratic and
pluralistic structures, and the fostering (via political education) of a
wider realm of socio-political identication and solidarity. Once again
there are difculties in applying some aspects of the argument to the
early modern context, as we will see in the nal chapter. 58
For our period it may be more useful to approach the problem of
the wider political and cultural impact of clubs and societies from a
more concrete, spatial, as well as metaphysical, angle. Already before
the English Revolution there had emerged what one might consider
mixed space, centred around drinking premises, incorporating some
of the conventions of both public institutional and private domestic
space, but with a distinct character shaped by the commercial imperative. In the post-Restoration era this mixed space expanded rapidly in
towns in step with the proliferation of new forms of public sociabilityfrom concerts and coffee-houses to clubs. Urban improvement meant that in many places this kind of `social space',
increasingly modulated by its own rules of behaviour, was delineated
58

J. Fletcher, The Nature and Rules of A Religious Society (Madeley, 1788), pp. ivv. For the
earlier use of the term civil society see P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare
in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998), 1501. J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the
Public Sphere, trans. T. Burger (Cambridge, Mass., 1989); D. Castiglione and L. Sharpe (eds.),
Shifting the Boundaries: The Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the 18th Century
(Exeter, 1995), pp. ix, 119, 2202; also G. Schochet, `Vice, Benets and Civil Society', in
P. R. Backscheider and T. Dystal (eds.), The Intersections of the Public and Private Spheres in Early
Modern England (London, 1996), 24465; J. A. Hall (ed.), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Oxford, 1995), 1, 22, and passim; also J. Keane, Democracy and Civil Society (London, 1988),
ch. 6; R. D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ,
1993); for a critique of some of these views see below, p. 487 ff.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

464

Impact

by a quartier of public and commercial buildings, providing a discrete

arena for elite discourse and interaction in its many forms. Even for
the middling and artisan classes, much of their sociable activity
occurred within or close to this area of social space, which now
increasingly overlay and integrated older areas of contested public
space. This is not to overstate the unifying nature of social space.
As we have seen, probably the most structured and dynamic area of
public sociability in the eighteenth century was focused on voluntary
associations, and by the end of the period one can detect the evolution
of a distinct associational space with its own controls and (increasingly) premises. The unity of social space was also fractured in other
waysthrough gender divisions, social and status divisions, and,
above all, by commercialism and erce competition between organizations. Despite its physical dimension, social space was less a regularly dened sphere than a eld of action, where the social and
cultural identities of the urban better-off were constantly reformulated
and reshaped. For all its uidity and imperfections, the evolving area
of social spacefree from the tyranny of the state and the family, and
in which associations increasingly exercised the dominant voicehad
important implications for the emergence of a new, more advanced
society. 59
The growth of voluntary societies contributed in other ways to
political `modernization'. They promoted ideas of national improvement, and encouraged collaboration and mutual trust among members, both through the convivial rites of fellowship, and by stressing
the convergence of private and collective interests. On some levels,
they may have fostered a new kind of empirical, non-confrontational
discourse. But probably the most signicant way in which societies
contributed to political change was through the low-level but regular
political experience they offered to their membership. For, in Alexander
Hamilton's phrase, `clubs . . . are civil governments in miniature'.
Members came and saw the difculties of running a democratic
voluntary organization; they argued, lobbied, and canvassed. As club
ofcers, they had exposure to a multiplicity of administrative and
leadership problems: running and ghting elections, chairing meetings, taking decisions, keeping to time, drafting rules, nancial
59
See pp. 39, 169; P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial
Town, 16601770 (Oxford, 1989), chs. 23; J. Stobart, `Shopping Streets as Social Space:
Consumerism, Improvement and Leisure in an 18th-Century County Town', Urban History,
25 (1998), 321; see also M. Reed, `The Transformation of Urban Space, 17001840', in Clark
(ed.), Cambridge Urban History.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

465

accounting, and the like. They also experienced their fair share of
disappointments caused by poor attendance, overweening colleagues,
acrimonious disputes, and, from time to time, their society's collapse.
As we saw, the pattern of ofce-holding in lower-class benet clubs
probably varied signicantly across the country, high proportions of
members serving in metropolitan London, and substantial numbers in
the industrializing West Riding, against lower levels of participation in
more-agrarian Suffolk. Yet even allowing for this and the trend
towards greater oligarchic control in many societies by 1800, in bigger
towns up to half the membership may have held at least one post over
timesome, indeed, following an ofcial cursus within a society, or
holding posts in different bodies. Among the upper classes there were,
of course, alternative avenues to ofce-holding, in national, county,
civic, parish, and commercial administration: for middling folk and
artisans such opportunities were less available. Not only were gilds on
the ebb across much of the country by 1750, but also civic government and parish vestries were becoming more select and closed
(although not necessarily apathetic). Churches (particularly nonconformist congregations) and the growth of improvement commissions and similar boards afforded some openings for ofce-holding,
but almost certainly on a more limited scale than was the case with
clubs and societies. 60 For the better-off, associational membership and
ofce-holding may have offered preliminary training for political
activity on a wider stage: for many men it marked the full extent of
their organizational experience outside their homes or businesses.
Nevertheless it was from the vantage-point of the political education
and information provided by clubs and societies that growing numbers
of Britons observed, judged, and, sporadically, sought to shape
national political developments.
Lobbying of Parliament by societies became a regular feature of
political life in the eighteenth century, and was not conned to
political associations. As the executive relaxed its grasp on social
policy, Parliament assumed a more directing role. That direction was
often instigated by backbench MPs, private individuals, corporations,
and societies. The SPCK was an early and active lobbyist, promoting
60
S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th-Century England (Chicago,
1994), 1225; R. Micklus (ed.), The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club by Dr.
Alexander Hamilton (Chapel Hill, NC, 1990), i. 1889; see above, p. 379 ff.; J. Innes and N.
Rogers, `Politics and Government, 17001840', in Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History;
P. Clark (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns (London, 1984), 32833; P. Gauci,
Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth, 16601722 (Oxford, 1996).

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

466

Impact

bills against blasphemy, debauchery and duelling, and for the education of the poor. It backed legislation for workhouses in 1723 and
sought to ensure its implementation. In the next decade it orchestrated a major campaign, both outside and inside Parliament, against
`Mother Gin', a campaign which led to the draconian Gin Act of 1736.
The society not only paid the cost of tracts against the spirits trade,
but leading members also lobbied ministers for action, helped to
organize petitions to Parliament, and probably had a hand in drafting
the legislation. Another well documented case was the campaign for
the abolition of the slave trade, which was co-ordinated by the
London committee of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery,
involved the large-scale distribution of publicity, mass petitions in
1788 and 1792, along with the lobbying of leading politicians, and
culminated in the Commons's vote for abolition in 1796. 61 All kinds of
issues were pursued: middle-class and artisan clubs in Scotland petitioned against Catholic emancipation, friendly societies agitated over
statutory recognition, and reformist and radical clubs called for parliamentary reform. Its agenda set by society campaigns over legislation, by political clubs lobbying for and against ministers and
measures, by informal associational networks using it as an arena in
which to pursue special interests, the Commons itself came to be seen
as just another type of voluntary society, frequently satirized as the
Robin Hood Club. 62
And yet associational pressure-groups were relatively unsuccessful
in producing effective governmental action. The 1736 Gin Act promoted by the SPCK was so repressive and misconceived that it
provoked a widespread popular reaction in the capital, which made
the law inoperative and led to its repeal in 1743, when more-liberal
controls had to be introduced. Despite the success of the Abolition
Society in getting Parliament to agree, in principle, to stop the slave
trade, little in fact was done to implement this vote until legislation in
1807 (the result of elite pressure backed by renewed public agitation).
Lobbying by opposition political societies was especially ineffectual.
61

J. Innes, `Parliament and the Shaping of 18th-Century English Social Policy', TRHS.,
5th series, 40 (1990), 7980, 83; T. Hitchcock, `Paupers and Preachers: The SPCK and the
Parochial Workhouse Movement', in Davison et al. (eds.), Stilling the Grumbling Hive, 14661;
P. Clark, `The ``Mother Gin'' Controversy in the Early 18th Century', TRHS, 5th series, 38
(1988), 737; J. R. Oldeld, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (Manchester, 1995), 41, 468
and passim.
62
See p. 369 ff.; SRO (GRH), RH 2/4/383, fos. 7578; Innes, `Parliament', 834, 89;
Middlesex Journal, 1518 Apr. 1769; Georgia Gazette, 11 April 1770 (citing the Salisbury Journal ).

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

467

The outcry of the Wilkesite clubs and other supporters failed to get
Wilkes re-seated in the Commons as MP for Middlesex or his early
release from prison. The various county associations calling for constitutional reform in the dog days of the North ministry had minimal
effect; just as the numerous reformist and radical societies showed
themselves unable to resolve the tactical dilemma of attempting to
reform an unwilling Parliament by peaceful means. External factors
were sometimes to blame. Thus, the anti-slavery movement and
demands for political reform were overwhelmed by the growing
national panic over the French threat. However, it is likely that the
organizational problems of associationsthe rivalry between bodies,
internal divisions, nancial difcultiescontributed to their general
lack of political and governmental success during the period. 63
Moreover, despite the general de facto acceptance of the role of
voluntary organizations on the public stage, there remained a nagging
undercurrent of opinion that voluntary societies should not intrude
too far into the governmental arena, that they should not usurp
functions that were the proper realm of the state. We have noted
this already in the case of moral reform societies and their attempts to
prosecute moral offenders. There was, likewise, opposition to prosecution societies. The Game Society provoked street demonstrations
in Westminster in 1752, opponents denouncing its efforts against
poachers as a menace to the liberties of the subject. In the 1790s
prosecution societies were accused of being `voluntary, undened,
unauthorised associations of men acting without responsibility and
open to irregular and private motives of action'. Loyalist societies were
similarly denounced for operating `under the pretence of supporting
the executive magistrate'. 64
In conclusion, for all their undeniable importance in the public and
political arena by 1800, the impact of voluntary societies was mufed
and limited. Not only were they often frustrated in their efforts at
63

Clark, `Mother Gin', 834; S. Drescher, `Whose Abolition? Popular Pressure and the
Ending of the British Slave Trade', P&P, 143 (1994), 13666; G. Rude, Wilkes and Liberty
(Oxford, 1962); O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, 3045; I. Hampsher-Monk, `Civic
Humanism and Parliamentary Reform: The Case of the Society of the Friends of the
People', JBS, 18(2) (1979), 779; J. Dinwoody, `Conceptions of Revolution in the English
Radicalism of the 1790s', in Hellmuth (ed.), Transformation of Political Culture, 542 ff.;
J. Stevenson, `Popular Radicalism and Popular Protest, 17891815', in H. T. Dickinson (ed.),
Britain and the French Revolution, 17891815 (London, 1989), 73.
64
See above, ch. 3; Kirby, `English Game Law System', 255; An Address to the Public from
the Friends of Freedom . . . (London, 1793), 3; The Resolutions of the First Meeting of the Friends to the
Liberty of the Press (London, 1793), 4.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

468

Impact

parliamentary lobbying and attempts to secure legislative change, but

when they exercised quasi-public responsibilities, the achievements
were rarely impressive. As a rule, associational action was not effective
action. This was frequently recognized at the time. Thus, the nancial
weakness of friendly societies was one of the reasons behind the 1793
Act. Even afterwards, however, actuarial problems persisted, a number of writers pointing out how these undermined the viability and
impact of friendly societies. In this context, Parliament's efforts to put
societies on a proper nancial footing were half-hearted. The state
showed a surprising reluctance to become involved, and in the event
the problem was left to the associational market-place to sort out, the
spread by the 1820s of the more nancially secure federations of
afliated societies causing the eclipse of the old-style local box clubs.
In other areas one nds a similar reluctance of government to act to
deal with the problems created by inefcient associations. By the same
token, parliamentary attempts to regulate and control associations such
as radical political clubs were not very effective either. During the
political panic of the 1790s intimidation by local worthies and conservative clubs was generally more crucial than state intervention. 65
This failure by the state to respond to the problems and challenges
posed by Georgian societies partly reected the reduced power and
ambition of English governments from the late seventeenth century,
as they retired from large areas of domestic policy, a development
which, we argued earlier, was one of the preconditions for the rise of
voluntary associations. Linked to this was a belief, forged after the
Glorious Revolution, that voluntary associations, like religious congregations, were best left to their own devices, that they were not a
general concern of the state. By the end of the period governmental
impotence and administrative prudence were given ideological support by the spread of laissez-faire theories. 66 After 1800, if not before,
there was another constraint on state action: the increasingly
entrenched position of upper- and middle-class associations, particularly in the public domain, unwilling to concede jurisdiction and
responsibilities, or to brook interference. Their position was further
enhanced by the growing identication of societies with the leadership
of local communities and with local autonomy.
65
See above, p. 368 ff.; B. Supple `Legislation and Virtue: An Essay on WorkingClass Self-Help and the State in the Early 19th Century', in N. McKendrick (ed.),
Historical Perspectives (London, 1974), 22930, 247; Gosden, Friendly Societies, 26 ff.; see above,
p. 176.
66
Supple, `Legislation and Virtue', 214, 22730, 2457; see below, p. 472 ff.

8.11.99 08:42 12 Chapter 0394

Impact

469

vi
By the close of the eighteenth century clubs and societies had penetrated many areas of public and communal life, and had turned Britain
into an associational society. If they were less signicant than one
might have thought for class formation, they undeniably contributed
to the growth of a networked nation. As clearing-houses for information and ideas, associations provided strong mechanisms for communication and cohesion both within and between communities, and
helped to develop and dene new regional and local identities. In
many ways, they were a progressive force, facilitating mobility and
contact across the burgeoning English-speaking world. Through their
impetus to collective participation and solidarity, and their members'
experience of elections, ofce-holding, and critical debate, they promoted the steady accumulation of what has been called social capital.
Above all, they fostered the toleration of differing opinions and the
development of a more open and pluralistic society.
Growing up in the new world of the late seventeenth century, with
its weakened state and the fragmentation of established political
bodies such as town corporations, voluntary associations, in aggregate,
assumed a number of the functions of government. This was particularly the case from the mid-eighteenth century on, as population
growth and accelerating economic change began to spawn a host of
new social problems and challenges. What we have also found, is that
the organizational success and effectiveness of voluntary associations
in many areas of endeavour was at best partial. There was considerable
activity, but internal problems and the absence in many cases of legal
sanction meant that the outcomes were often disappointing. As the
social and other problems created by urbanization and industrialization multiplied after 1800, the relative performance of societies lagged
behind. At the same time, the ascendancy of voluntary associations
obstructed the extension of state authority, leading to unresolved or
contested political territory. The balance sheet in terms of the impact
of voluntary societies was mixed. If British society gained in terms of
social cohesion, pluralism, and social capital, the price may have been
high, certainly by the late Victorian era, in terms of governmental
efciency.

8.11.99 08:43 13 Chapter 0394

13
Conclusion

i
The argument of this book has been that the early modern period saw
the origin of a major new form of social institution in the British
world, one which borrowed ideas and practices from other organizationsmedieval fraternities, trade gilds, foreign academies, Protestant
sects, other types of new-style public socializingbut which was sui
generis: an invention of the pre-industrial era. Primarily secular in
format and voluntary in concept, clubs and societies catered for a
growing plurality of interests, with surges of activity in particular
areaspropelled by fashion, competition, commercialism, and specialization. The Stuart preoccupation with leisure activity was overlaid
in the eighteenth century by a new stress on public and personal
improvement which, in turn, was complemented towards the end of
the century by a growing stress on moral and social reform.
Spreading out initially from London to England, and thence somewhat unevenly to the rest of the British Isles and beyond, the rise of
clubs and societies before 1800 was umbilically linked to the opportunities and challenges of an extraordinarily high rate of urbanization
(by European standards), along with improved living standards and
increased social and physical mobility. Essential for the landslide of
associational activity in the eighteenth century was the advent of a
national and provincial press, especially after the virtual ending of
censorship in England during the 1690s, the limited capacity of governmentboth at the state and civic leveland the efforts of a legion
of society promoters, led by victuallers and publicans, printers and
professional men. Distinctly masculine in membership, early modern
clubs and societies recruited from the landed, middling, and artisanal
classes, and were characterized by a signicant, but regulated, measure
of social mixing. Although organizationally innovative and exible,
responsive to changes in fashion and interest, and quick to exploit new
marketing techniques, associations often suffered from internal structural problems, which were only partially mitigated by the growth of

8.11.99 08:43 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

471

more institutionalized and centralized public subscription associations

in the last years of the period.
As we saw in the last chapter, the effects of this associational
revolution were often contradictory. Clubs and societies contributed
to political and cultural integration, but they were also a force for local
autonomy. They assumed near-governmental functions, but they
never played a clear political role. Despite all their activity, their
achievements were subdued. On the other hand, when we return to
the key issue of whether clubs and societies contributed to new
concepts and realities of progress in early modern Britain, the answer
from our evidence seems to be strongly in the afrmative. This was a
world that was conscious of being caught up in the dynamics of
change and improvement, and aware that voluntary associations had
a key role to play in that process. Yet if such bodies provided an
important bridge to modernity, one of their strengths in terms of their
appeal was that their activities incorporated many traditional features
of pre-industrial societyheavy drinking, ceremonies and ritual, oldstyle masculinity, clientpatron relationships, and selectivity. Clubs
and societies, then, were the creation of a distinct conjuncture of
circumstances in early modern Britain. To comprehend them fully,
however, we need in this nal chapter to view our voluntary associations in a wider perspective, to outline their development and changing character after 1800, and to assess their importance in the light of
those contemporary discussions about voluntarism and civil society
with which we began this study.

ii
Charting the evolution of voluntary associations after 1800 is not easy.
Much of the literature for this later period has conned itself to
particular themesfor instance, relations between the voluntary sector and the stateor to specic kinds of association, especially those
concerned with philanthropy. As we have seen, voluntary associations
need to be analysed in a broad, aggregate way, in order to identify and
understand the complex uctuations of activity and support. Those
few studies which have examined the wider spectrum of associational
life have largely concentrated on individual towns, whilst contemporary surveys of voluntary action have blurred the picture by including a
wide eld of non-associational activity. Despite the absence of
systematic research, there is strong, if impressionistic, evidence that
British clubs and societies continued to increase both in number and

