Augustan Literature - Historical Context - Political and Religious Context

Political and Religious Context

The Restoration period ended with the exclusion crisis and the Glorious Revolution, where Parliament set up a new rule for succession to the British throne that would always favor Protestantism over sanguinity. This had brought William and Mary to the throne instead of James II, and was codified in the Act of Settlement 1701. James had fled to France from where his son James Francis Edward Stuart launched an attempt to retake the throne in 1715. Another attempt was launched by the latter's son Charles Edward Stuart in 1745. The attempted invasions are often referred to as "the 15" and "the 45". When William died, Anne Stuart came to the throne. Anne was reportedly immoderately stupid: Thomas Babington Macaulay would say of Anne that "when in good humour, was meekly stupid and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid." Anne's reign saw two wars and great triumphs by John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. Marlborough's wife, Sarah Churchill, was Anne's best friend, and many supposed that she secretly controlled the Queen in every respect. With a weak ruler and the belief that true power rested in the hands of the leading ministers, the two factions of politics stepped up their opposition to each other, and Whig and Tory were at each other's throats. This weakness at the throne would lead quickly to the expansion of the powers of the party leader in Parliament and the establishment in all but name of the Prime Minister office in the form of Robert Walpole. When Anne died without issue, George I, Elector of Hanover, came to the throne. George I was never comfortable with the English language, and his isolation from the English people was instrumental in keeping his power relatively irrelevant. His son, George II, on the other hand, spoke some English and some more French, and his was the first full Hanoverian rule in England. By that time, the powers of Parliament had silently expanded, and George II's power was perhaps equal only to that of Parliament.

London's population exploded spectacularly. During the Restoration, it grew from around 350,000 to 600,000 in 1700 (Old Bailey) (Millwall history). By 1800, it had reached 950,000. Not all of these residents were prosperous. The Enclosure Acts had destroyed lower-class farming in the countryside, and rural areas experienced painful poverty. When the Black Act was expanded to cover all protestors to enclosure, the communities of the country poor were forced to migrate or suffer (see Thompson, Whigs). Therefore, young people from the country often moved to London with hopes of achieving success, and this swelled the ranks of the urban poor and cheap labor for city employers. It also meant an increase in numbers of criminals, prostitutes and beggars. The fears of property crime, rape, and starvation found in Augustan literature should be kept in the context of London's growth, as well as the depopulation of the countryside.

Partially because of these population pressures, property crime became a business both for the criminals and for those who fed off of the criminals. Major crime lords like Jonathan Wild invented new schemes for stealing, and the newspapers were eager to report crime. Biographies of the daring criminals became popular, and these spawned fictional biographies of fictional criminals. Cautionary tales of country women abused by sophisticated rakes (such as Anne Bond) and libertines in the city were popular fare, and these prompted fictional accounts of exemplary women abused (or narrowly escaping abuse).

Increased population also meant that urban discontent was never particularly difficult to find for political opportunists, and London suffered a number of riots, most of them against supposed Roman Catholic agent provocateurs. When highly potent, inexpensive distilled spirits were introduced, matters worsened, and authors and artists protested the innovation of gin (see, e.g. William Hogarth's Gin Lane). From 1710, the government encouraged distilling as a source of revenue and trade goods, and there were no licenses required for the manufacturing or selling of gin. There were documented instances of women drowning their infants to sell the child's clothes for gin, and so these facilities created both the fodder for riots and the conditions against which riots would occur (Loughrey and Treadwell, 14). Dissenters (Protestants not conforming to the Church of England) recruited and preached to the poor of the city, and various offshoots of the Puritan and "Independent" (Baptist) movements increased their numbers substantially. One theme of these ministers was the danger of the Roman Catholic Church, which they frequently saw as the Whore of Babylon. While Anne tended to favor the high church faction, particularly towards the close of her reign, the court of George I was more closely allied with and elements, and was warmer towards non-conformists. The convocation was effectively disbanded by George I (who was struggling with the House of Lords), and George II was pleased to keep it in abeyance. Additionally, both of the first two Hanoverians were concerned with James Francis Edward Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart who had considerable support in Scotland and Ireland, and anyone too high church was suspected of being a closet Jacobite, thanks in no small part to Walpole's inflating fears of Stuart sympathizers among any group that did not support him.