Chapter IX: Good King, Bad King
IX
Good King, Bad King
In February of 1745, the French-backed effort to conquer England and restore the Stuarts to the throne began. But as the French invasion with ten thousand troops crossed the English Channel to land at Essex, a powerful storm blew in and swamped the fleet. One ship sank with all hands, and the others were turned back to France. Support for the coup cooled in France due to the disaster, but Bonnie Prince Charles was determined to gain the throne with or without French backing. The second Jacobite rebellion commenced when Charles Edward landed on Eriskay Island in Scotland on July 23, 1745, with a supply of friends, money, and arms. The Stuarts originally gained power when James I (from a daughter of Henry VII through the Scottish line) inherited the British throne, making Scotland the logical point of departure of Charles Edward for the invasion (the Jacobites took their name from “Jacobus,” the Latin form of James).
Joined by discontented Scottish Highlanders, Charles Edward began the invasion, wresting Scottish cities away from British control and demanding supplies from every city he conquered. By October he commanded a force of forty-five hundred with four hundred horsemen, and moved south into England with the hope that the English citizens would welcome the return of the Stuarts and follow him to London. Upon reaching Derby in December, only one hundred miles from London, his Scottish officers began quarrelling about their ability to take and hold the capital. Had they known that George II was preparing to flee London, they might have pressed their advantage. For a brief moment, the future of England and America hung by a thread. The Jacobites chose to retreat and regroup instead.
After a disorderly return to Scotland, Charles Edward’s army reorganized and gained strength through reinforcement from other clans, as well as with a group of French artillery and engineering experts—much less French support than sank in the channel ten months earlier. But their hesitation offered the British a chance to counterattack. On April 15, 1746, a pursuing British force led by the Duke of Cumberland, George II’s son, struck the Jacobite army at Nairn, inflicting heavy losses that scattered them. British forces ruthlessly pursued Jacobite rebels and leaders, executing them on the spot and committing other atrocities in the aftermath of their victory. But Charles got away and was hidden by various people still loyal to him in Scotland. After five months of fugitive wanderings, he escaped back to France despite the price of £30,000 on his head offered by the British government. Later, a Scottish lord was put on trial for harboring him. Many Jacobite supporters were quickly deported to the colonies and others emigrated on their own to begin an anonymous life free from the immediate hostility of England.
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After a trip down to the Bethesda Orphanage in Georgia, Whitefield returned north to Philadelphia, whereupon hearing about the failed Jacobite rebellion in England, he prepared a sermon for a national day of thanksgiving. Whitefield preached “Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duties” in Philadelphia on August 24, 1746, and had it immediately published. As the topic was time sensitive, the sermon probably was included in his repertoire for just the length of his preaching tour. But within it were themes he would echo in numerous sermons throughout the war years. Eager buyers quickly gobbled up at least four editions in Philadelphia and Boston. No other American sermon by any writer in 1746 went through more than one edition, showing Whitefield to be the most popular religious figure in the colonies three years after the revival.
Recognizing that a growing body of Scots in America still harbored resentment and hostility, Whitefield wished to disarm any potential for trouble in America from new immigrants and deportees who were not loyal to the British crown. He had just completed a tour of Scotland in 1744, where he aligned himself solidly with the Scottish Presbyterians, giving New England conspiracy theorists plenty of ammunition for attacking him. Additionally, still smarting from Chauncy’s charges of sedition, Whitefield might be accused of being a Jacobite sympathizer himself if he did not make a strong statement. It is likely that shiploads of the deported Jacobites were arriving in colonial ports, along with less rebellious Scotch-Irish immigrants, as the news of the final battle crossed the Atlantic. In America, their discontent might ignite renewed fears of rebellion against the New England authorities.