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

472

Conclusion

diversity into the twentieth centurya pattern paralleled by developments in North America.
In the period up to the 1880s, a great deal of the momentum
stemmed from moral reform and philanthropic societies (often linked
to different churches), a continuation of that surge of activity which
had begun in the last decades of the eighteenth century. As Sir James
Stephen remarked in 1849, `for the cure of every sorrow . . . there are
patrons, vice-presidents and secretaries. For the diffusion of every
blessing there is a committee.' At Liverpool, a multitude of evangelical
and other church-based associations directed relief; Leeds (up to 1830)
had over thirty new societies of this kind; and Manchester's societies
organized charitable work in conjunction with artistic and educational
activity. Similar bodies multiplied in most British towns. 1 This was
due, in part, to the religious revival movement, with the churches
locked in erce competition for new areas of operation and support;
in part, to the growing scale of social problems and the perceived
threat from the lower orders, as urban growth and industrialization
accelerated. Voluntary intervention in this area was also encouraged by
the policy of the state, which, bowing to laissez-faire ideas, converted
the earlier, limited role of government in welfare provision into an
issue of principle. Indeed, voluntarism became integral to the conceptualization of the state by the political nation. The new poor law of
1834 introduced a deterrent system of relief, which gave support only
through the workhouse and drove many deserving poor to depend on
the voluntary sector. The same decade saw the state abdicate much of
its responsibility for education by entrusting the expansion of schooling to the churches and church-based organizations, such as the
National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor and the
British and Foreign School Society. 2
1
F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in 19th-Century England (Oxford, 1980), 22; M. B.
Simey, Charitable Effort in Liverpool in the 19th Century (Liverpool, 1951), ch. 3; T. Iwama, The
Urban Elite in Leeds, 17801820: From Notables to Middle Class, Discussion Paper No. 52, Tohoku
University, Japan (1996), 346; M. Rose, `Culture, Philanthropy and the Manchester Middle
Class', in A. J. Kidd and K. W. Roberts (eds.), City, Class and Culture (Manchester, 1985), 103
17. Cf. H. Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakeeld and Hudderseld, 17801870 (Cambridge,
1987), 226; P. Clark and L. Murn, The History of Maidstone: The Making of a Modern County
Town (Stroud, 1995), 113, 144, 1914.
2
R. J. Morris, `Clubs, Societies and associations', in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The
Cambridge Social History of Britain 17501950, Vol. III (Cambridge, 1990), 4059; G. Finlayson,
Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain, 18301990 (Oxford, 1994), 87; J. Lewis, `The Boundary
Between Voluntary and Statutory Social Service in the Late 19th and early 20th Centuries',
HJ 39 (1996), 157; N. Parry et al. (eds.), Social Work, Welfare and the State (London, 1979), 23.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

473

Not all voluntary welfare was dominated by upper- and middleclass societies. Mutual aid societies, already the largest category of
association before 1800, continued to increase, though local clubs,
with their actuarial problems, were side-lined by the rise of the more
nancially secure national federated orders, such as the Oddfellows,
Foresters, Druids, and the like: by 1872 these had 1.25 million
members. After the mid-century local friendly societies faced further
competition from centralized societies, like the Hearts of Oak and the
Royal Standard, based in London and without local branches, and
from the expanded activity of trade unions, which offered unemployment and other benets. Co-operative societies similarly ourished,
the 200 local organizations in 1850 jumping to 500 within a couple of
decades. 3
Other types of society made more modest progress. Following the
union of the Modern and Ancient orders, English freemasonry
counted just over 500 regional and local lodges in 1830, and about
800 in 1850in step with the national demographic advance. Information on musical societies is less complete, but by the 1860s
the metropolis had more than fty listed bodies, with another 250
or so in the British provinces. County learned societies increased from
the early years of Victoria's reign, and the 1851 census enumerated
1,057 literary and scientic societies and mechanics' institutes. The
surge of provincial learned societies in the later Victorian era was
stimulated by the proselytizing work of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science. 4 As in the early modern period, however,
the overall picture was uid. While some societies (including new
ones) thrived, others subsided. Thus, prosecution societies generally
disappeared, following the organization of local police forces from the
1840s; and bell-ringing companies, one of the oldest types of association, lost fashionability and support. 5
The late nineteenth century witnessed more dramatic changes, as
the growth of British societies exceeded the pace of demographic and
3
P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England, 18151875 (Manchester, 1961), ch. 2;
for Scotland: I. Levitt and C. Smout (eds.), The State of the Scottish Working-Class in 1843
(Edinburgh, 1979), 12932; Finlayson, Citizen, 2830.
4
Freemasons' Calendar and Pocket Book (London, 1830); ibid. (London, 1850); Musical
Directory Register and Almanac (London, 1860), 79 ff., 103 ff.; PP, 1851, XC, Report and Tables
on Education: England and Wales, p. lxx; O. J. R. Howarth, The British Association for the
Advancement of Science: A Retrospect, 18311931 (London, 1931), 95.
5
D. Hay and F. Snyder (eds.), Policing and Prosecution in Britain, 17501850 (Oxford, 1989), 38
and passim; E. Morris, History and Art of Change Ringing (London, 1931), 144, 150, 160, 5956.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

474

Conclusion

urban increase. Already by the 1860s there was growing recognition

that the welfare work of the mass of church-based societies, armed
with moral reform agendas, was having a meagre effect on social
problems. William Rathbone of Liverpool, for instance, denounced
the `individualism [which] has run riot in all voluntary efforts'. There
was a shift to a more scientic, co-ordinated approach through the
establishment of national bodies like the Charity Organisation Society,
and local umbrella organizations such as the Central Relief Society in
Liverpool. 6 Even so, the economic instability and mounting social
distress of the last decades of the century threatened to overwhelm
voluntary societies, beset as ever by excessive competition, denominational rivalry, oligarchic tendencies, and nancial weakness. From
the 1890s one nds an acceptance of the need for greater state
intervention in the welfare sector, which culminated in legislation after
1905 introducing pensions, school meals, school medical services, and
unemployment and health insurance for certain groups of the population. Pressure for change stemmed not only from the New Liberals'
vision of an enhanced role for the state and the greater challenges
facing religious and philanthropic organizations, but also from the
latter's increasing difculties of recruitment, as support drained away
to a galaxy of new, alternative leisure and other activities, commercial,
municipal and voluntary, which proliferated in the late Victorian and
Edwardian era. Trying to ght back, the churches developed their own
constellation of leisure and educational societies: there was an explosion of auxiliary organizations. But, in the end, churches became overextended, `saddled with a great width of provision, stretching across
many activities'. 7
Established types of society made some of the new running, each,
as usual, with its own chronology of growth. In Scotland, historical
and antiquarian societies reached a peak of new foundations in the
1880s. In England and Wales, the number of new learned societies
nearly doubled between the 1870s and 1900s. After only a small
advance between 1860 and 1880, British musical societies rose by 50
per cent over the next twenty years (to nearly 500), while English and
Welsh masonic lodges, under the London grand lodge, had more than
a twofold increase in strength between 1870 and 1910 (totalling over
6

Simey, Charitable Effort, 58, 828, 923, 11516; Finlayson, Citizen, 71.
S. Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis (London, 1976), 65 ff., 180, 296300;
Morris, `Clubs', 4202; Clark and Murn, Maidstone, 1879; there was a surge of church
auxiliary organizations (cf. S. J. D. Green, Religion in the Age of Decline: Organisation and
Experience in Industrial Yorkshire, 18701920 (Cambridge, 1996), 1835, 194 ff.).
7

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

475

3,100). Working-men's clubs, afliated to the national union (established in 1862), jumped from sixty-eight in 1870 to 710 in 1900, and
2,007 in 1920, and registered drinking clubs saw their numbers quadruple between the 1880s and the eve of the First World War.8
Striking was the advent of new hobby and sporting clubs. By the
1890s it was assumed that `a man would as like as not spend his leisure
time on a hobby', and these were frequently run by clubs. Philately
already had a national society from the 1860s, but local clubs were
spreading quickly by the end of the century. Amateur football clubs,
often linked to rms or churches, mushroomed: Liverpool in the
1880s had more than 100, Birmingham well over 300. More select,
nearly 270 rugby union clubs were founded between 1870 and 1900,
and a further eighty over the next twenty years. Cycle clubs also
pedalled their way to popularity. 9 Organizations for younger people
were inspired by religious and political worries about the social decay
of city life, and its effect on the moral bre of the rising generation.
The Boys' Brigade (established in Glasgow in 1883) had 1,360 companies by 1914, and other similar bodies included the Church Lads'
Brigade, the Girls' Friendly Society, and the Boy Scouts, which grew
rapidly after its launch in 1908. Signicantly, their success owed a great
deal to demand from young people (and their parents) for greater and
better after-school recreation. 10
Numerical expansion was matched by the extraordinary variety of
leisure clubs at the end of the Victorian period. In 1897 the mayor of
8

C. S. Terry, A Catalogue of the Publications of Scottish Historical and Kindred Clubs and Societies
(Glasgow, 1909); the number in England and Wales rose from 34 in the 1870s, to 55 in the
1890s, and 65 in the 1900s: E. L. C. Mullins, A Guide to the Historical and Archaeological
Publications of Societies in England and Wales (London, 1968); Musical Directory, Register and
Almanac (London, 1860); Musical Directory, Annual and Almanac (London, 1880); ibid. (London,
1900). I am grateful to Robert Parker at the British Library for his advice on musical
societies. Freemasons' Calendar and Pocket Book 1870 (London 1870); Masonic Year Book 1910
(London, 1910); G. Tremlett, Clubmen: History of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union
(London, 1987), 7, 2967; G. B. Wilson, Alcohol and the Nation (London, 1940), 384.
9
R. McKibbin, `Work and Hobbies in Britain, 18801950', in J. M. Winter (ed.), The
Working Class in Modern British Society (Cambridge, 1983), 130; The British Stamp Directory
(Birmingham, 1899), pp. 98101; The British Stamp Directory (Birmingham, 1902), 803; J.
Walvin, The People's Game (London, 1975), 567; E. Dunning and K. Sheard, Barbarians,
Gentlemen and Players (Oxford, 1979), 236; H. Meller, Leisure and the Changing City, 18701914
(London, 1976), 227.
10
J. Springhall, Youth, Empire and Society: British Youth Movements, 18831940 (London, 1977),
chs. 13, p. 138; also D. A. Reeder, `Predicaments of City Children: Late Victorian and
Edwardian Perspectives on Education and Urban Society', in id. (ed.), Urban Education in the
19th Century (London, 1977), 889.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

476

Conclusion

Bristol wondered at the `number of institutions of all kinds which had

sprung up and were ourishing in their midst'. Within a few years the
citizens could choose from rie, esperanto, bird-fancying, youth,
automobile, footpath, old boys', football, cricket, trade, musical,
political, temperance, benevolent, and a myriad of other clubs and
societies. Many of the new activities appealed to working people. As
Lord Peel's Commission reported in the 1890s, `the extension of the
franchise, the spread of education, and a great improvement of conditions among the working classes have had a great effect in promoting clubs'. As large-scale manufacturing grew, clubs and societies were
seen as offering relief and social autonomy after the monotonous
labour of factory work. Their advance at this time was all the more
remarkable given the parallel growth of the commercial leisure industry, featuring music-halls, popular theatres, early cinemas, and railway
excursions, as well as the expansion in municipal provision of swimming pools, public libraries, art galleries, and adult education 11
Despite the First World War and the economic setbacks of the
peace, voluntary associations maintained the impetus of growth.
While the public sector extended its role in the mixed economy of
welfare, philanthropic bodies continued to be a signicant provider of
services; at Leicester, for instance, societies shared in a wide range of
specialist medical and educational activity. Though increasingly
eclipsed by the commercial insurance societies, friendly societies
enjoyed considerable popular support. The Workers' Educational
Association, established in 1903 and already growing strongly before
the war, used public grants to treble the number of courses and nearly
quadruple its enrolments in the inter-war period. Indeed, clubs and
societies advanced on a wide front. At Liverpool, a survey of leisure
during the early 1930s revealed that going to club meetings was the
second most popular social activity after reading newspapers; and
support was strong amongst both the middle and working classes.
In 1938 York's inhabitants were entertained by sixty-ve football and
rugby clubs, along with sixty-one cricket, fty-one bowling, eighteen
tennis, fty-two rowing, and various golf, running, rambling, cycling,
and swimming clubs. In addition, the city had thirty-six trade unions,
seventy-nine friendly society lodges, between 100 and 140 sick clubs,
twenty-nine licensed clubs, and assorted unemployment clubs. Nor
11

Yeo, Religion, 218, 310, 315; Kelly's Directory of Bristol (London, 1914), 962 ff.; Wilson,
Alcohol, 138; J. Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 18901960 (London, 1994), 5; McKibbin, `Work', 143; Meller, Leisure, 967, 99.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

477

was this all. For the middle classes there was host of literary, debating,
learned, folk-dance, trade, musical, League of Nations, and childprotection societies, as well a medical society, law society, masonic
lodges, women's institute, and young people's organizations.12
Nationally, most types of society ourished. The number of English
masonic lodges increased to about 5,200 in 1930; listed musical societies
went up from 478 in 1900 to 960 in 1929. Gardening and allotment
societies bloomed, with at least seventy societies in the London area,
while angling (300 clubs in the greater London area) and pigeon-racing
(2,000 clubs by 1930) also did well. On the eld, amateur football clubs
afliated to the Football Association headed the score, numbering as
many as 30,000 in the 1940s. Clubs registered to sell drink nearly doubled
between 1914 and 1935 (to 15,657), though some of this growth may
have been due to the decline of licensed public houses.13 Nationally
organized youth organizations took off in the inter-war period: the Boy
Scouts trebled their number of local groups in the period 1910 to 1938,
when they had nearly half a million members, mostly in southern
England. Local boys' clubs also gained a new lease of life after the
formation of a national federation (19245), and their numbers increased
threefold over the next decade.14 Trade, employer, and professional
organizations expanded, whilst one of the most dynamic new associations was the British Legion, whose branches spread far and wide. At
the popular level, public houses continued to support a dense undergrowth of informal savings, rafe, darts, and picnic clubs.15
12
Finlayson, Citizen, 21730; Wellcome Trust Project 19936, Centre for Urban History,
Leicester University, `Public Health in Twentieth Century Leicester'; M. Stocks, The Workers'
Educational Association (London, 1953); T. Kelly, A History of Adult Education in Great Britain
(Liverpool, 1992), 249, 257, 273; P. Johnson, Saving and Spending: The Working-Class Economy in
Britain, 18701939 (Oxford, 1985), 56, 60 ff.; J. Harris, `Did British Workers Want the Welfare
State? G. D. H. Cole's Survey of 1942', in Winter (ed.), Working Class, 213; D. C. Jones (ed.), The
Social Survey of Merseyside, Vol. III (Liverpool, 1934), 275; B. Seebohm Rowntree, Poverty and
Progress: A Second Social Survey of York (London, 1941), 206, 208, 210, 333, 3446, 348, 387 ff.; also
Kelly's Directory of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire (London, 1937), section on York, p. 77.
13
Masonic Year Book, 1930 (London, 1930); Musical Directory, Annual and Almanack, 1900
(London, 1900), pp. 7091; Musical Directory of the United Kingdom, 1929 (London, 1929), 6176;
The New Survey of London Life and Labour, Vol. IX (London, 1935), 62, 6871; gures for
pigeon-racing clubs kindly supplied by the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (Major E.
Camilleri). Walvin, People's Game, 1478; Wilson, Alcohol, 384 (registered clubs: 8,738 in
1914 and 15,657 in 1935).
14
Springhall, Youth, 131, 1389; W. McG. Eagar, Making Men: The History of Boys' Clubs and
Related Movements (London, 1953), 40812, 421.
15
Kelly's Directory of Bristol and Suburbs: 1935 (London, 1935), 1,2202; G. Wootton, The
Ofcial History of the British Legion (London, 1956), 63, 303; The Pub and the People: A Work Town
Study by Mass Observation (London, 1970), 270 ff.; also Johnson, Saving and Spending, 14951.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

478

Conclusion

The Second World War presented major challenges for associational

life. Bombing, blackouts, and conscription caused disruption to meetings and falling membership for a number of societies. After the war
the creation of the welfare state appropriated the work of many
medical, philanthropic, and educational bodies, along with much of
the remaining role of friendly societies. For a while the voluntary
welfare sector marked time, uncertain of its position, but by the
1960s, if not before, there was increasing awareness of the need for
specialist voluntary societies catering for disadvantaged groups not
adequately served by public provision. Already before the arrival of
the Conservative government in 1979, the voluntary sector, with a
suite of new, often small-scale associations, was assuming a greater
role in welfare provision. 16
Outside the welfare sector, voluntarism was a major beneciary of
post-war prosperity. Bolton in the 1960s had more than 400 associations, and early in the next decade Birmingham counted over 4,000
voluntary organizations active in the city (almost certainly an underestimate). The best organized and historically most successful of all
British societies, the London-based masonic order, saw the number of
English and Welsh lodges move inexorably upward, from about 7,500
in 1950, to 9,000 or so in 1970, and over 10,500 in 1990. Hobby and
leisure clubs echoed the same trend: the number of local philatelic
societies increased tenfold between the 1930s and 1990s; clubs linked
to the National Federation of Anglers more than trebled between 1971
and 1991; pigeon-racing clubs increased less dramatically, from 1,634
in 1950 (considerably down on 1930) to 2,172 in 1970, and 2,712 two
decades later; working-men's clubs rose from about 3,500 in 1960 to
nearly 4,000 ten years after, though the total drifted down to 3,366 in
1996. 17 Hard evidence is missing for music societies, but signs exist of
the spread of new specialist associations. Ethnic associations also
multiplied in response to large-scale black immigration after the
16

Wootton, British Legion, 258; Finlayson, Citizen, 287305; J. Wolfenden, The Future of
Voluntary Organisations: Report of the Wolfenden Committee (London, 1978), 20; A. Richardson
and M. Goodman, Self-Help and Social Care: Mutual Aid Organisations in Practice (London, 1983),
3, 11 ff.
17
Tillotsons Bolton Directory for 1967 (Bolton, 1967), p. xliii; Wolfenden, Voluntary Organisations, 345. Masonic Year Book, 1950 (London, 1950); Masonic Yearbook, 1970 (London, 1970);
Masonic Yearbook, 19901 (London, 1991); Philatelic Societies Handbook, 19323 (Torquay, 1933);
Association of British Philatelic Societies: Yearbook and Directory (London, 1995), 29 ff., 849;
angling gures provided by the National Federation of Anglers; pigeon-racing gures from
Major E. Camilleri; Tremlett, Clubmen, 2967; Directory of British Associations (Beckenham,
1996), 492.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

479

war; several hundred were functioning by the 1980s, with others

`mushrooming daily'.18
There have been some major casualties in the late twentieth century, though the picture is not always clear-cut. Friendly societies,
deprived of much of their original function, have dwindled away,
and church-based societies have also declined from their inter-war
levels, though here single-issue, interdenominational organizations like
the anti-abortion Life movement (founded in 1971) have gained
strong support (190 branches by 1990). Youth organizations have
generally stabilized in numbers since the 1980s, a signicant
achievement given the ageing of the population. 19 After the war
old-established learned, historical, and scientic societies tended to
stagnate, but the Historical Association increased the number of its
branches, from seventy-two in 1952 to over a hundred in the early
1970s, before easing back to about seventy in 1996. Meantime, an
upsurge of family-history societies occurred after 1970 (120 societies
of different sorts by 1995, some with a few-score members, others
with several thousand). Following the war, the incidence of trade
unions declined sharply (mostly because of amalgamations), but membership was buoyant up to the late 1970s, only to be driven down by a
third due to the collapse of British manufacturing, anti-union legislation, and efforts by employers to withdraw union recognition and
casualize their labour forces. Party political organizations likewise
experienced a major drop in membership: from the 1960s to the
1990s the Conservative party lost about 64,000 members a year,
eroding local constituency associations. The Labour party after 1948
shed about 11,000 members annually up to the 1980s, though this
trend had been reversed by the mid-1990s. 20
18
British and International Music Yearbook: 1996 (London, 1996), 7 ff., 253 ff; S. Jenkins (ed.),
Ethnic Associations and the Welfare State (New York, 1988), 11920.
19
B. Knight and P. Stokes, The Decit in Civil Society in the United Kingdom (Birmingham,
1996), 1314; Kelly's Directory of Bristol and Suburbs: 1935, 12201; Kelly's Directory of Bristol, 1973
(London, 1973), 1,0858; gures supplied by Life (I am indebted to Professor J. Scarisbrick).
E.g. Scout Association membership was 641,000 in 1980 and 631,000 in 1996 (source: Scout
Association).
20
46th Annual Report of the Historical Association (London, 1952); 66th Annual Report . . .
(London, 1972), 18 ff.; Annual Report . . . 1983 (London, 1984), 44 ; Directory of British
Associations, 246. Family history data provided by the Federation of Family History Societies
(thanks to Mr M. Gandy); Employment Gazette, 101 (1993), 18991; P. Whiteley et al., True
Blues: The Politics of Conservative Party Membership (Oxford, 1994), 69, 99, 222; P. Whiteley, The
Labour Party in Crisis (London, 1983), 67, 79 ; Labour party membership rose from 265,000
(1993) to 401,000 (1997) (Source: Labour Party Headquarters).

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

480

Conclusion

Against examples of decline have to be set areas of associational

expansion, such as the upsurge of sporting clubs and societies. Not all
the data are complete, because of the multitude of afliated bodies,
but the total gure for local sporting clubs may have risen from about
95,000 in 1965 to 123,000 in 198990. Some sports stagnated, but this
was more than offset by the growth of others, such as archery,
subaqua, and snooker, and the arrival of new sports, including
pentathlon. Where membership gures are available, the level of
participation seems to have grown faster than the number of clubs.
Certainly, it would be premature to talk of a general decline in British
voluntary associations in the later twentieth century. Any analysis has
to take into account shifts in activity from one kind of organization to
another, and demographic changes. A national survey of voluntary
activity in the United Kingdom in 1991 reported that just over half of
those interviewed had undertaken some kind of formal voluntary
activity that year, compared with 44 per cent in 1981. But not all of
this activity involved voluntary associations, and recent reports have
suggested that the actual level of regular voluntary activity may be
lower. Of those involved in clubs and societies in the early 1990s, the
highest proportion preferred sporting bodies, with welfare organizations not far behind; political clubs had a low rating. 21 Since 1800
British clubs and societies seem to have enjoyed real growth for most
of the period, propelled, as before, by growing specialization, the
development of new areas of activity, and an institutional responsiveness to changing economic and social conditions.
As in the early modern period, however, national trends may mask
important regional and local variations. There are indications that the
rest of the British Isles remained behind England in associational
activity during the Victorian era, failing to close the lead opened up
before 1800. In a similar way, the 1991 survey of voluntary action
found that Scotland and Northern Ireland lagged behind England in
the level of volunteering, with the Midlands and the South-East
achieving the highest scores. At the local level, the civic images and
identity of different towns continued to be dened and distinguished
by a web of voluntary societies. Bradford in the early nineteenth
century, industrializing fast, was notable for the absence of learned
societies, though it caught up later; Manchester's myriad societies
21

Figures collated and extrapolated from A Digest of Sports Statistics for the UK: 3rd Edition
(London, 1991); P. Lynn and J. D. Smith, The 1991 National Survey of Voluntary Activity in the UK,
Voluntary Action Research, 2nd series, 1 (1992), 19; Knight and Stokes, Decit, 1213.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

481

combined a preoccupation with philanthropy and civic culture; lateVictorian Bedford's social life was dominated by a couple of powerful
associations which set the social tone, while Lincoln had a wider array,
exemplifying divisions between the upper and lower town, and
between city and cathedral close. 22 Often there were strong class
overtones. In some cities an increasingly powerful middle class sought
to use societies both to increase its own unity and to stamp its
authority on the community; in other places a continuing upper-class
presence created more mixed societies; in country towns, steadily
abandoned by Victorian landowners, associations became part of
the public face of the local bourgeoisie. By 1914 local cultural life
was being redened by the onrush of new societies, but associations
continued to enjoy a central role in civic life well into the twentieth
century. As Arthur Schlesinger senior observed after the Second
World War, associational networks in America meant that `every
community large or small has acquired a cellular structure, intricately
interlaced and overlapping'. The remark was equally true of Britain. 23
Overall, modern British clubs and societies have remained predominantly an urban-based phenomenon, only a handful of types having
inltrated the countryside. This clearly reects the dynamic pace of
urbanization, with half the national population resident in towns by
1851, over three-quarters by 1900, and four-fths by 1950. Cities and
towns provided that essential density of better-off, informed people
necessary for a ourishing associational membership, but equally
important, they generated many of those problems and pressures
that societies sought to answer: hence the moral reform, philanthropic, and welfare societies of the Victorian era; the unemployment clubs
of the 1930s; the ethnic organizations helping immigrants in the late
twentieth century. It seems likely that suburbanization (already in
place by 1800, but rapid and widespread in Britain from the Victorian
era) and the general spatial fragmentation of urban life in the twentieth
century have generated continuing demand for clubs and societies as a
mechanism for social networking across communities. It is surely no
coincidence that Britain and the United States, the most suburbanized
countries in the world, sustain the highest levels of associations in the
22
e.g., A. D. Buckley, ` ``On the Club'': Friendly Societies in Ireland', Irish Economic and
Social History, 14 (1987), 3958; Lynn and Smith, National Survey, 37; G. Firth, Bradford and the
Industrial Revolution: An Economic History, 17601840 (Halifax, 1990), 207, 216; Kidd and Roberts
(eds.), City, Class and Culture, esp. chs. 5, 6. I owe information on Lincoln and Bedford to
Denise McHugh at Leicester.
23
A. M. Schlesinger, sen., Paths to the Present (2nd edn., Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 45.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

482

Conclusion

contemporary period, though the converse is also arguable: that the

compact network of associations in these countries makes possible the
evolution of a decentralized urban society, while retaining some measure of social and cultural coherence.24
Rising living standards have remained a signicant force in the
growth of modern British associations. As we have seen, the surge
of new leisure and other clubs at the end of the nineteenth century
was closely linked to improvements in social conditions for the
working class. The apparent expansion of clubs during the interwar era, despite the Depression, is initially surprising, but has to be
seen in the context of the regionally selective nature of the Slump.
There is also, perhaps, a ratchet effect in society formation, with
total levels of activity, once established, sustainable against shortterm economic decline. Certainly, the renewed advance in living
standards after the 1950s gave a major stimulus to the growth of
many societies.
What was the impact of links with the information industry, so
important before 1800? In the Victorian period editors of periodicals
were intimately connected with the establishment of scientic societies. The decline of local philanthropic and religious bodies at the
close of the century has been attributed to the decline of local newspapers in the face of a growing national press, though the argument is
challenged by the profusion of leisure and sports clubs at this time. By
the inter-war period a number of hobbies and sports had their own
specialist magazines, which often carried club news. In the second half
of the twentieth century it is likely that the broadcast media have
played a vital part in the promotion of public interest in sports and
other leisure activities, which has, in turn, generated a surge in associationsas in the case of television coverage of darts matches
encouraging local clubs.
One major contrast between modern and earlier societies is in their
relationship to the drink interest. Whereas Stuart and Georgian clubs
in Britain were often promoted by publicans and almost invariably
held in victualling houses, upper- and middle-class societies in the
nineteenth century moved to their own private premises: ne clubhouses in the West End, more modest church halls, institutes, masonic, and friendly society halls in provincial townsa wonderful
subject for an architectural history. 25 Popular, often informal, clubs
24
R. L. Fishman, `American Suburbs/English Suburbs: A Transatlantic Comparison',
Journal of Urban History, 13 (1987), 23749.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

483

still continued to gather at pubs up to the Second World War, but

many of them, especially sports clubs, increasingly migrated to municipal premises during the late twentieth century.
The expansion of clubs and societies since the late nineteenth
century has involved both continuity and change. Young people
have remained a signicant group in many societies, but there has
been a sharp increase in social participation among the lower classes.
The most important shift in the composition of societies has involved
women. For the later twentieth century a fairly equal gender balance is
evident in voluntary activity, albeit with some specialization in types of
organization. This is in marked contrast to the early modern period,
when female activity, though increasing by the 1780s, was always
marginal; indeed, as we have argued, the absence of women was
one of the essential, almost dening features of British clubs and
societies in their formative period. Even into the Victorian era, despite
their growing role in fund-raising for public subscription associations,
women had a secondary position. From the 1870s, however, they took
the initiative in various welfare organizations, and a growing network
of regional suffrage societies sprang up (similar developments
occurred in the United States, where the Association for the Advancement of Women promoted local clubs run by women). After the First
World War, with its terrible loss of young men, female members
penetrated most types of society (apart from male-dominated social
clubs, masonic lodges, and certain sport and hobby clubs). 26
In spite of the expanded membership of voluntary associations and
the burgeoning of specialist bodies, rivalry and conict remained as
much a problem for modern societies as for their pre-industrial
predecessors. In Victorian Liverpool, competition for funds was
chronic among charitable organizations, and consequently a large
`amount of time and energy' was wasted. During the late twentieth
century care organizations have been aficted by similar difculties,
and number of modern sports have rival national organizations.
Aggravating the position of many smaller societies is the lack of
rm institutional arrangements; a few people do much of the work,
25
S. Sheets-Pyenson, `Low Scientic Culture in London and Paris, 18201875' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1976), 2089; Yeo, Religion, 56 and passim; for
the links between American scientic associations and the media: D. Nelkin, Selling Science
(New York, 1995), 12534.
26
Lynn and Smith, National Survey, 25, 53; Morris, `Clubs', 4305; Prochaska, Women, 23
ff.; K. J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redened (New York, 1980), 89, 12,
21 ff.; Jones, Merseyside, 275.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

484

Conclusion

leading too often to collapse. The price of associational exibility

remains fragility and the risk of disintegration. As the Wolfenden
Committee reported in the 1970s, `there is nothing static about the
scene', new organizations being constantly formed and others dying. 27
Before 1800 one remedy for instability was the development of federal
structures, and this practice became increasingly common during the
early nineteenth century. Along with the appearance of the national
federations of friendly societies like the Oddfellows, the National
Union of Working-Men's Clubs was established in the 1860s, and by
1900 a growing number sports and hobbies were run on a similar
basis. In addition, national organizations, managed essentially as public
subscription associations with highly centralized governing bodies,
have expanded steadily, notably in the second half of the twentieth
century. Founded in 1895, the National Trust had about 2,000 members in 1930, and about 24,000 by 1950; within twenty years the
number had soared to 278,000; and by 1991 the gure was over 2
million. In a similar fashion, the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds achieved a near tenfold increase in membership between 1971
and 1991. The steady increase of national organizations may well have
served as `a great cementing force for national integration', the notion
of an associational nation reinforcing what has been called the ethnic
nation. Meanwhile, the international dimension, incipient in the
Georgian era, has become increasingly crucial, with overseas organizations recruiting extensively in Britain. For example, the International
Greenpeace movement, initiated in Canada in 1971 and having its
international headquarters in Amsterdam, gained 300,000 British
members up to 1991. 28
In general, British voluntary associations appear to have retained a
high degree of vitality and support into the contemporary period. This
seems to be different from the United States, where, despite a parallel
pattern of success for much of the modern period, there have been
suggestions of diminished activity in the last decades of the twentieth
century. On the other hand, the impact of associations on British
27

Simey, Charitable Effort, 82; also Lewis, `The Boundary', 1567, 173; Richardson and
Goodman, Self-Help, 956, 105; Digest of Sports Statistics; B. Nash, `Conict and Cooperation in
Three Voluntary Associations' (unpublished Sociology eldwork dissertation, University of
Leicester, 1975), 1, 2, 16, 23; Wolfenden, Voluntary Organisations, 13.
28
Tremlett, Clubmen, 7; Digest of Sports Statistics; R. Fedden, The Continuing Purpose: A
History of the National Trust, its Aims and Work (London, 1968), 188; J. Church (ed.), Social
Trends (London, 1996), 191; Schlesinger, Paths, 50; Greenpeace Annual Report, 19923
(Amsterdam, 1993).

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

485

society may have begun to change since the 1960s, through the
erosion of the earlier close links between associational networks and
the local community. Institutional factors are probably at work here,
including the rise of large-scale national and international organizations, some of them run on commercial lines, where membership
involves little active participation at the local level, often not much
more than signing an annual membership cheque. Also inuential in
this context is the almost inexorable rise of highly specialist, niche
societies, usually with limited communication with each other. In
contrast to preceding periods, when there was a signicant level of
multiple membership of local societies, half of those involved in
organizations at the end of the twentieth century were engaged in a
single type of activity, and the proportion was even higher among
members of sporting organizations. Members of Conservative associations surveyed in the early 1990s revealed a similar lack of interest
in other local organizations and activities. However, any explanation
for the decline of society networking at the local level also needs to
take into account external factors, such as the adverse effects of
television (keeping people at home more), and the general rise in
working hours (reversing earlier trends). Increased car-ownership
has changed the nature of involvement as well, decreasing local and
neighbourhood ties in favour of organizational participation which
may transcend geographical boundaries. That distinctive social space
at the heart of our towns and cities, which was created and occupied
by societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is now almost
certainly on the decline, a process accelerated in recent decades by the
destruction of much of the established townscape, and the changing
political relations between associations and the state and local
community. 29
For most of the nineteenth century the symbiotic relationship
between government and voluntary associations, which developed in
the early modern period, still obtained, as the voluntary sector exer29
S. B. Warner, The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of its Growth (2nd edn.,
Philadelphia, 1987), 612; also A. M. Schlesinger, sen., The Rise of the City, 187898 (New
York, 1933), 2089, 2202, 28890, 41011; H. M. Wach, `Civil Society, Moral Identity and
the Liberal Public Sphere: Manchester and Boston, 181040', Social History, 21 (1996), 281
303; also S. Beckert, `Institution-Building and Class Formation: How Bourgeois New
Yorkers Organized', paper at the Fourth European Urban History Conference, Venice
(1998). R. Putnam, `Who Killed Civic America?', Prospect, (Mar. 1996), 6672; for similar
suggestions of decline in Britain in Knight and Stokes, Decit, 67 and passim; Lynn and
Smith, National Survey, 49, 52; Whiteley et al., True Blues, 1857.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

486

Conclusion

cised broad responsibilities in the area of welfarefrequently working

in informal partnership with town councils (often, indeed, sharing the
same leaders). From about the turn of the century this picture began
to be transformed, as social legislation encroached on the territory of
associations. Even so, public provision was often restrained by a
parsimonious Treasury, and many of the new powers were actually
devolved on to local councils rather than exercised by central government. Local authorities also enlarged their activity, in other elds,
including the provision of leisure facilities. On the other hand, societies acquired new areas of activity and their public standing in the
eld of welfare remained important up to the Second World War. This
was clearly recognized in government circles. In 1925 the Chief
Medical Ofcer, George Newman, an energetic supporter of health
education, declared that his ministry's efforts should be conned to
elite groups, leaving more popular forms of propaganda to local
authorities and, above all, to voluntary associations, closer to the
masses. For ofcial agencies, he judged, cannot easily undertake
such work: `this is the sphere of voluntary bodies and an enlightened
public opinion. The character and traditions of the people of Great
Britain are such that they elect . . . to be arbiters of their own fate.
They will not accept that which is foisted on them against their
will.' 30
The old balance between associations, local councils, and the state
was radically upset after the Second World War, when the central
government appropriated many responsibilities from the voluntary
sector and local authorities. However, societies retained a substantial
foothold in social provision and this, combined with their entrenched
position in British society and the general buoyancy of associational
activity from the 1960s, began to stabilize their relations with the state
even before 1979. After the advent of the Conservative government
voluntary organizations took over social policy functions not only
from government but also from their traditional partners, local
councils. The outcome has been messy: because of the institutional
weaknesses of associations; because of the continuing lack of a clear
framework for voluntary organizations and attempts by government
to undermine their autonomy and turn them into client agencies;
30
Finlayson, Citizen, 81, 834 and passim; M. Daunton, `Payment and Participation:
Welfare and State-Formation in Britain, 19001951', P&P 150 (1996), 1702, 181 ff.; T.
Boon, `State and Individual: The Context of the Health Education Film', paper at the
Wellcome Health Education Conference, Leicester University (1995); I am indebted to Dr
Boon for letting me cite from his paper.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