But Whitefield’s efforts to warn people about arbitrary power were genuine, and he wished to continue his open support of the British authorities. Since the Jacobites believed that kings were authorized to rule by hereditary succession rather than qualifications, they had opposed the rule of George II and still might be viewed as a threat in the colonies. Whitefield’s challenge was to steer Scottish and Jacobite allegiance (as well as foreign immigrants) to King George. If he could do this publicly, his image of another spirit would benefit from the evidence supplied by his open support of the British authority structure. So to silence criticism, Whitefield seized the opportunity to declare publicly his loyalty to the king and further disarm accusations that his ministry was seditious.
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In “Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duties,” Whitefield built upon the connection between religion and politics and warned of the ramifications of supporting the Stuarts. Whitefield’s sermon promoted the idea of religious liberty by speculating about life under a Roman Catholic-controlled government. While affirming the Protestant and British protection of religious and civil liberties, Whitefield’s supportive actions would define him as loyal to King George II once and for all. So, with just the right sermon, he could kill two birds with one stone. Moving quickly, he had the sermon published and advertised for sale in Boston within three weeks of its initial oration. In the analysis of the sermon that follows, the reader will see how Whitefield built upon the same logic templates he had been promoting for seven years and how he extended his notions of virtue, as expressed in “good versus evil” terms, from individual religious status to national religious status. This shift led Americans directly toward a national political belief system grounded in religion.
To achieve his ends, Whitefield structured the sermons from the past, into the present, and looking to the future. He argued that knowing the past helps one to place the present situation in perspective and suggest a future response. Knowing about God’s past mercies allowed one to be thankful to God, which in turn would promote virtue in the future. After Whitefield explained this principle, as drawn from biblical stories, he suggested that it applied to Great Britain in the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion. For him, the averted rebellion constituted deliverance from a real threat, for which thanks must be offered to God to ensure God’s continued favor. Thus the sermon is divided into three major movements. First, Whitefield emphasized the stability in Great Britain after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which ushered in a wave of religious freedom. Next, he painted a portrait of the political instability that could have resulted from a successful Jacobite rebellion, describing both civil and religious atrocities that would have resulted. Finally, Whitefield praised the heroes of the battle and argued that if they deserve praise, then God deserves more. Britain’s stability would depend upon recognizing God as their protector and the people fulfilling religious duty. Whitefield’s flowery style contrasts strikingly with other sermons. He says nothing in a blunt direct manner, but employs the “high style” of oratory, loaded with poetry and passion, traditionally reserved for the most formal of occasions.
Whitefield begins by asserting that Great Britain has enjoyed a “gentle mild administration” under George II, in which political and religious oppression have been nonexistent and Britain has prospered. He lavishes praise upon George II for his prudent rule, filled with justice and civil freedom:
By thee we enjoy great quietness, and very worthy deeds have been done unto our nation by thy providence. He has been indeed Pater Patriæ, a father to our country, and though old and gray-headed, has jeopardized his precious life for us in the high places of the field. Nor has he less deserved the great and glorious title … “a nursing father of the church” … As there has been no authorized oppression in the state, so there has been no publicly allowed persecution in the church. We breathe indeed in free air.
Whitefield appeals to the observations of anyone tuned into politics, as a matter of fact, that George II is “one of the best.” Not offering specific examples but general assessments, he extols the state of peace, resulting in both civil and religious liberty, owing to the wise leadership of the king. Whitefield ultimately gives credit for the king’s solid leadership to God and concludes by declaring that “Happy art thou, O England! Happy art thou, O America, who on every side art thus highly favored!”
Abruptly shifting his tone as he enters the second movement of the sermon, Whitefield demonizes Charles Edward with a scathing sequence of imagined possibilities had the rebellion been successful:
But, alas! How soon would this happy scene have shifted, and a melancholy gloomy prospect have succeeded in its room, had the rebels gained their point, and a popish abjured pretender been forced upon the British throne!
Whitefield projects a slippery slope that compares Charles Edward to the mythological Greek character Phaeton, Apollo’s son who “was to guide the chariot of the sun; and had he succeeded in his attempt, like him, would only have set the world on fire.” Having fanned anti-Catholic feelings into a flame with the term “popish,” he further characterizes the rebellion as a “horrid plot, first hatched in hell, and afterwards nursed at Rome.” Supplying evidence for the evil intent of the rebels, Whitefield accuses Charles Edward of ordering his officers to “give no quarters to the Elector’s troops”—that is to say, take no prisoners. Had Charles Edward successfully gained control of the country, Whitefield speculates that Parliament would have soon been impotent, as it had been in previous times, and that the “popish pretender” would have shortly ruined the British economy.
Whitefield also employs the term “arbitrary” to describe the rule of the Stuart kings in previous generations. He reminds his audience that “for his arbitrary and tyrannical government, both in church and state,” the Stuart Dynasty “was justly obliged to abdicate the throne” in 1688 “by the assertors of British liberty.” In these phrases, Whitefield links together images of “arbitrary” and “tyrannical,” held aloft and compared to “liberty,” all within a church/state context. He asserts a hereditary succession of evil to Bonnie Prince Charles, claiming that his family line taught him to be an oppressive ruler, saying, “Arbitrary principles he has sucked in with his mother’s milk.”
But Whitefield is far from finished with Charles Edward. Moving from political fears to religious ones, he presses the accusations forward: “But, alas! What an inundation of spiritual mischiefs would soon have overflowed the Church.” Then Whitefield lists his fears in a picturesque, eloquent, climaxing portrayal:
How soon would whole swarms of monks, dominicans, and friars, like so many locusts, have overspread and plagued the nation; with what winged speed would foreign titular bishops have posted over, in order to take possession of their respective sees? How quickly would our universities have been filled with youths who have been sent abroad by their Popish parents, in order to drink in all the superstitions of the Church of Rome? What a speedy period would have been put to societies of all kinds, for promoting Christian knowledge, and propagating the gospel in foreign parts? How soon would our pulpits everywhere have been filled with those old antichristian doctrines, free-will, meriting by works, transubstantiation, purgatory, works of supererogation, passive obedience, non-resistance, and all other abominations of the whore of Babylon? How soon would our protestant charity-schools in England, Scotland, and Ireland, have been pulled down, our Bibles forcibly taken from us, and ignorance everywhere set up as the mother of devotion! How soon should we have been deprived of that invaluable blessing, liberty of conscience, and been obliged to commence (what they falsely call) catholics, or submit to all the tortures which a bigoted zeal, guided by the most cruel principles, could possibly invent! How soon would that mother of harlots have made herself once more drunk with the blood of the saints!
Notice how Whitefield employs the words “our” and “we” in the passage, indicating that he viewed himself as part of the colonial society. The reader can easily imagine how Whitefield might have clothed the passage with indignation and anger through his tone and bodily action. Imagine, by adding a voice to those words above, how they would sound when delivered with a pure, clear voice, increasing emotion, building to a near-shouting climax at the end—yet under complete control of the speaker as he moves out of the pulpit and toward the audience, raising a single hand aloft as he looks directly into the eyes of every person listening. Something of Whitefield’s power is still embedded in this passage for those with the imagination to hear it.
These fears he describes held great power for the community of Protestant Christians, as the Jacobite bloodletting reminded them of England’s previous periods of revolutionary and religious turmoil. Moreover, the violence and war of the past two hundred years in Europe—usually resulting from or attributed to religious conflict—made these fears far more potent than they might seem today. Whitefield ends the section giving thanks to God for preventing such horrors.
Notably here, Whitefield condemns the notions of “passive obedience” and “non-resistance” as “abominations of the whore of Babylon.” These were practices that had been debated in British politics for the past century. The successful refutation of these practices empowered the 1645 revolution and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Yet Jacobites and other Stuart supporters continued to invoke these practices in their efforts to put the Stuarts back on England’s throne. Passive obedience and nonresistance were resurrected within British rhetoric against the move for independence prior to the American Revolution. They were condemned by Jonathan Mayhew in his sermon that John Adams called the “morning gun of the revolution,” and they were addressed head on in Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense.