487

because of tensions with local authorities, often with different attitudes and policies towards such bodies; and because of the growing
entry of the commercial sector into the public service arena. Far from
opening a new golden era for voluntary associations, political developments under the Conservative government after 1979 led to a
confused image for societies, which may help to explain their loss
of grass-roots backing and declining role in local community networks. 31 To what extent this is a permanent change, reversing longestablished traditions, remains unclear.
What is remarkable is that clubs and societies, which evolved as a
cornerstone of British society in the pre-modern era, have retained
much of their importance, vitality, and attraction into the late twentieth century. No less striking, a good many of those basic features of
societies, begot in the special conditions of later Stuart and Georgian
expansionism, have remained inuential in the shaping of modern
associations. If their umbilical identication with heavy drinking and
distinctive masculine fellowship may have faded, their idealistic ambitions, their organizational limitations, and their ill-dened relationship
with the state have stayed both to sustain and to shackle British
voluntary associations.

iii
Finally, what are the implications of this study of the rise of British
clubs and societies for the current debate among political theorists
and commentators about the evolution of civil society? Underlying
that debate, as we noted earlier, are a series of key questions: on the
extent to which voluntary organizations, perceived as the prime
engines of civil society, can be fabricated in a virgin terrain, or need
a long process of maturation; on the preconditions necessary for their
successful growth; on the importance of a regional dimension; and on
their contribution to economic modernization as well as to the processes of democratic dialogueproviding a powerful check on the
state, inculcating ideas and experience of communal trust. 32
That modern voluntary associationsclubs and societies and similar bodiesare a historical entity which has evolved and changed over
31
Wolfenden, Voluntary Organisations, 85; Finlayson, Citizen, 35879; N. Connelly, Between
Apathy and Outrage: Voluntary Organisations in Multiracial Britain (London, 1990), 34.
32
J. A. Hall (ed.), Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison (Oxford, 1995), chs. 1, 45, 10; R.
Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ, 1993).

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

488

Conclusion

time needs little exegesis. But they did not emerge protoplasmically
from the Middle Ages, as Robert Putnam suggested for Italian associations. Rather, in Britain they were created by a complex set of
economic, social, political, and cultural conditions which were already
in place before the Industrial Revolution. As we have seen, voluntary
associations may be transplanted to new terrains, such as the British
empire, but they need a favourable context in which to ourish and
mature: urbanization, an expanding better-off class, a free press,
limited government, and good communications. Without such conditions they will fail to develop deep roots, and will remain in a shallow
colonial or elite mode. 33
One of the other major ndings of this work has been that there are
strong regional dimensions to the rise of British clubs and societies,
but that they are not xed or immutable. Though it is evident that the
rest of the British Isles lagged behind Georgian England in the
number, range, and density of association, a divergence which seems
to have persisted after 1800, regional patterns within countries were
complex and varied over time. Moreover, regional differentiation was
only one aspect of the impact of British societies in the Augustan age.
It has to be set beside their importance for national integration on the
one hand, and their contribution to local communal consciousness on
the other. As we have argued, it was often at the community level that
the dense networks of associational membership had their greatest
effect, bringing together different social groups, breeding a sense of
communal identity, bridging the divide between town and countryside.
This is not to forget the general importance of voluntary associations
in eighteenth-century society in giving many Britons experience of
ofce-holding and elections, of debate and decision-making, and
putting even small-town shopkeepers and artisans in communication
with a wider political and cultural universe, which enabled them to
comprehend notions of improvement and progress.
Yet we should not be too starry-eyed about the contribution of
clubs and societies to political education. While they may have helped
to teach the better-off classes a sense of mutual trust and collaboration, the repeated failure of societies, their internal divisions and
disputes, their selectivity and secrecy, their frequent dependence on
one or two charismatic leaders, the recurrent problems of poor attendance and oligarchic control, provided a depressing object lesson in
how difcult it is to realize ideals, to sustain voluntary collective action
33

Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 125 ff.; see above, ch. 11.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

489

over a period of time. The typical experience of associations in

Georgian Britain was not one of balanced inter-society co-operation
on a Lockean model, but of a Hobbesian jungle, where clubs and
societies strove against each other to attract publicity, patrons, supporters, and, above all, cash. Alongside the success stories like the
freemasons or the Royal Society, the period was littered with societal
failures like the Bucks, the Gormogons, and the county feast societies.
Again, we should not be simpliste about the nature of the social
improvement which many societies pursued, particularly from the
last years of the eighteenth century. Recent work has emphasized
how the work of charitable societies in the nineteenth century
involved a serious invasion of the privacy of the lower classes. What
the better-off might construe as democratic collective action to help
the needy, was often regarded as domineering intrusion and social and
religious blackmail by the poor. 34
Again, the much-vaunted notion of voluntary societies holding the
ring against an imperialistic state and a capitalist private sector may be
too sanguine. As we have seen, clubs and societies grew up in Britain
because of the general decline of the state at both the central and local
level. Moving into some kind of political and governmental vacuum,
they assumed signicant adminstrative functions. And in the smallscale, expansive world of Georgian Britain, it probably made sense for
voluntary associations, close to the local community, to take on this
work. But, as we concluded in Chapter 12, the overall performance of
societies was unimpressive. In the Victorian era, as urban problems
snowballed, the institutional defects of associations became tiresomely
obvious, and the achievements of the voluntary sector in welfare
provision were found wanting. During the twentieth century relations
between the state, voluntary organizations, and the private sector have
been poorly dened: a murky menage a trois rather than the effective
partnership called for by conservative commentators. Whether such
an arrangement can present an effective response to the challenges of
post-industrial society, beset by the threats of globalization, is open to
question.
Claims that voluntary associations contribute to economic modernization appear equally debatable. In England, commercial growth,
rises in living standards, advances in consumer industries, and the
expansion of internal trade appear to pre-date the great surge of
societies during the eighteenth century. In Ireland, by contrast,
34

D. Vincent, `Secrecy and the City, 18701939', Urban History, 22 (1995), 3469.

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

490

Conclusion

economic backwardness acted as a brake on the growth of societies

and, despite all the efforts of improvement associations, the impetus
to economic change seems minimal. In Scotland, it is true, many
Edinburgh societies preached the language of modernization and
Anglicization, but it is unlikely that this was the direct cause of the
commercial and industrial take-off of the western and central lowlands. On the other hand, it is plausible that, by creating perceptions
of improvement and modernity, associations did foster a general
culture in the Augustan era that was tolerant of new economic ideas,
innovation, and industrial investment. However, this may have been a
function, not of the voluntary sector in general, but of particular kinds
of association operating at certain times. In the later nineteenth
century the great upsurge of clubs and societies coincided with a
growing perception that Britain was in the process of falling behind
in the great economic race against Germany, but few associations
sought to address that problem. All the indications are that, while
voluntary associations had a progressive, dynamic effect in the premodern period, their functions and effectiveness in the modern and
post-modern world are constrained, if not undermined, by the institutional baggage inherited from that earlier era.
Thus, the long history of British associations makes one wary of the
more atulent theorizing about civil society. To appreciate the role of
voluntary associations and their limitations, it is necessary to understand the organizational context, the problems of running such
bodies, their high turnover rate, and their propensity to collapse
amidst acrimony. There has to be due recognition of the differences
between traditional local associations, like early Georgian clubs, with
their relatively small membership and considerable degree of participation, or federated organizations (like the freemasons), with more
centralized control but still quite extensive local autonomy and involvement, and the important national (and international) associations
which have multiplied in the late twentieth century with a largely
passive, spectator membership.
Fundamentally, any discussion of the role of associations in the
early modern and modern worlds needs to answer in a convincing way
why Britons and Americans turned into nations of joiners, why so
many people were willing to leave home on cold, wet nights, or when
other business called, for a club or society meeting. Serious publicspirited motives, though important, were only part of the story. Nor
was self interest, whether in personal improvement, social mobility,
jobs, mutual aid, or learning skills, a sufcient explanation for the

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

490

Conclusion

economic backwardness acted as a brake on the growth of societies

and, despite all the efforts of improvement associations, the impetus
to economic change seems minimal. In Scotland, it is true, many
Edinburgh societies preached the language of modernization and
Anglicization, but it is unlikely that this was the direct cause of the
commercial and industrial take-off of the western and central lowlands. On the other hand, it is plausible that, by creating perceptions
of improvement and modernity, associations did foster a general
culture in the Augustan era that was tolerant of new economic ideas,
innovation, and industrial investment. However, this may have been a
function, not of the voluntary sector in general, but of particular kinds
of association operating at certain times. In the later nineteenth
century the great upsurge of clubs and societies coincided with a
growing perception that Britain was in the process of falling behind
in the great economic race against Germany, but few associations
sought to address that problem. All the indications are that, while
voluntary associations had a progressive, dynamic effect in the premodern period, their functions and effectiveness in the modern and
post-modern world are constrained, if not undermined, by the institutional baggage inherited from that earlier era.
Thus, the long history of British associations makes one wary of the
more atulent theorizing about civil society. To appreciate the role of
voluntary associations and their limitations, it is necessary to understand the organizational context, the problems of running such
bodies, their high turnover rate, and their propensity to collapse
amidst acrimony. There has to be due recognition of the differences
between traditional local associations, like early Georgian clubs, with
their relatively small membership and considerable degree of participation, or federated organizations (like the freemasons), with more
centralized control but still quite extensive local autonomy and involvement, and the important national (and international) associations
which have multiplied in the late twentieth century with a largely
passive, spectator membership.
Fundamentally, any discussion of the role of associations in the
early modern and modern worlds needs to answer in a convincing way
why Britons and Americans turned into nations of joiners, why so
many people were willing to leave home on cold, wet nights, or when
other business called, for a club or society meeting. Serious publicspirited motives, though important, were only part of the story. Nor
was self interest, whether in personal improvement, social mobility,
jobs, mutual aid, or learning skills, a sufcient explanation for the

8.11.99 08:44 13 Chapter 0394

Conclusion

491

exponential growth of membership. In the midst of all our high-own

discussion about the economic, political and cultural effects of societies, we should never forget that those improving artisans of Georgian
Westminster, bee-keeping burghers of Culross, and loquacious gentlemen of Annapolis's Tuesday Club, with whom we began this study,
shared the same expectations as the working-class inhabitants of interwar York who turned up to their bowling or football clubsthe hope
of relaxation and happiness. At such places, as we know, they would
take part in the formal business and then sit around with friends,
usually with a drink, to hear the latest news or scandal, to join in a
song, to escape from the tedium of work and the family, in other
words, to have a little fun. No one could describe the experience
better than that jovial expatriate Scot, Alexander Hamilton: `we meet
converse, laugh, talk, smoke, drink, differ, agree, argue, philosophize,
harangue, pun, sing, dance and ddle together . . . we are really and in
fact a club.' 35
35
J. Wheeler, `Reading and Other Recreations of Marylanders, 17001776', Maryland
Historical Magazine, 38 (1943), 44.

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

INDEX

Abel, Karl Friedrich 122

Aberdeen 58, 80, 91, 121, 138, 165, 206, 350,
454, 456, 460
Aberdeenshire 113
academies, continental 5, 1416, 18, 19, 44,
45, 53, 262, 263, 439, 443, 470
Academy of Ancient Music 11, 79, 121, 236,
263, 441, 448
Acland, John 370, 371
Adams, John 397, 416
Adams, John Quincy 414
Addison, Joseph 4, 227
Africa 95, 105
Ahiman Rezon 333, 344
Albany, NY 408
alehouses 32, 43
London clubs meeting at 50, 62, 309
and moral reform movement 433
at Oxford 26
mixed space at 27, 39
poor men at 130
premises of 40, 1623
regulation of 44, 278
sociability at 1545, 363
social clubs at 352
Warwickshire 37
ales 30, 31, 33
Alnwick 327
Alton, Hants 357, 361
American Academy of Sciences, Boston 11
American Philosophical Society,
Philadelphia 264, 405, 4089
Amsterdam 19, 107
Ancient Society of York Florists 84, 244,
246
Anderson, James 263, 3323
Anglesey 298
Anglicization 347, 4001, 403, 426, 453,
455, 456, 490
angling 32, 42, 124, 391, 418
Annapolis:
administrative functions of 392
assemblies in 414
club ofcials in 254, 256
club processions in 267

concerts at 392, 414

drinking houses in 395
economy of 392
Homony Club at 181, 232
imported fashions in 415
newspapers in 394
overshadowed by Baltimore 409
plays at 392, 414
population of 392
race-meetings at 392
range of clubs in 392
Scots migrants to 87
see also Tuesday Club
Anne, queen 270
Annesley, Samuel 275, 278, 279
Anti-Gallican Societies 89, 99, 401
anti-slavery movement 104, 132, 215, 466,
467
Antigua 3, 346, 421, 426, 427
antiquaries 334
at Chester 32
early societies of 26, 45
feast of in 1650s 50
society of at Edinburgh 68
Spalding links with Society of 79
see also Society of Antiquaries
antiquarianism 78, 111, 278, 298, 334, 423
Scottish 474
Victorian 456
apprentices:
attending clubs 130
to Bristol 432
clubs organised by 110
diary of a Lancashire apprentice 43
excluded from societies 221
and living in service 206
to London 4312, 447
Philadelphia 223
poor 2778, 284, 2879, 297, 338, 432
in population 204
prizes to 4313, 447, 448
and religious societies 55, 205
at society feasts 269
and Tory clubs 57
and trade guilds 22

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

494

Index

apprenticeship 158, 267, 272, 279

decline of 159, 448
archery 21, 50, 68, 1245, 184, 189, 197
architects 14, 15, 194, 212, 2356, 334, 336
Architects Club 11718, 236
Argyllshire 294
army 127, 139, 271, 329, 338, 348, 397, 407
Arne, Thomas 122, 441
Arthur, king 5
artists 14, 63, 78, 79, 212, 218, 230, 248, 446
arts, visual 2, 11, 15, 63, 78, 97, 423, 442,
472
Ashdon, Essex 124
Ashmole, Elias 50
Asiatic Society of Bengal 264, 423, 425
assemblies 60, 161, 171
and assizes 186
crowded 188
in India 423
at inns 162, 164
integrative function of 160, 180, 291, 307
Irish 190
London 88
and new-style public sociability 3, 27, 41
North American 391, 406, 414, 419, 422
organized by societies 192
Scottish 187
social mixing at 189
and social mobility 152
under George I 39
in the West Indies 421
women at 191, 202, 450
assembly rooms 147, 152, 160, 162, 168,
169, 192, 268, 412
Assheton, Nicholas 32, 42
assizes 36, 37, 186, 292
Association of Protestant Schoolmasters
117, 225
Association of the Friends of the People 99,
132
Aston, Sir Willoughby 43
astrology 49
astronomy 271, 336, 439
Atherstone, Warwicks 37
Atholl, Duke of 230, 344
Atkins, Sir Robert 284
Attleborough, Norfolk 23
Aubrey, John 51, 53, 284
Ayrshire 294
bachelors 135, 136, 194, 204, 205, 207

Bakewell, Robert 112

Baltimore 303, 305, 306, 409, 411, 451
Banbury, Oxon 84
Bangor, Wales 66
bankruptcy 153, 220, 338, 360
banks and bankers 103, 129, 260, 261, 284,
338
Banks, Sir Joseph 218, 220, 2346, 256, 427,
439
Baptists 34, 96, 105
Barbados 58, 68, 163, 301, 329, 338, 4201,
425, 427
barbecues 397, 419
barn and house raising 31, 397, 419
Barrington, Sir Thomas 46
Barry, James 234, 248
Barrymore, Lord 126, 1367
Bath 255, 299
competition with Bristol 456
economy of 135
fashionable migration to 147
orist society at 84
learned society at 111
music society at 123, 135
philanthropic society at 105, 135
population of 135
range of associations at 135
social composition of associations at 213
social segregation at 18990
Bath and West Society 112, 113, 135, 210,
271, 457
Baxter, Richard 52, 27980
Beaufort, 2nd Duke of 62, 241
Beaufort, 5th Duke of 289, 3402
Bedford 42, 512, 481
bee-keeping 1, 126
Belfast 110, 138, 143, 167
benet clubs 2, 54, 72, 94, 35087, 432, 452,
458
actuarial basis of 355, 366, 376, 385, 468,
473
at alehouses 1545
Bath 135
Birmingham 134
called associations 11
centralized modern societies 473
clerks of 257, 364, 379, 380
and the courts 243, 368
Dutch 18
effectiveness of 4356
federated orders 3856, 468, 473, 484

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

Index
female 351, 354, 3567, 3758, 380, 450;
function of 3645; importance of
men in 200, 380; numbers of 3,
198, 364, 450; reasons for low
female participation in 2023, 364;
and upper-class women 358, 364
nances of 202, 242, 2601, 354, 355,
357, 3658, 376, 468
French 17, 19
and funerals 270, 382
and gilds 83, 311, 355
heaven as 5
Irish 350, 385
Maidstone 136
membership exclusions 211, 215, 3767,
436, 446
middle class 84, 85, 208, 222, 3546, 366,
367
and multiple membership 218
North American 52, 385, 391, and passim
Norwich 89
numbers of 325, 350, 374, 473, 479
ofce-holding 254, 354, 358, 359, 368,
37980, 3834, 465
organization of 2379, 3803
Oxford 90
Philanthropic Society and 106
poor attendance at 237
pre-Civil War 26, 47, 352
processions by 266, 363, 382
promoted by publicans 164
rhetoric of 246
rules of 250, 373 ff.
rural 3, 136, 142, 215, 351, 356, and
passim, 436
and schools 272
Scottish 47, 50, 53, 68, 91, 132, 137, 138,
296, 350, 352, 3845
social exclusion from 130
spatial coverage of 129, 3745
statutory regulation of 176, 177, 3703,
466
trade-based 83, 91, 92, 96, 100, 129,
1328, and passim
and upper classes 215, 3569, 3635, 374,
383
Welsh 350, 351
Benevolent Order of Friendly Brothers of
St Patrick 77, 98, 299
Benevolent Society, Stafford 221, 246, 369
Bengal 3457, 422, 423

495

Bentinck, Lord 198

Bentley, William 234, 331, 431
Berkshire 54, 280, 282, 447
Berlin 16
Bermuda 421, 424, 425
Bewick, Thomas 431
Birch, Thomas 263
Birmingham 154, 157, 293, 341, 457, 475
associations: and local courts 243, 365
associations: bell-ringing 72, 134;
building houses 129, 242; debating
102, 120, 133, 199; masonic 315,
330, 331; meetings of 381; modern
78; musical 80, 134; organization of
253, 260; painting of 248;
philanthropic 105, 133; range of
1334, 164; scientic 110, 133, 252,
440; trade, 361; Welsh 300
economy of 133, 457
population of 133
and region 133, 295, 457
bishops 49, 65, 119, 298
blacks 304, 408, 412, 426, 478
Blandford Forum 167
Blessington, Earl of 328
blind 107, 134
Blow, John 63, 269
Bo'ness 47, 352
Board of Agriculture 113, 439, 445, 448
Board of Loyal Brotherhood 62, 73, 224,
23941, 250
Bolton 327, 358, 478
Bombay 422, 424, 425, 454
booksellers 4, 62, 78, 109, 150, 151, 165,
212, 401
Boscawen, Fanny 170, 188
Boston, Lincs 20, 85
Boston, Mass 162, 3937, 399, 402, 411, 455
associations 407; ethnic 52, 68, 302, 303,
389; re 87, 389; learned 11, 58;
masonic 347, 389; missionary 104;
number of 139, 389, 407;
philanthropic 107; religious 66, 68,
389
economy of 389, 390
population of 389
Boswell, James 149, 187, 229, 297
bowling 32, 33, 413, 81, 126, 422
greens 42, 43, 67, 92, 422
Boyle, Robert 49, 51
Bradford 105, 110, 361, 370, 444, 451, 480

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

496

Index

Bradwell, Essex 124

Brasbridge, Joseph 100, 153
Bray, Thomas 178, 217, 401
Brentwood, Essex 56
brewers 163, 176, 214, 261, 357
Bridgetown 58, 301, 420, 424, 427
Bridlington 105
Brighton 135
Bristol 170
associations 271, 307; bell-ringing 48, 89;
book 109; county 51, 75, 89, 280,
286, 2934, 4323; diocesan 66, 89;
ethnic 300; horticultural 84, 89;
library 110; masonic 267, 310, 314,
315, 333, 432, 433; medical 115;
modern 475; moral reform 64;
musical 1223; philanthropic 83,
89, 99, 105, 197, 436; political 57,
89, 242; professional 54, 58; range
of 678, 89, 133, 456
economy of 92, 147, 152
elite of 147
family rituals at 28
gilds at 23, 185
new-style sociability in 147, 185, 190
newspapers at 69
population of 89, 133
and region 294, 353, 456
street lighting at 169, 411, 433, 436, 456
townscape of 1578, 267
Brooks's Club 224, 228, 271
Brussels 16
Buchan, Earl of 253
Buckinghamshire 173, 282, 284, 289, 363
Bucks, Noble Order of 76, 89, 98, 134, 247,
259, 423, 425, 453, 489
Burgess, John 231, 431
Burgh, James 11
Burke, Edmund 102, 137
Burlington, NJ 408
Burney, Fanny 188
Burns, Robert 231
Bury St Edmunds 42, 168, 185
Byrd, William 453
Byrom, John 70, 157, 209, 211, 217, 218,
229, 291
Calamy, Edmund 278, 279, 432
Calcutta 3, 199, 347, 4227, 455
Cambridge 9 n., 51, 62, 72, 80, 90, 120, 214,
244, 254, 272, 277, 293

university 37, 38, 71, 123, 186, 231, 235,

253, 293
Cambridgeshire 20, 30, 220, 281, 282
Camden, William 26
Canada 3, 4212, 426, 484
canals 261
Canterbury 61, 71, 84, 109, 111, 123, 293
Cape of Good Hope 423, 424
capitalism, gentlemanly 7, 428
card-playing 29, 126, 135, 191, 192
Carlisle 41
Carlisle, Earl of 359
Carlisle, Penn 409
Carmarthen 66
Carolina, South 3, 160
Cashell 167
Castle Howard 359
Castle Tavern Musical Society, London 79,
199, 220, 260
Catch Club, London 122, 232, 2379, 246,
252, 255, 257, 425
Catholicism 14, 23, 34, 55, 61, 65, and passim
Cave, Edward 70, 227
Cave, Sir Thomas 147, 173
Celtic culture 298, 299
Celtis, Conrad 15
censorship 18, 45, 52, 106, 415, 427
end of 26, 49, 54, 69, 172, 292, 470
Chamberlayne, John 257
chambers of commerce 11, 138, 152, 404
Channel Islands 92, 214, 309
Charles I 36, 247, 279
Charles II 41, 52, 53, 279, 280, 285
Charleston:
associations 240, 4067, 454;
ethnic 3025, 391; growth of 75,
139; for juveniles 11; library 402;
masonic 3267; musical 199; range
of 391, 405, 410, 459
club houses at 412
elite at 394
newspapers at 394
politics at 454, 459
Chelmsford 101, 186
Chepstow 124
Chesapeake region 392
Cheshire 201, 457
circles in London 291
county society 275, 276, 278, 279, 284,
287
orist societies in 84
Jacobite club in 247

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

Index
landowners 30, 43
chess 126
Chester 32, 33, 41, 57, 66, 102, 107, 153,
185, 261
Chestereld 120
Chestertown, Md 392
Chichester, Earl of 170
Child, Sir Robert 212
Chirk 102
Chorley, Lancs 327
Church, Anglican 27, 30, 335, 42, 43, 48,
557, and passim
Church, of Scotland 43, 117, 137
Cincinnati, Society of 7, 100, 245, 407, 417
Cirencester 71, 287
civil society, notions of viiviii, 463, 48790
Civil Wars, English 6, 26, 32, 49, 175, 461
civility 4, 36, 178, 450
Clark, Richard 430
clergy 11, 33, 34, 49, 55, 65, 79, and passim
Clitheroe, Lancs 42
clocks and watches 129, 163, 170
clubbing 10
clubs and societies:
advertising by 102, 119, 173, 2589, 268,
288, 332, 344, 414
ceremonies 87, 95, 99, 191 203, 223, 233,
267, 312, 3335, 347, 363
certicates issued by 206, 3302, 340,
353, 361
charitable activity of 71, 259, 260, 272,
276, 2789, and passim; see also
philanthropy
chartered 9, 11, 53, 55, 59, 66, 70, 82, 95,
and passim
closure of 235, 244, 299, 3657, 385, 406,
438, 461, 465, 490
club rooms 164, 190, 198, 202, 245, 247,
259, 266
committees 65, 2556, 289, 297, 33940,
358, 379, 380, 385, 451
and competition 14, 1819, 2627, 44,
5961, and passim
conversation at 111, 203, 206, 222,
22930, 413, 462
denitional problems of 1013
divisions in 54, 118, 207, 220, 2347, and
passim
elections at 220, 256, 379, 464, 488
expulsions by 236, 240, 242, 3658

497
founders of 23, 141, 165, 213, 218, 246,
2513, 424, 444
furniture 2479, 259
and gilds 235, 353, 355
homosociality of 203, 223
histories of 1, 7, 72, 256
in private houses 164, 202, 250, 364
institutionalization of 95, 100, 101, 202,
244, 246, 262, 273, 444
justication for 1778, 180, 264
legal status of 243, 36870, 372, 469
libraries in 112, 114, 250, 304, 438, 462
life span of 9, 601, 109, 2434, 290, 309,
362, 367, 443, 484, 490
meeting times of 170, 171, 190, 211, 216,
23740, 256, 282, 3801, 459
mobility of 209, 2412, 319
music at 62, 73, 77, 130, 191, 198, 203,
225, and passim
names of 1012, 195, 459
numbers of 13, 26, 52, 58, 60, 94, 96,
and passim
ofce-holding in 13, 24, 45, 49, 51, 55,
59, 62, 63, 65, and passim
oligarchic tendency 98, 109, 198, 236,
256, 379, 383, 465, 474, 488
opposition to 445, 53, 59, 102, 103, 119,
179, 312, 333, 349, 433, 467
organisation of 6, 12, 13, 22, 26, 49, 54,
56, 59, 60, and passim
origins of 1327, 34, 44, 353, 470, 488
private premises of 24850, 349, 396,
412, 427, 451, 482
prizes awarded by 85, 11214, 431, 437,
438
promoters of 40, 107, 161, 1646, 356,
357, 470, 482
promotional activity by 7, 53, 65, 122,
137, 164, 235, 26273, 325, 3323,
3445, 348, 402, 4389, 470
publications of 7, 53, 74, 85, 86, 107,
11214, 195, and passim
reasons for joining 72, 1945, 223, 413,
4901
records of 9, 54, 71, 101, 257, 311, 320,
373
regalia of 76, 222, 2268, 247, 248, 266,
270, 327, 329, 345, 353
rhetoric of 181, 195, 211, 227, 234, 246,
31920, and passim

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

498

Index

clubs and societies (cont ):

rituals 71, 76, 77, 219, 223, 2268, 319,
3335, 417, 448
rules of 9, 49, 51, 52, 59, 62, 63, 65, 70,
71, 78, and passim
salaried ofcials of 77, 200, 251, 257, 340,
364, 380
satirized 45, 7, 94, 264, 267, 333
secrecy at 223, 262, 312, 3334, 488
social mixing at 224, 226, 235, 273, 320,
3234, 328, 386, 470
spatial distribution of 23, 6, 502, 578,
60, 645, 76, and passim
club and society functions:
and civic identity 45860, 4801
and class formation 8, 9, 4446, 469, 481
and fun 2256, 230, 491
and government 267, 445, 523, 96,
97, 17580, 4034, 41718, 465 ff.,
4857, 489
and improvement 1, 178, 206, 232,
2712, 3356, 429, 453, 456, 464, 489
integrative function of 161, 178, 1802,
1956, 225, 233, 277, and passim
lobbying by 100, 137, 179, 200, 306,
36970, 372, 4658
and national identity 41617, 420, 452,
455, 488
and political education 118, 386, 4625,
469, 488
and religion 182, 187, 224, 235, 287, 312,
330, 334, 377, 382, 461, 472, 474
social networking role of 150, 153, 158,
209, 290, 299, 304, and passim
club and society membership:
admission procedures for 79, 158, 190,
20911, 21617, 21924, 233, 235,
246, 256, 324, 334, 446, 448
age structure of 3, 50, 2048, 216, 260,
346, 365, 376, 435
attendance by 23740, 251, 283, 325, 346,
415, 430, 465, 488
behaviour regulated 9, 177, 2501, 3824,
4512
costs of 130, 202, 2212, 225, 237, 258,
304, 324, 3545, 3779, 446
dress of 124, 223, 227, 254, 266, 270, 288,
327, 329, 381
exclusions from 2201, 3767, 384, 412,
424, 436, 446, 449

male bias of 3, 12, 22, 24, 49, 84, 95, 122,

130, 191, and passim
multiple 21819, 222, 223, 312, 448, 485
paintings of 67, 228, 2478, 329
ranks of 20910, 2245, 334
size 1969, 213, 216, 220, 236, 251, 310,
354, 364, 3747, 405
social composition of 34, 22, 45, 73, 74,
834, and passim
and social standing of 152, 154, 232, 438,
445
women in 119, 122, 1301, 155,
198204, 44951, 483
club and society types:
agricultural 17, 18, 86, 91, 11214, 135,
138, 179, and passim
alumni 2, 48, 56, 59, 61, 71, 90, 92, 101,
132, 134, 136, 137, 164, 253, 265, 272,
285, 423
anti-slavery 104 132, 215, 409, 410, 417,
454, 466
archery 1245, 136, 174, 197, 2002, 220,
221, 243
aristocratic 19, 45, 49, 212
artistic 2, 11, 478, 78, 97, 132, 134, 212,
236, 250, 340, 442, 446, 447
bell-ringing 26, 48, 52, 57, 712, 89, 90,
and passim
benevolent 11618, 220, 221, 224, 285,
337, 366, 369, 405, 409, 423, 436, 476
book 2, 85, 90, 10910, 1336, 165, 181,
201, 218, 421, 431, 462
building 12930, 134, 242
clock 129, 134, 164, 250, 352
closed 101, 191, 250
clothing 129, 134, 164, 352
common room 3, 54, 57
cricket 5, 125, 135, 136, 174, 227, 456
debating 2, 3, 18, 47, 48, 51, 89, 102, 109,
and passim
educational 55, 812, 88, 1034, 109, 132,
179, and passim
female 3, 91, 130, 187, 198, 200 ff., 259,
351 and passim, 436, 450, 483
ctitious 4, 5, 203
re 87, 38891, 393, 405, 406, 409, 410,
418, 421, 431, 462
shing 124, 390, 391, 405, 431, 477, 478
hobby 475, 478
horticultural 2, 4, 489, 51, 58, 68, 801,
845, and passim

8.11.99 14:32 Index 0394

Index
hunting 73, 124, 1357, 139, 201, 252,
391, 405, 409
improvement 1, 2, 1617, 19, 61, 856,
91, 92, and passim
informal 57, 59, 70, 100, 165, 196, 204,
244, 253, 299
jockey 125, 174, 392, 405, 410, 419, 422,
424
juvenile 205, 475, 477, 479
library 88, 10910, 134, 201, 390, 391,
393, 402, 403, 408, 414, 420
literary 2, 47, 50, 57, 70, 90, 91, 1012,
and passim
loyalist 96, 99, 103, 136, 138, 176, 449,
461, 462, 467, 468
medical 2, 7, 53, 86, 91, 97, 1067,
11416, 132, and passim
military 17, 48, 68, 77, 100, 127, 132, 136,
137, 391
missionary 1045, 132, 137, 418, 453, 460
money 129, 134, 253, 352, 365, 367
moral reform 646, 68, 69, 745, 84, 95,
and passim
musical 2, 3, 11, 17, 26, 50, 51, 54, 57, and
passim
neighbourhood 2, 56, 91, 101, 137, 208,
228, 259, 2856
patronymic 47, 56, 59, 83, 101, 137, 217
philanthropic 2, 3, 11, 19, 22, 26, 50, 56,
61, 66, 814, and passim
political 2, 7, 11, 17, 18, 26, 4952, 55, 57,
and passim
professional 2, 11, 54, 58, 66, 89, 97, 109,
11518, and passim
prosecution 2, 11, 67, 956, 1024, 133,
1356, 138, 165, 179, and passim
pseudo-masonic 2, 767, 98, 133, 137,
141, 2445, 423, 425, 453, 462
radical 96, 99, 132, 133, 136, 1645, 176,
196, 449, 453, 454, 461, 462, 4668
reading 100, 133, 138, 162
religious 10, 55, 57, 60, 646, 68, 84, 91,
92, 95, and passim
scientic and learned 2, 3, 7, 19, 22, 26,
41, 45, 47, 4954, and passim
social 1, 2, 13, 26, 50, 57, 68, 701, 83,
and passim
sporting 2, 5, 68, 734, 81, 90, 95, 1236,
132, 134, 136, 138, 174, and passim
student 90, 91, 101, 121, 137, 245, 405,
462

499

temperance 454, 476

see also benet clubs; freemasons; regional
and ethnic societies; and under the
name of individual bodies.
cock-ghts 40, 41, 81, 125, 162, 164, 172,
183, 284, 292, 391, 420
coffee-houses 169, 189, 194, 430
American 395
associations at 19, 26, 40, 41, 50, 70, 73,
74, 78, 100
attempted suppression of 55, 176
and civil society 6, 463
conict at 236
numbers of 162
origin of 40
regional and ethnic connections of
1601, 297, 301
role of 1612, 178
servants at 239
sociability at 401, 152
Coggeshall, Essex 353
Coke, Lady Mary 190
Colchester 114, 116, 353
Colebrook, Sir George 198, 249
Collinson, Peter 178, 4012, 454
Colquhoun, Patrick 371, 435
compagnonnages 19
composers 67, 79, 121, 441, 442
Concord, Mass 404
Congregationalists 34, 96, 105
Congress, American 406, 416
Connecticut 397, 398
continent, European 3, 5, 1320, 47, 60,
107, 142, 175, 388, 390, 4423
Copenhagen 16
Cork 92, 107, 110, 121, 139, 143, 167, 182,
200, 317
Cornwall 30, 136, 290
Corsica 209
Coterie Society 198, 2023, 242, 249
Cotton, Robert Sir 26
Counter-Reformation 14
country houses 149, 184
county:
association movement, reformist 11, 99,
176, 292
associations of ministers 52, 27980
clubs 274, 277, 281, 2902
consciousness 278, 279, 284, 287, 2913,
456
histories 275, 284, 292