Religion was political for Whitefield, and he became increasingly political when religious freedoms were threatened. Whether Whitefield was or was not exaggerating the extent of a French victory, he believed he was not, and wanted his audience to believe the same. The community of Christian converts that grew out of the Awakening held genuine political interests that, as their minister, he felt obligated to defend. His purpose was to solidify public support of the current British government to protect the free practice of Protestant religion. The Scots were largely Presbyterians with whom Whitefield could build a bridge founded on their common Protestant faith. Whitefield created a deeper sense of unity among the more recent immigrants by arguing that Jacobite sympathizers should support George II based on their religious heritage. In addition, most of the European groups who immigrated to America were Protestant and could respect his arguments. By employing John Knox’s idea that obligation to God should come first, Whitefield protected religious liberty, even if it meant rejecting a rightful heir to the throne. A change in the king could have replaced the Church of England with Roman Catholicism as the state-supported religion. This was a situation Whitefield wanted to clarify for everyone.
But most importantly, Whitefield provided definitions of a good king and a bad one. On one hand, he portrayed George II in glowing terms with general examples of his justice and wisdom. On the other, he depicted Charles Edward as a servant of the antichrist and speculated on the results of a successful invasion with examples of past atrocities. While his speculations may have been rooted in personal fears, his portrayal of the situation was realistic. Indeed, had the weather cooperated in the first attempt, or if Charles Edward had been given better advice, unified leadership within the Scots, and a stronger base of support from the people of Scotland and England, the rebellion might have succeeded. Whitefield distinguished between good and evil leadership in the practical republican terms of action, whether arbitrary and tyrannous or protective of liberty. And while his definition was intended to draw people closer to God, it supplied, for those who heard it, a plumb line for leadership in all contexts. In so doing, these definitions would begin to operate as a new perspective for revolutionary era patriots—that “the people” have a duty to oppose tyrannous leaders who would threaten their freedoms.
In the sermon’s final movement, Whitefield attributes the victory to God’s mercy, giving God full credit for Charles Edward’s retreat from Derby back into Scotland. He compares Charles Edward’s advisors to the biblical character Ahithophel, whose rebellious yet prudent advice to a monarchial usurper was thwarted by God’s divine intervention. Whitefield points out that because of Charles Edward’s retreat to the Highlands and the union of all the rebels into one army, Cumberland was able completely and decisively to defeat the rebel threat. Whitefield even argues that it was best for the rebellion to go as far as it did because the king learned who his friends were, the people had an occasion to express their loyalty, France was humbled, and an “effectual stop” was put to “any such further popish plot to rob us of all that is near and dear to us.”
The “instrument of this victory” deserves notice, and Whitefield personally names and extols people key to Britain’s success. He describes William, Duke of Cumberland, a younger son of George II, with the terms “nobleness of mind,” “courage,” “surprising bravery,” and “magnanimity,” eloquently acclaiming eight aspects of his character or deeds. Also, he lauds others involved in the battle:
And shall we not say “Blessed above men let his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland be; for through his instrumentality, the great and glorious Jehovah hath brought mighty things to pass?” Should not our hearts be towards the worthy Archbishop of Tirk, the Royal Hunters, and those other English heroes who offered themselves so willingly? Let the names of Blakeney, Bland and Rea, and all those who waxed valiant in fight on this important occasion, live forever in the British annals. And let the name of that great, that incomparable brave soldier of the king, and a good soldier of Jesus Christ, Colonel Gardiner, (excuse me if I here drop a tear; he was my intimate friend) let his name, I say, be had in everlasting remembrance.