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

500

Index

county (cont ):
societies 59, 272, 386, 4323, 462, 489;
after the Glorious Revolution 61,
68, 2869; after the Restoration
910, 54, 56, 57, 181, 252, 2806;
before the Civil War 2745; during
English Revolution 26, 50, 51,
274280; Hanoverian 75, 137,
28995; modern 456; organization
of 2767, 2823; sources for 910,
2745
Court 38, 39, 45, 57, 283, 287, 341
Irish 146
courts 67, 117, 180
American 398, 412, 419
church 285
Irish 146
local 360
police 169
prerogative 49, 175
of requests 243, 365, 368
Westminster 45, 98, 116, 117, 243, 277,
341, 357, 3689
see also assizes; quarter sessions
Coventry 35, 80, 124, 362
Cowbridge 92
Cowe James 202, 364, 371
Craftsman 148, 174 n.
cricket:
clubs 81, 90, 125, 135, 136, 174, 227
colonial 422
county teams 292
Downing St cricket club 5
modern clubs 456
new-style 40, 125, 431
promotion of 164
spectators at matches 189
traditional 33
crime 33, 64, 67, 95, 96, 102, 103, 106, 169,
179, 243, 32930, 4345
Croseld, Thomas 32, 38
Cullen, James 198, 199
Culross 1, 2, 126, 491
Cumberland 31, 289, 359
Cumberland, Duke of 328, 343
curling 81, 126
Curwen, Samuel 28, 186, 430
cycling 475
Cymmrodorion Society 219, 247, 2989
D'Urfey, Tom 286, 297
Dacres, Sir Thomas 277

Dalkeith 201, 353

Dance, George 117
Darlington 111
Dartford, Kent 124
Darwin, Erasmus 111, 151, 218, 252, 457
Dashwood, Sir Francis 78
Daventry, Northants 84
Davidson, Jeremiah 230
debtors 107, 337, 338, 408
Dedham 80, 406
Defoe, Daniel 148, 157
Delany, Mary 157 187, 189, 192
Delaware 347
Denman, Thomas 150, 151
Denmark 16
Derby 84, 111, 165, 168, 252, 458, 460
Devonshire, Duke of 183
Derbyshire 290, 457
Dering, Sir Edward 47
Dermott, Laurence 87, 333, 344
Devaynes, William 200
Devon 31, 290, 370
diaries 9, 28, 42, 43, 70, 136, 430
Dickinson, John 157
Dilettanti, Society of 205, 212, 241, 247,
248, 254, 258, 260, 265, 442
dispensaries 82, 107
Diss, Norfolk 72
dissenters 23, 34, 35, 43, 44, 49, 55, 57, 64,
and passim
Doncaster 79
Donoughmore, Lord 343
Dorset 225, 287, 293
Douglas, Walter 453
dress 156, 160, 183, 189, 278
drinking houses and their landlords 12, 27,
35, 37, 39, 401, 44, 50, and passim
licensing 1612, 171, 177
see also alehouses; coffee-houses; inns;
taverns
Druids 334
Dublin 4, 65, 93, 138, 146, 150, 157, 162,
267, 460
associations 267, 447; benet 350, 385;
Corsican 209; craft 83, 264, 266,
269; educational 82, 88;
improvement 86, 92, 112, 114;
learned 68, 77, 92, 132, 213, 239,
265; library 110; masonic 92, 133,
310, 317, 326, 462; medical 115, 132,
224; moral reform 64, 132; music 2,

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

Index
68, 80, 92, 121, 132, 188, 272, 401,
441; philanthropic 99, 105, 108,
1323, 173; and printers 165;
professional 220; range of 68, 92,
1323, 462; regional and ethnic 58,
132, 286; religious 66, 68, 92, 133
built environment of 146, 167
cultural life of 146, 18890, 441
population of 92, 131, 143, 146
press of 69, 172, 192, 232
Dublin Society, Royal 113, 114, 2634, 271,
437, 455
Dudley 331
Dumfries 272, 350, 362
Dundee 121, 138
Dunmore, Lord 304
Durham 41, 73, 125, 235
Dursley, Gloucs 103
Dyke, Sir Anthony van 48
East Dereham, Norfolk 72
East India Company 11, 422, 424
East Lothian 58
Eddis, William 181, 415
Eden, Sir Frederick 202, 261, 350, 353, 361,
370, 373, 377, 378, 435
Edinburgh 5, 137, 143, 157, 162, 192, 436,
454
associations 5, 88, 252, 456, 490;
academic 117, 248; benet 132,
246, 350, 353; book 110; debating
1201, 240, 453, 455; and elite 446;
golf 81; improvement 61, 91, 112,
113, 213, 438, 455; learned 2, 79, 86,
97, 242, 445, 453, 455, 460; literary
2, 91; medical 97, 114, 228, 455;
moral reform 64, 401; music 80, 91,
131, 249; networks of 449; number
of 459; philanthropic 106, 108,
1312, 213, 436; range of 91, 1312;
religious 66, 91, 131, 132, 213;
skating 213; social 68, 91, 101, 131,
132, 205, 453
economy of 91, 446
landowners in 91, 146, 153
New Town 146, 167
population of 91, 131, 295
professions in 91, 150, 252
university 117, 248
Edward VI 23
Egremont, Earl of 198

501

Egypt 77, 334

Egyptian Society 78, 252, 334
Elizabeth I 44
Ely 109; Isle of 281
Epsom, Surrey 124
Essex 46, 56, 81, 102, 116, 255, 353, 434
ethnic societies 75, 101, 132, 137, 161, 271,
274, 295307, and passim
American 301
French 301, 302, 408
German 301, 302 ff., 405
Irish 90, 299300, 302 ff.
Jewish 301
modern 4789, 481
Scottish 47, 50, 52, 53 58, 75, 2589,
2967, 300, 302 ff., 389, 392, 421,
433
Swiss 301
Welsh 75, 88, 89, 90, 219, 267, 297300,
302 ff., 433
Eton 56, 61 n.
Evelyn, John 50
Exclusion Crisis 54, 55, 57, 181, 281, 285,
286, 461, 462
Exeter 71, 77, 99, 103, 111, 126, 133, 151,
168, 217, 221, 234, 314
exhibitions 38, 88, 162
fairs 37, 42, 43, 153, 1856, 431
Fakenham, Norfolk 72, 80
Falkland, 2nd Lord 47
Falkland, 4th Lord 54
family 2730, 42, 246, 3601, 398, 419,
4489, 464
farewells 30, 43, 267
Farington, Joseph 196, 219, 430
farmers 22, 29, 37, 39, 103, 184, 186, 359,
383, 385, 396
feasts:
at age of majority 184
American 397, 398
of antiquaries 77
associational 26770, 27489, 326, 327,
344, 358, 359, 3812, 461
colonial 68, 301, 304, 305
civic 185
Ellandtide 31
fetes champetres 184
marriage 30
singing 123
St Cecilia's day feast 63

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

502

Index

feasts (cont ):
tickets for 282, 283
Felsted, Essex 61
Female Friendly Society, York 108, 358, 371
fencing 126
Fermanagh, Lord 173, 183
Ferrers, Earl 340
Fifeshire 294
res 87, 147, 167, 272, 280, 283, 337, 338,
378, 418
sheries 85, 397, 438
Fitzwilliam, Lord 145
Florence 14, 15
footbal 33, 397, 475, 477
Forbes, Charles 454
Fothergill, John 114
Fowler, Edward 285
France 11, 15, 62, 95, 176, 271, 362, 371, 467
academies in 15, 16, 1819
activity of in India 422
associations in 14, 17, 1819, 312, 334
confraternities in 14, 1819
enlightenment in 443
state in 175
Huguenot migrants from 301, 302
Franklin, Benjamin 135, 154, 156, 1656,
181, 390, 401, 413, 453
fraternities and confraternities 1314,
1724, 33, 34, 44, 59, 142, 209, 228,
270, 272, 470
Fredericksburg, Va 410
freemasons 2, 7, 13, 19, 50, 60, 63, 74, 76,
and passim
American 7, 100, 312, 3267, 347,
38993, 407, 408, 412, 417, 431, 454
Ancient order of 76, 87, 98, 129, 300,
309 ff., 348, 390, 405, 406, 4201, 454
colonial 3, 60, 87, 88, 309 ff., 401, 405,
406, 4205
continental 1618, 309, 310, 312, 334, 335
federal structure of 98, 311, 312, 319,
324, 325, 336, 329, 331, 33945, 490
Freemasons' Hall 189, 249, 333, 3403
Irish 60, 68, 76, 87, 92, 100, 310 ff., 401,
454, 462
lodge numbers 76, 30910, 31318, 324,
345, 473, 4747, 478
membership 205, 208, 214, 215, 2212,
224, 230, 231, 240, 313 ff., 445, 448,
449, 450
military 127, 310, 332, 340, 345, 348

Modern order 76, 80, 87, 98, 141, 252,

309 ff., 373, 390, 405, 420
ofce-holding in 76, 309, 314, 324, 326
328, 329, 336, 33945
publications 174, 263, 265, 329, 3323,
3356, 344
regalia 164, 247
rituals 319, 3335, 347, 417
secrecy of 262
Scottish 48, 58, 60, 68, 76, 86 87, 91, 98,
310, 311, 334
songs 227, 326, 327, 333, 344, 348
union of Ancient and Modern 349, 473
and women 2012, 483
York order of 87
Freeth, John 248
funerals:
associational 228, 270; benet club 354,
364, 368, 370, 382; burial club 352;
masonic 327, 331, 332, 337
colonial 306, 398
as communal events 30
gild 21
Gaelic culture 2945, 297
Gale, Roger 85
Galloway 294
Galway, Lord 258
game laws 102, 103
gambling 2, 37, 40, 41, 71, 83, 89, 101, 181,
224, 225, 228, 237, 250, 382
gardening 29, 81
Garrick, David 212
Gateshead 457
Geneva 3
Genoa 14
Gentleman's Magazine 70, 174, 402, 443
Gentlemen's Society, Spalding 78, 85, 210
218 228 239, 245, 249
George I 39, 334
George II 39, 342
George III 39, 271, 442
Georgia 345
Germantown, Penn 409
Germany 12, 1519, 99, 334, 338, 443, 490
Germans 160, 3013, 305
gesture 156, 223
Gibbon, Edward 127
Gibbons, Grinling 212
Gibraltar 423
gilds, trade 14, 17, 103, 334, 470

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

Index
and benet clubs 353, 355
decline of 35, 83, 154, 159, 185, 206, 357,
448, 465
feasts of 40, 185, 201
halls of 168
medieval 13, 205, 311
and migration 158, 159
numbers of 23, 24
regulated 24, 35
rhetoric of 178
rituals of 24, 223, 228, 270
rules of 245
Scottish 44, 48, 29, 311
Glamorganshire 113
Glasgow 143, 293, 389
associations 227, 258, 456; benet 350,
362, 370; debating 121, 137; literary
91; numbers of 137; range of 91,
137; regional and ethnic 294, 300,
307; social 87, 91, 254
economy of 91, 92, 137
improvement in 167
population of 137
and region 2945
Gloucester:
bowling green at 42
orist society at 84
freemasons at 314
godly commonwealth of 35
humane society at 459
lawyers at 151
music festival at 66
music society at 80, 90
political clubs at 62
shopkeepers at 153
Sunday school movement at 103, 166
trade gild at 24
Gloucestershire:
bellringing in 204
benet clubs in 351, 383
county society for 282, 284, 285, 287, 289,
290, 293, 294; see also
Gloucestershire Society
Gloucestershire Society, Bristol 51, 54, 212,
227, 260, 280, 293, 294, 433
Goldsmith, Oliver 4, 102, 159, 187, 212,
224, 229
golf 81, 126, 297
Gormogons 76, 489
Grand Antiquity Society, Glasgow 137, 214
Gray family 4489

503

Greece 13, 15, 78, 442

Green Ribbon Club 55, 57, 205, 285
Greenock 295
Greetham, Lincs 85
Grimston, Lord 222
Grosley, Pierre-Jean 5, 217, 360
Gwyneddigion Society 272, 299
Halifax 123, 220, 235, 361, 447
Halifax, Nova Scotia 3, 226, 345, 421, 427
Hambledon Cricket Club 81, 125, 227
Hamilton, Alexander 1, 87, 226, 256, 263,
389, 390, 396, 401, 464, 491
Hamilton, Gawen 248
Hamilton, Mary 187
Hampshire 81, 125, 282, 283, 327, 357
Handel, George Frederick 2, 67, 75, 118,
121, 122, 259, 441
Hanway, Jonas 989, 141, 197, 253, 259
Harford, Md 115, 217
Harley, Edward 73
Harley, Robert, lst Earl of Oxford 77, 217
Harlow, Essex 124
Harrington, James 51
Harrogate 148
Harvard university 38, 398
harvest feasts 397
Hateld, Herts 124
Haverhill, Mass 406
Hawkhurst, Kent 3667
Haydn, Joseph 122, 170, 441
Haselrig, Sir Arthur 50
health-drinking 163, 223, 2268, 269, 290,
301, 304, 454
heaven 5
Heidelberg 15
Herbert, Lord 127
Hereford 66, 71, 124, 232
Herefordshire 201, 276, 282, 289, 290, 293
Hertford 6
Hertfordshire 56, 58, 67, 116, 160, 276, 277
Heseltine, James 3413
Hey, William 151, 252
Hickey, William 347, 424
Highland Societies 97, 113, 131, 137, 294,
296, 438
Hill, Christopher 275
Hitchin, Herts 56
Hogarth, William 79
Honourable Society of Improvers,
Edinburgh 61, 85, 86, 113, 213, 263,
4378, 455

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

504

Index

Horneck, Anthony 55
horse-racing 120, 147, 184, 431
before the Civil War 38, 42
colonial 95, 302, 391, 392, 399, 400, 419,
427
crowds at 189
growth of 75
and new-style sociability 413, 81, 186,
188
politics and 180
promotion of 164, 174
Houghton, John 178
household 27, 28, 34, 42, 43, 169, 192
houses of call 357
housing 29, 85, 87, 129, 1457, 166, 168, 169
Hudson, Thomas 248
Hull 105, 120, 243, 381, 411, 436
Humane Societies 269, 431, 448, 453
colonial 409, 421, 425
continental 19
in English provinces 135, 336, 459
in London 107, 208, 459
Scottish 132, 137
Hume, David 1778, 254
hunting 32, 37, 42, 43, 123, 162, 184, 229,
439
colonial 397, 41819, 427
hare-coursing 32, 252
socially degrading for gentlemen 183
subscription hunt clubs 124, 252
Huntingdonshire 281, 282, 283 287, 290
Hutton, William 134, 164, 168, 203, 228
Illuminati 17, 335
improvement 2, 79, 85, 111, 113, 118, 121,
138, 146, 16671, and passim
commissions 11, 167, 179, 465
India 3, 93, 131, 156, 172, 264, 326, 335,
3457, 4227, 455
inrmaries 82, 84, 106, 114, 115, 150, 151,
168, 186, 296, 443
inns:
associations meeting at 50, 268, 282
cock-pits at 41
colonial 427
declining fashionability of 248
economic and social role of 1612
Irish 163
lodging at 147
as mixed space 27
numbers of 39, 161

ordinaries at 36
plays at 42
political meetings at 49
prayer meetings at 34
premises of 39, 159, 162
inns of court 37, 38, 45, 116
insurance 4, 88, 355
Invisible College 49
Ipswich 66, 80, 84, 90, 109, 124, 225, 248
Ireland 2, 4, 11, 43, 58, 60, 645, 68, 77, 82,
858, and passim
irreligion 71, 96, 176, 250, 287
Italy 14, 15, 19, 78, 79, 121, 442
Jacobites 62, 734, 183, 247, 293, 461
Jamaica 68, 115, 345, 421, 426
James I 45
Jamestown 58, 301, 389
Jews 182, 301, 330, 331, 377
Johnson, Maurice 78, 90, 225, 239, 244
Johnson, Samuel 10, 102, 194, 197, 212,
43940, 461
Jones, Sir William 112, 135, 423, 426
Jones, Thomas 252, 297
Jonson, Ben 47
journeymen 83, 130, 154, 2046, 220, 221,
264, 266, 269, 354, 357
Junto Club, Philadelphia 230, 390, 413
justices of the peace:
and benet clubs 2724, 384
concern with public order 44
and the moral reform movement 64
opposition to textile clubs 357
regulation by 120, 171, 176, 267
sociability of 36
societies of 186
Kay, Sir John 283
Keelmen's Society, Newcastle 353, 367, 368
Kelso 237
Kendal 66
Kenninghall, Norfolk 72
Kent 23, 116, 149, 276, 278, 279, 281, 287,
288, 293, 337, 3667
Kentish Society for Promoting Useful
Knowledge 111, 135, 272
Kettering 84, 105, 108
Kidderminster 66
Kildare 167
Kilmarnock 124, 363
Kingston, Jamaica 107, 421

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

Index
kinship 27, 28, 43, 192, 202, 398, 399, 413
and associations 21718
and elites 35
gender dimension of 202, 450
and merchant networks 152
and migration 158, 159, 304, 307
and sports 32
and the professions 151
rites 28, 30, 42
Kirk, Robert 55, 296
Kit-Kat Club 612, 73, 165, 248
Knapton, George 248
L'Estrange, Roger 353
Lancashire 372, 457
benet clubs in 374
charitable society in 61
circles in London 291
county society for 290
horticultural societies in 84
mock corporations in 73
prosecution societies in 67
Lancaster 125, 266
Lancaster, Penn 393
landed classes 4, 19, 20, 22, 24, 2830, 32,
3643, 46, and passim
language 156, 278, 287
Latimer, Lord 283
Latrobe, Benjamin 416
Laud, William 275
lawyers 28, 1502, 245, 365, 366, 425
colonial 160, 424
eighteenth-century associations of
11517, 196, 220, 366, 369
as founders of societies 78, 165, 2512,
297, 444
as members of societies 73, 101, 118,
120, 152, 194, 21315, 217, 290, 448
post-Restoration associations of 52, 54,
67
pre-Civil War circles of 47
lectures 3, 74, 75, 88, 119, 162, 419
Leeds:
archery club at 125
benet clubs in 369
debating club at 120
elites and societies at 151, 252, 444, 446
freemasons at 315
learned society at 111
medical societies 174
philanthropic society at 105

505

religious societies in 472

social club at 67
Legard, Sir John 359
Leicester:
bell-ringing society 57, 458
book club at 109
gilds at 23
horse-races at 41, 147
modern associations in 476
music club at 123
as a sociable centre 147, 148, 183, 460
townscape of 168, 460
Leicestershire 129, 183, 282, 290
Lennox, Sarah 188
letters of introduction 160
Lettsom, John Coakley 107, 114
Levant 40, 78
Levellers 49
Lewes 66, 431
Ley, James 26
Leycester, Sir Peter 284
Liberal Society of Tradesmen, Newcastle
220, 221, 355
libraries 79, 109, 110, 121, 162, 476
Licheld 3, 57, 80, 111, 180, 204, 252
lighting, street 16971
Lincoln 41, 48, 85, 94, 109, 130, 168, 481
Lincolnshire 78, 116, 289
Linnaean Society 112, 237, 257
Lister, Martin 63
Literary and Philosophical Societies
11011, 134, 219, 440, 444, 448, 457
Literary Fund 118, 141, 255
Liverpool 134, 160, 341, 411
associations at 71; ethnic 299; library
114, 134; modern 472, 4746, 483;
political 62; pseudo-masonic 259;
philanthropic 105, 108, 134; range
of 134; social 101, 134, 194
living-in service 154, 204, 206 448
localism 6
and associations 193, 254, 273, 294,
3855, 387, 446, 4589, 468, 471
and society rituals 2389, 459
and speech 156
and traditional rituals 31
Locke, John 177
lodging houses 159, 206
London 3, 37, 48, 51, 53
associations in 2, 26, 4753, 558, 606,
6971, and passim
Charterhouse 56, 71

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

506

Index

London (cont ):
Christ's Hospital 48, 56, 201, 329
districts of: Blackfriars 62, 130, 296;
Blackheath 125, 126, 189;
Bloomsbury 122, 145; Cheapside
73, 162, 200, 208, 290, 369; City 208,
211, 241, 267, 280, 313; Clerkenwell
46, 108; Cornhill 280, 290; Covent
Garden 701, 100, 166, 241, 249,
268, 270, 297; East End 72, 74, 157,
208, 313 380; Finsbury 50, 124;
Lincoln's Inn Fields 46, 145; Mayfair
145, 190; Pall Mall 50, 101, 240, 241,
250, 300; Soho 208, 251; South Bank
157, 208, 313; Spitalelds 74, 108,
214, 324, 368; St Giles Cripplegate
210, 286; Stepney 56, 286; Strand
208, 241, 249, 297; Vauxhall 168,
170, 189, 300; West End 145, 157,
208, 313, 323, 324, 482; Westminster
1, 2, 26, 456, 53, 82, 208 259, 286,
313, 328, 467, 491
drinking houses 39, 40, 42, 45, 49, 55,
122, 125, 1602, 2402, 290, 324, 431
entertainments 38, 39, 42, 889, 170, 180,
187, 188, 190, 430, 442
ethnic minorities in 295301, 377, 433
Great Fire of 53, 167, 168, 280, 283
Gresham College 513, 249
hospitals 48, 56, 82, 99, 108, 114, 150,
168, 232, 258, 296, 378
improvement in 16770
inuence of 88, 140, 146, 302, 313, 387,
4013, 4245, 428, 4535, 459
landowners in 29, 456, 48, 53, 69, 145
livery companies 185, 276, 284, 353
livery halls 282, 283, 297
Londoners' feasts 276, 278, 279, 2856,
301, 432
migrants to 50, 15861, 209, 278, 284,
28991, 447
numbers of associations in 89, 131
population of 131, 142
press 69, 88, 172, 173, 175, 187, 200, 288,
364, 395, 402
Puritans 2747, 279
season 38, 46, 145, 238, 239
suburbs 56, 72, 152, 157, 158, 209, 238
London Corresponding Society 99, 245, 451
London Missionary Society 105, 268
longitude 271, 439

Lorraine, Duke of 201

Lothian, Marquis of 198
Lovell, Lord 328
Lowe, Roger 43
Lunar Society, Birmingham 110, 133, 252,
440, 457
Luton 66
Maccleseld 330
Mackintosh, James 454
Macky, John 1, 73
MacLaurin, Colin 217
Madras 344, 346, 422, 427, 455
magazines 92, 109, 138, 172, 219, 462
associations described in 4, 5
associations promoted by 69, 174, 262,
332, 401, 415, 482
German 18
growth of 69
Maidenhead 126, 137
Maidstone 23, 1356, 148, 152, 272, 330,
336, 459
Maine 398, 399
Mainwaring, Sir Thomas 30
Major-Generals 276
Maldon, Essex 81
Man, Isle of 281, 282
Manchester 109, 157, 158, 172, 218, 293,
341
associations in: agricultural 457; benet
177, 372; debating 120; learned 219,
440, 444; mathematical 74; modern
472, 4801; philanthropic 105;
prosecution 435; range of 295;
social 67, 229
economy of 329, 457
and region 295, 457
Manchester, Duke of 343
Mandeville, Bernard 177, 178
Marine Societies 97, 99, 137, 141, 249, 253,
259, 265, 389, 404, 406, 431, 451
Market Overton, Rutland 85
markets 27, 34, 37, 153, 167, 1856, 269,
272, 411
marriages 30, 38, 72, 152, 187, 200, 228, 258,
370, 398
Marten, Henry 50
Maryland 1, 94, 115, 178, 217, 232, 347, 392,
409
Maseres, Francis 366
masquerades 94, 187, 192

8.11.99 14:33 Index 0394

Index
Massachusetts 30, 393, 395, 396, 399, 403,
404, 406, 407, 418
mathematics 1, 74, 214, 336
Mayett, Joseph 363, 3656
meals 28, 29, 36, 1701, 192, 227, 361, 397
mechanics' institutes 473
medical men 1502, 157, 254, 364
associations of 107, 114, 115, 220, 417
as founders of associations 87, 107, 114,
218, 252, 444
as members of associations 49, 101, 107,
152, 194, 212, 213, 215, 217, 218, 424
Medical Society of London 107, 114, 115,
256
medicine 16, 53, 74, 82, 116, 336, 4401,
476
Mediterranean 14
Melbourne, Lady 198
Melbourne, Lord 198, 199
Melksham, Wilts 181
merchants 37, 39, 53, 144, 252, 300, 394,
400, 416, 425, 426
associations of 11, 91
at coffee-houses 40
as founders of associations 141, 253, 296
as members of associations 3, 4, 50, 77,
101, 111, 152, 194, 21216, 274, 277
301, 313, 346, 354, 391, 424, 445
as migrants 159, 160, 304, 331, 346, 452
networks of 152
as ofcers of associations 55
Meriden, Shropshire 124
Methodism 75, 96, 103, 105
middle-classes 18, 104, 108, 123, 126, 129,
131, and passim
and class formation 8, 3456, 481
Middlesex 238, 323, 374 n., 376, 377, 380,
381, 383, 467
migrants and migration 15761, 274, 307,
470, 481
to America 143, 301 ff., 345, 347, 3934,
401, 413, 416
American to Britain 101, 1601, 301, 401
artisanal 159, 353, 361
associations for 134, 274, 295308, 408,
413
continental 15, 291
French 291, 301, 302
German 301, 302, 303
to India 346, 425

507

Irish 95, 1056, 2956, 299300, 303,

306, 347
Jewish 301
landed to town 145, 159, 284, 291
as members of societies 208, 20911,
216, 447
poor 1056, 418
problems of integration for 160
rates of 141, 158, 284
rural 95, 432
Scottish 87, 1056 2957, 300, 302, 303,
304, 306, 347
to suburbs 1578
support for by associations 50, 206, 209,
2778, 284, 28990, 295 ff.
Swiss 301
types of 1589, 291
Welsh 295, 2979
young people as 2056, 208
military men 45, 135, 159, 212, 213, 332,
337, 346, 348, 377
militia meetings 36, 42, 185, 398, 419
Minorca 338, 423
Monck, George 52
Monmouth 188
Montagu, Elizabeth 149
Montagu, 2nd Duke 76
Montreal 422, 424
moral reform movements 64, 81, 140, 162,
278, 359, 371, 372, 383, 451, 466, 470,
474
More, Hannah 187
Morris, Hunter 208, 209
Mosquito Shore 345
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 441
MPs 38, 73, 177, 212, 275, 277, 283, 289,
3702, 465, 467
Munich 16, 19
museums 79, 249, 271
music 1, 2, 15, 24, 29, 30, 33, 37, and passim
concerts: American 199, 304, 391, 392,
414; at drinking houses 40, 42, 62,
63, 162, 164; in English provincial
towns 51, 60, 623, 80, 121, 123,
228, 300, 441; Indian 422, 423;
masonic 326; metropolitan 623,
7980, 88, 118, 122, 187, 198, 199,
2201, 259, 269; and new-style
public sociability 3, 27, 40, 60, 75,
186, 450, 463; patronage of by

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

508

Index

music (cont ):
associations 270; private 198, 441;
Scottish 80, 165; West Indian 421;
women at 190, 199, 191, 202
festivals 66, 75, 165, 183, 186, 188, 232,
441
musicians 79, 97, 165, 236, 259
Musselburg 354
Naish, Thomas 67
Nantwich 30
Naples 15, 16
neighbourhood 2733, 485
in America 395, 397
dimension of associations 88, 2089,
288, 363, 365, 449
rituals of 2931, 33
and women 202, 365, 450
Nelson, Henry 264
Neoplatonism 311
Netherlands 14, 1618, 163, 312
Neve, Peter le 77
Neville, Sylas 124
New England:
associations in 87, 93, 123, 271, 406, 417,
462; clergy meetings in 11; towns in
394; university commencements in
38
New Galloway 163
New Hampshire 3957, 403, 412
New Haven 160
New Jersey 393, 407, 408, 414
New York 390, 394, 396, 397, 400, 403, 411,
415, 455
associations 402, 403, 448; benet 385,
404, 408; ethnic 68, 3026, 390, 408,
412; library 390, 400, 403; numbers
of 139; philanthropic 107, 404, 408,
436, 448; range of 390, 404, 4078;
social 226, 390, 404
civic government of 418
colony of 393
state of 226, 408, 415
Newark, NJ 408
Newcastle 41, 73, 160, 172, 293, 431, 457
associations: benet 89, 220, 221, 300,
3535, 370; diocesan 66, 89;
horticultural 84, 89; learned 111,
440; masonic 89, 314; medical
11415; philanthropic 89, 97;

political 73; professional 117; range

of 89, 133, 431
economy of 89, 457
Newcome, Henry 204
Newcastle, Duchess of 88
Newmarket 41, 125
Newport, RI 400, 405
Newport, Isle of Wight 186
newspapers:
American 3, 88, 172, 3945, 410, 414
artisans reading 360
and association feasts 268
and associations 102, 164, 1656, 1735,
229, 238, 332, 435, 462, 470, 488
and British distictiveness 5, 141
and censorship 45
in Channel Isles 92
circulation of 1723, 414
colonial 9, 88, 172, 4023, 424, 425, 427
early 49
and employment 291, 307
exported to the colonies 401, 402
in France 18
and freemasonry 344, 345
Irish 69, 88 172
London 9, 69, 88, 172, 173, 239, 2589,
262, 288
modern 482
and new-style sociability 6
numbers of 69, 172
provincial 9, 69, 127, 172, 174, 395, 457
Scottish 69, 88, 172
as sources for studying associations 9, 10
suburban 158
Newton, Sir Isaac 289
Nichols, John 218
night 171, 290
Norfolk 23, 30, 124, 145, 381, 435
Norfolk, Duke of 125, 328
Norfolk, Va 305, 392
North Carolina 417
North, Lord 467
North, Roger 285
Northampton 23, 84, 90, 147
Northamptonshire 67, 105, 145, 258, 276,
282, 359
Northumberland 124, 201
Norwich 21, 23, 69, 83, 89, 147, 169, 353,
358
associations: artistic 442; bell-ringing 72,

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

Index
89, 207; benet 83, 84, 89, 358;
debating 120, 200; diocesan 57, 66,
89, 258; ethnic 300; horticultural
489, 51, 84, 89; learned 89, 111;
library 110; masonic 89, 247, 294,
314, 315, 337; musical 80, 89, 121,
123, 199; philanthropic 107, 224;
political 73; professional 118; range
of 89, 133, 456; religious 66
and region 456
Nottingham 23, 57, 66, 109, 121, 1478,
314, 441, 460
Nottinghamshire 190, 258, 260, 276, 383
Nova Scotia 338, 346
odes 269, 2868, 297
Odiham, Hants 451
Oglander, Sir John 42
Old Colony Club, Plymouth, NE 266, 271,
406
Oldenburg, Henry 53
Oldham 350
opera 187, 238, 441
Orford, Earl of 124, 252
Oswestry 72
Oxford 32, 40, 51, 53
associations: common room 11, 54, 57;
county 910, 57, 252, 280, 293;
ethnic 90, 299, 300; horticultural
84; learned 19, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 77,
90, 460; masonic 90; medical 114;
musical 51, 57, 63, 667, 80, 89, 249;
number of 459; origins of 26;
political 62, 63, 667, 8990; range
of 51, 8990; social 51, 67, 8990,
223
university 323, 37, 38, 51, 54, 71, 90, 186
Oxfordshire 54, 102, 123, 252, 2804, 289,
290
Pacic region 105, 211
Packington, Sir John 54
Paisley, Lord 336
Paris 3, 15, 107, 259, 291, 360
Parliament:
activity of 1767
after the Glorious Revolution 61, 62, 69,
2868, 357
associations lobbying 100, 137, 200,
3412, 369, 372, 4658
colonial 5

509

during the Interrregnum 2758, 281,

28588
and the Exclusion Crisis 54, 281, 285
Hanoverian 73, 290
Irish 45, 82, 146
and the London season 238
satirized 45
as a social centre 38, 45
Parliament, Long 26, 38, 46, 277
party conict 61, 73, 1802, 285, 2878,
449, 461
patronage networks 73, 154, 180, 329, 363,
386, 4457, 471
Peckwell, Henry 105
Pelham, Sir Thomas 46
Pembroke, Lady 198
Pembrokeshire 244
Penn, William 453
Pennsylvania 93, 98, 209, 298, 347, 393, 397,
402, 406, 409, 453, 454
Pepusch, John Christopher 269
Pepys, Samuel 502
Perth 121, 138
Peter the Great 16
Peterborough 85, 239; diocese of 258
Peters, William 248
Petersburg, Va 410, 412
Petiver, James 63, 454
Petre, Lord 188, 248, 343
Petty, William 51
Philadelphia 8, 156, 170, 188, 3957, 403,
411, 455
associations in: anti-slavery 454; ethnic
75, 88, 3024, 306, 390; re 390,
418; shing companies at 124,
3901, 405; growth of 139, 1656;
improvement 416, 417; learned
178, 264, 390, 402, 405, 4089;
London inuence on 88, 401;
masonic 347, 390, 405; medical
403, 405; philanthropic 107, 306,
390, 405; pseudo-masonic 223;
range of 3901, 4045, 4089;
Scottish inuence on 87; social
230, 3901, 413
economy of, 390, 406
population of 390, 406, 411
press of 156, 394
Philanthropic Society, London 106, 173,
255, 256, 261

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

510

Index

philanthropy:
and association feasts 264
and associations: American 40784, 418;
colonial 3034; during the English
Revolution 50, 276, 2779; postRestoration 55, 56, 284, 288, 296;
early 18th century 66, 75, 803, 264;
late 18th century 1059, 140, 2312;
masonic 3369; modern 471 ff.,
481
by dissenting churches 34
and fraternities 21, 22
neighbourly 33
and the reputation of associations 272
and trade gilds 24
volume of 436
Phillips, Sir Richard 460
Philosophical Society, Edinburgh 2, 86, 217,
263
Pitt, William, the elder 454
Pitt, William, the younger 5
Pittenweem, Scotland 352
Place, Francis 129, 130, 451
plague 53, 54, 280, 281, 296
planters 301, 391, 394, 399, 424
pleasure gardens 88, 168, 170, 184, 189,
192, 300, 422
Plot, Robert 57, 284
Plymouth 337
Plymouth, NE 266, 406
poaching 32, 102, 467
poetry 4, 9, 50, 264, 299, 333
policing 169, 179, 453, 473
Pomfret, Lady 190
Pond, Arthur 218, 231
Pontefract 42, 258
poor 21, 31, 37, 40, 82, 1059, 123, 130, and
passim
relief of 31, 106, 179, 215, 279, 358, 359,
363, 370, 371, 435, 472
Port Royal, SC 399
Portland, Duke of 258
Portmore, Lord 328
ports 71, 92, 175
American 93, 139, 143, 157, 390, 399, 433
Channel Island 92
colonial 345, 388, 420
Irish 92, 143
Portsmouth, NH 403, 412
Portugal 3, 253, 336
Prague 16

Pratt, Matthew 447

preachers:
and associations 49, 67, 105, 181, 195,
227, 268, 274 ff., 284 ff.
fraternity 21
masonic 312, 319, 329
Puritan 29, 33, 34, 204
Preston 23
Prescot, Lancs 151
Preston, William 333
Priestley, Joseph 110
princes 135, 211, 328
printers and printing 4, 135, 329, 458
assocations promoted by 70, 103, 165,
174, 470, 482
and censorship 45, 52, 106
growth of 49, 109
sociability of 154
trade gild of 352
prisons 130, 261, 272, 378, 412
Privy Council 45, 340
processions:
associational 2647, 270; benet 266,
358, 363, 381, 382; colonial 2667,
301; county 51, 61, 274, 288, 294;
masonic 266, 267, 312, 325, 327,
332, 339; political 55, 73, 461; trade
264
civic 31, 32
and fraternities 21
funeral 270
growth of 267
and trade gilds 21, 24, 35
Proclamation Society 104, 106, 216, 434
proclamations 64, 104, 176, 371
professions 2, 4, 22, 26, 47, 49, 535, 61, 79,
and passim;
see also clergy; lawyers; medical men;
military men
prophesying meetings 34, 36, 44
prostitution 64, 95, 99, 169, 408, 433
public buildings 14, 1669, 327, 331, 422,
423
public sphere, notions of 6, 463
public subscription associations 191, 295,
444
American 418
membership of 98, 109, 128, 137, 198,
211, 216, 218, 246, 445
modern 483, 484, 490
ofcers of 254

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

Index
and oligarchic leadership 109, 256
organization of 98, 137, 204, 471
publications of 265
and women 1301, 2001, 204, 450
public walks 41, 92, 168, 189, 192, 422
Purcell, Henry 63, 67, 269, 286, 441
Puritans 23, 29, 30, 326, 42, 2745, 396
Quainton, Bucks 363
Quakers 10, 279
quarter sessions 36, 37, 185, 2912, 352,
356, 372, 375
Quebec 3, 338, 346, 4212
radicals 50, 120, 134, 311, 330, 335, 362, 371,
416, 449, 4612
Raikes, Robert 103, 166
Rambling Club of Ringers, London 72, 182,
197
Ramsay, Andrew 334
Ramsay, Allan 86
Ray, John 15
rebellion, Scottish: 1715 297; 1745, 61, 438
Redenhall, Norfolk 72
Reeves, John 96, 99, 103, 176, 449
Reformation 14, 33, 35
regional and ethnic societies 2, 137, 209,
273308, 447, 452
see also county societies; ethnic societies
register ofces 291, 307, 447
religious revivals 96, 182, 187, 419, 451, 472
Renaissance 14, 15, 36, 166, 334
Renfrew 294
Reresby, Sir John 283
Restoration 6, 8, 52
revolution:
American 96, 97, 101, 139, 348, 404, 406,
416, 420, 455, 461
English 26, 35, 52, 55, 145, 262, 311, 432
French 17, 96
Reynolds, Sir Joshua 102, 187, 248, 442
Rhode Island 399, 400, 416
Richmond, Duke of 328
Richmond, Va 305, 40910, 414, 417
Richmond, Yorks 335
Robin Hood Club, London 48, 89, 119, 174,
263
Robinson, Ralph 278, 279
Rodney, Admiral George 196
Rolle, John 370, 372
Romanticism 124, 149

511

Rome 13, 15
Romney, Earl of 2523
Rose, George 372
Rosebery, Earl of 258
Rota Club 51, 52
routs 135, 171, 187, 188, 191, 192, 300, 414
Roxbury, NE 269
Royal Academy Club 219, 237, 430
Royal Academy of Arts 2, 11, 19, 97 207,
234, 236, 249, 340, 430, 442
Royal Institution 213, 217, 250, 253, 445,
448
Royal Irish Academy 132, 213, 242, 264,
443, 453
Royal Society 63, 89, 218, 489
and antiquarian studies 77
charters 7, 53, 59, 97
and continental associations 19
divisions in 111, 220, 234, 236, 256
fore-runners of 51
foundation of 523
histories of 7, 262, 263
meetings of 239
membership of 209, 218, 235, 401, 4534
organization of 255
and politics 181
premises of 249
and provincial societies 57, 79, 460
publications of 7, 53, 262, 263, 439
satirized 4
scientic impact of 43940, 443
stagnation of 74
Royal Society Club 71, 218, 227, 239, 247
Royal Society of Edinburgh 97, 264, 4457
Rumford, Count 19
Royston 58, 62, 67, 248
Rugby 84, 164
rugby 475
Russia 16, 141, 253
Rutland, Earl of 28, 41
Ryder, Dudley 196, 206
St Albans 160
St Andrews 58, 81, 352
St Johns, Antigua 421, 427
St Johns, Newfoundland 347, 421, 427
St Monday 238
St Peter Port 92, 214
St Petersburg 16
St Tammany Societies 305, 306, 409, 412
Salem 393, 398, 405, 406, 431

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

512

Index

Salisbury 35, 67, 80, 235

Salisbury, Earl of 28
Sandwich, 4th Earl of 78, 122, 252, 255, 290
satire 1, 45, 7, 184, 203, 466
Savannah 302, 345, 3912, 410
Savile, Gertrude 190
Saxmundham, Suffolk 80
Sayer, Anthony 309
Scarborough 135
Schaw, William 311
Scholars of Cheapside 48, 49, 52
schoolteachers 21, 117, 151, 252, 296
Scotland 1, 2, 8, 19, 41, 43, 468, 52, and
passim
Scots Corporation, London 53, 75, 259,
296, 433
Sefton, Earl of 198
Select Society, Edinburgh 2, 86, 120
sensibility, culture of 107, 203, 383, 451
servants 28, 29, 130, 220, 222, 321, 376,
377, 386
service sector 133, 142, 147, 153, 161
Shaftesbury, 3rd Earl of 177
Shefeld 103, 153, 196, 218, 259, 361, 373,
436
Shipley, William 86, 135, 141, 271
shops 43, 129, 148, 156
shop-keepers 204
living standards of 144
as members of associations 4, 21416,
320, 328, 355, 386, 434
Shrewsbury 42, 72, 82, 147, 168, 172
Shropshire 103, 186, 293, 462
Sidney, Sir Philip 47
Sinclair, Sir John 113
skating 126, 213
Sloane, Sir Hans 63
Smeaton, John 111
Smibert, John 248
Smith, Adam 91, 137, 1778
Smith, Sydney 434
Smitheld Club 113, 438
Snettisham, Norfolk 205
Soane, Sir John 117
sociability 131, 141, 1889, 3256
economic advantages of 1512
and migration 1601, 291
new-style 6, 8, 26, 27, 28, 36, 406, and
passim
private 27, 29, 38, 43, 141, 192, 427, 430,
450

traditional 6, 18, 19, 2744, 60, 129, 139,

and passim
social confusion 1556, 158, 18890, 212,
216, 217, 400
social isolation 1568, 209, 3467, 411
social mobility 154, 206, 211, 258, 328, 470,
490
Society for Bettering the Condition of the
Poor 106, 445, 448
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
(SPCK) 66, 82, 249, 434
nances of 260, 261
lobbying by 179, 4656
membership of 210, 217, 448
missionary work of 104, 105, 1789
networking by 60, 75, 98, 245, 453
ofcers of 77, 257
Society for Propagating Christian
Knowledge, Scottish 66, 82, 85, 213
Society for the Encouragement of Learning
237, 249
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts (SPG) 66, 97, 104, 105,
430
Society for the Suppression of Vice 104,
197, 216, 434, 462
Society of Ancient Britons, London 259,
2979
feast of 268, 269, 297
formation of 75, 252, 297
inuence in America 88
ofcers of 252, 254, 297
publicity by 173, 265
school of 272, 298, 433
Society of Antiquaries 89
charter of 97, 340
decline of 111
divisions at 220, 2356
meetings of 26, 445, 237
members of 26, 197, 218, 252, 4012,
430, 448
premises of 249
and provincial associations 79
publications of 264, 265
re-establishment of 77, 252
Society of Arts 86, 11113, 141, 197, 245,
248, 249, 251, 253, 255, 271, 402, 420,
431, 437, 438, 455
Society of College Youths 48, 49, 437
Society of Finsbury Archers 50, 124, 222
Society of Gentlemen Practisers in the
Courts of Law 11517

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

Index
Society of Musicians, Royal 80, 97, 118, 259,
260, 441
Society of the Rose tavern, Bristol 54, 58,
231
Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke, London
478, 63, 78, 164, 212, 222, 239, 248,
250
Somers, John 62
Somerset 31, 54, 266, 280, 282, 290, 293
Sons of Liberty 269, 4046, 454
Sons of the Clergy:
London: associated societies of 70, 224;
charitable function of 55, 285;
charter of 55, 59, 70; feast of
2678; nances of 259; fore-runner
of 50; formation of 55, 217;
ofcers of 55, 283; and professional
identity 115, 116; provincial
inuence of 66; diocesan versions
of 57, 66, 115, 116
Dublin 92
South Carolina 3, 160, 391, 392, 417
South Shields 355
space:
contested 166, 169, 192
private 27, 29, 166
public 27, 39, 158, 166, 169, 266
social 27, 39, 44, 164, 169, 2656, 395,
4634, 485
Spain 16, 163
Spalding, Lincs 78, 85, 90, 239, 244
Spectator 69, 174, 178, 183, 230, 402
Spelman, Henry 26
Spenser, Earl 258
Spenser, Edmund 47
spinning bees 398, 419
Sporting Magazine 174
sports 27, 40, 149
colonial 302, 396, 397
fashionable 32, 404, 81, 1246
modern 476, 480, 482
traditional 30, 32, 33, 404, 1234, 183
see also under individual sports and clubs and
societies types
Sprat, Thomas 7, 53, 262, 263
Staffordshire 73, 103, 149, 276, 280, 284,
457
Staines, Middlesex 447
Stamford 3, 79, 84, 85, 90, 213
Stanley, Thomas 372
statutes:

513

American 395, 414, 415

Chantries Act (1547) 22, 23
for Devon friendly societies 370
Friendly Society Acts (1793, 1795) 176,
177, 261, 351, 352, 362, 363, 366, 372,
373, 376, 383, 384, 468
Gin Act (1736) 466
improvement 167, 438
for local benet societies 370
for London coalheavers 370
modern 474, 479, 486
New Poor Law Act 472
Sedition Act (1795) 120
Test and Corporation Acts 179
Toleration Act (1689) 64
Two Acts (1796) 176
Unlawful Societies Act (1799) 349
Steele, Richard 4, 170
Stephen, Sir James 472
Stirling 121, 272
Stirlingshire 294
Stockholm 16
Stoke on Trent 67
Stourbridge 331
Strangers' Friend Societies 1056, 436
Stratford on Avon 278
street, the 27, 33, 35, 1669, 266, 365, 386,
450
strikes 357, 362, 371
Stukeley, William 67, 77, 85, 90, 213, 252,
298, 334
Suffolk 110, 188, 276, 282, 37583, 465
Sunday schools 1034, 109, 165, 166, 252,
371, 408, 445
Sunderland 105, 337, 370, 457
Sunderland, Earl of 328
Surrey 81
Sussex 32, 46, 137, 231, 290
Swaffham, Norfolk 80, 124, 252, 330
Sweden 16
Swift, Jonathan 4, 62
Switzerland 3, 17, 162, 301
Taunton 58, 77, 353
taverns 161, 396, 411, 412, 431
American in London 301
association feasts at 268, 276, 283
associations at: American 303, 304, 395;
colonial 163, 249; during the early
18th century 62, 70, 73, 79, 2402,
290; during the English Revolution

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

514

Index

taverns (cont ):
49, 50; during the late 18th century
96, 122, 2467; masonic 312, 324;
post Restoration 52, 63 282; preCivil War 45
declining fashionability of 248
gentry at 36
numbers of 39
premises of 3940, 427
and the public sphere 399
Scottish in London 297
taxation 144, 146, 153, 175, 370
television 482, 485
temperance 77, 419, 454
Temple Coffee-house Botanical Club 41,
63, 74
theatre:
and association feasts 283, 304, 3267
associations depicted in 4, 7, 201
clubs at 701, 126, 1367
colonial 3267, 391, 392, 4203
competition of associations with 188
fraternities and 14
at inns 40, 42
Irish 92
itinerant 37
laws regulating 176
in London 42, 187
as neutral space 180
private 126, 137
promoters of 164
in provincial towns 42, 135
and public sociability 3, 27, 60, 75, 88, 92,
120, 184, 192, 450
sponsored by associations 201, 259, 267,
270
United States 412, 414, 419
and universities 38
Thomas, Isaiah 415
Thoresby, Ralph 67
Thornbury 114
Three Choirs Festival 66, 232
Tillotson, John 285
time, attitudes to 1701, 187, 189
Tocqueville, Alexis de 172
Tiverton 136, 181, 234, 235, 357, 358, 362
Toland, John 12
Tonson, Jacob 62, 165
Torrington, Devon 185
town-halls 162, 166, 170, 188, 268
towns:

improvement in 143, 166, 272, 458, 463

industrial 142, 158, 31416, 351, 457, 459
landowners in 367, 46, 52, 143, 1459,
168, 185
resort 135, 147, 175, 314
rivalries between 403, 412, 422, 455, 460
suburbs of 95, 1578, 166, 209, 270, 409,
481
see also London; ports; urbanization
Toxophilite Society 125, 220, 242
trade unions 473, 476, 479
trapball 126, 135
Trenton, NJ 408
Trim, Ireland 232
Truro 123, 136
Tucker, Abraham 230
Tuesday Club, Annapolis 1, 392, 402, 491
dinners at 227
history of 1, 263
members of 1, 401
music at 228
ofcers of 254, 256
rituals of 1, 87, 267
and women 203
Tunbridge Wells 135, 148
Turk's Head Club, London 102, 187, 197,
212, 461
turnpike roads 12, 159, 260, 314
Tuscalan Society, Norwich 120, 200, 249,
462
Tynemouth 457
Ugly Face Club, Liverpool 194, 215
Ullapool 438
Ulster 143, 168, 318
United Irishmen 100, 138, 165, 462
universities:
American 390, 398, 400, 417
associational support for students at 55,
71, 272, 277, 278
associations at 38, 51, 54, 57, 91, 117, 121,
248
and public sociability 378, 186, 398
see also clubs and society types: alumni,
and under individual institutions
Uppsala 16
Upton upon Severn, Worcs 358
urbanization 6, 8, 14158, 449, 469, 470
American 1434, 389, 394, 395, 41011,
414, 41820

8.11.99 14:34 Index 0394

Index
and associations 61, 93, 95, 141 ff., 319,
488
colonial 426, 427, 449, 456, 469, 470
English 143, 314, 318
Irish 139, 143, 456
modern 472, 481, 488
Scottish 138, 143, 456
Uttoxeter 227
Venice 15
Vertue, George 63, 222
Vienna 15
Virginia 58, 88, 286, 301, 302, 392, 394, 396,
406, 409, 412, 437
voluntary association, modern use of term
11
wages 120, 144, 154, 159, 202, 360, 3626,
371, 375, 377, 378, 435
Wake, William 287
Wakeeld 30
Wales 289, 32, 55, 64, 66, 73, 82, 88, and
passim
Walpole, Horace 78, 168
Walpole, Sir Robert 62
Walsall 120
Wanley, Humfrey 77, 257
war 15, 53, 62, 150, 360, 452
American revolutionary 11, 119, 120,
141, 176, 180, 3045, 404, 4067
colonial 346, 390, 399
French revolutionary 95, 96, 108, 176,
331, 362
impact of on associations 61, 96, 176,
346, 362, 4067, 428, 478, 483
modern 478, 483
victims of 3378
Ward, Edward 4, 7, 80, 224, 245, 290
Warrington 50, 117, 226, 235
Warwick 42, 167
Warwick, Earl of 279
Warwickshire 275, 276, 278, 2813, 286, 375,
381, 432, 457
Washington, George 348, 405, 407, 416
Waterford 143
Wedgwood, Josiah 457
welcomings 30
Wellingborough, Northants 84
Wells 67
Wesley, John 75
West Deeping, Lincs 85

515

West Indies 3, 58, 68, 88, 93, 131, 172, 286,

326, 338, 345, 390, 391, 4201, 424,
426, 427, 453
Westmorland 280, 289
Westmorland, Earl of 54
Weymouth 135
White's Club 71, 89, 181, 224
Whitelock, Bulstrode 41, 47
Wigan 327
Wight, Isle of 42
Wilberforce, William 104, 106, 372, 439
Wildman, John 502
Wilkes, John 94, 99, 109, 164, 196, 272, 289,
362, 453, 461, 462, 467
William I 288
William III 63, 65, 2867
Williams, David 141
Williams-Wynn, Sir Watkin 184
Williamsburg, Va 392, 394, 4057
Willis, Browne 298
Wilmington 408
Wiltshire 54, 181, 2758, 280, 282, 284, 287,
290, 293, 294, 447
Winchester 54, 67, 230, 2801
Winchilsea, Earl of 253
Wisbech 85, 364
Wolfe, General 3
Wolverhampton 120, 199, 331, 358, 373
women 38, 119, 229
American 399, 408, 413
associational relief of 354, 360, 364, 366,
408
and drinking houses 40, 364
exclusion from associations 49, 84, 122,
1301, 201, 2023, 449
in fraternities 14, 20, 22
and the household 29, 169, 399
inuence of 4501
linked to associations 2012, 268, 269
and sociability 155, 1834, 187, 1902,
2024, 365, 399, 44950
social position of 2023, 364, 365, 386
stereotyping of 199, 2023
upper-class 29, 155, 358, 3645
women as members of 91, 122, 1301,
198201, 204, 358, 450, 483
see also benet clubs, female: club and
society types, female
Wood, Anthony 9, 26, 40, 51, 54
Wood, Beavis 136
Woodstock 84

8.11.99 14:35 Index 0394

516

Index

Woodward, Josiah 65, 207, 262

Worcester 66, 79, 110, 351, 382
Worcester, Mass 415
Worcestershire 27982, 284, 285, 358, 457
working-men's clubs 475, 478, 484
Workington, Cumb 359
Wren, Sir Christopher 51, 55
Wrexham 73, 92, 102
Wyatt, James 220, 235
Wyndham, William 22930
Yale university 38, 398
Yarmouth 72, 120
York:
associations in: benet 164, 364, 371;
horticultural 84, 246, 257; masonic
87, 314; modern 4767, 491;
musical 121; philanthropic 105,
108; range of 133, 135, 4489, 456;
religious 66; social 101, 215
drinking houses in 162, 164

economy of 133, 147, 168

gilds 23
newspapers at 174
population of 133, 15860
public buildings at 147
race-meetings at 41
and region 168, 456
York, archbishop of 283
York, Duke of 123, 328
Yorkshire 31, 67, 2813, 286, 287, 290, 373,
374, 377, 380, 447
East Riding 359
West Riding 30, 31, 104, 365 n., 37583,
465
Yorktown, Va 392
Youghall 327
Young, Arthur 112, 113, 135
Zodiac Club, Cambridge 225, 231
Zouch, Henry 104