He links tyranny with Catholicism in his praise of the battle’s victors, who “delivered three kingdoms from the dread of popish cruelty, and arbitrary power.” By defending English liberty and opposing the threatened tyranny of Charles Edward, these men have earned great praise. One can only imagine the vocal punctuation and emotion with which Whitefield was able to adorn the above passage, especially in light of the high style of oratory, laden with artful language and even rhyme. The passage is somewhere between poetry and prose. If one reads it aloud with attention to its internal metering, pacing, alliteration, and rhyme, it comes alive. Undoubtedly, Whitefield was at his oratorical and theatrical best. In a Boston Gazette editorial published a few weeks later, an eyewitness praised Whitefield and the sermon: “I should have been well pleased that all Men had heard it from the Preacher … he was in an Extasy, and every pause was so natural, that the Congregation were charmed with Silence that spoke, and Eloquence of Eyes.”
Whitefield follows his praise of men with a call for the praise of God. He demands consistency from people; if men deserve honor, God deserves more honor, and such honor can best be provided through public and private virtue. For Whitefield, a system of civic/religious ordinances, as set down in Scripture and practiced in New England, was far superior to a legal code of any secular origination, and its superiority is self-evident: “Is not the divine image and superscription written upon every precept of the gospel? Do they not shine with a native intrinsic luster?” He wraps up the sermon by providing a repetition of his argument that God is the agent of their blessings and deserves honor. Finally, Whitefield concludes with a warning for the future, insisting that the danger from the rebels has not ended, that they may be instruments of God intended to scourge England for the neglect of her citizens toward God’s law. He argues that as God “dealt with the Egyptians,” God might also deal with Britain, and perhaps already has, citing recent epidemics.
Whitefield’s political sentiments (an aspect of another spirit) were manifested by addressing a significant military and political event and prescribing a set of political beliefs for his auditors. Surprisingly, there is no invitation to the new birth, which climaxes almost all of his other sermons, showing that his goal for the sermon was primarily political. For one such as Whitefield, this absence of a persuasive invitation to the new birth is significant and must not be overlooked in interpreting his intention for the sermon. One can presume that audience members, for whom Whitefield’s version of events was legitimate, might embrace his definitions and interpretations. These were definitions that were grounded in common sense, eloquent, and widely circulated in print, giving them the potential of being influential to open minds. Even his slippery-slope portrait of life under a tyrannical “Popish government” was common in European history. The descriptions of tyrannical rule in general created a vivid definition of a tyrant to which future rulers might be compared. Moreover, Whitefield praised the opposition to potential tyranny, even though Charles Edward had a legal claim to the throne according to the practice of hereditary succession. He lauded the individuals who fought in the battles and popularized the notion that “opposition to tyranny is just.”
Whitefield was drawing upon an older tradition to vilify the Catholic French. Anti-Catholic rhetoric had been employed for at least a century in English politics as a “coded language for constitutional fears of over-powerful monarchy.”1 But according to Nathan Hatch, this tradition was not grounded in “fears that Rome pulled the strings for Stuart puppets.” Nor did the anti-Catholic fears originate from Enlightenment thinkers who accused Rome of keeping people ignorant that they might be more easily controlled. Instead this tradition was derived, according to Hatch, from a “view of history that had come to define the struggle between Protestant and Catholics as one battle in the larger war between liberty and arbitrary power.”2 By portraying the Catholic French as “them,” the enemy of genuine religion and liberty, and by blending the religious vocabulary with political terms, Whitefield showed how deeply religious activism was intertwined with American politics. He prescribed a political ideology—support of the British Crown—to the religious community, and they accepted it and became involved in the war effort. This political view set a precedent for American religion and politics: that the church should support (with blood) the kind of government that will ensure liberty and oppose the government that would oppress people through arbitrary power. Whitefield reiterated and reinforced this view for the rest of his career.
As Whitefield’s tour progressed, he was acutely aware of the political message in “Britain’s Mercies” and was interested to know how well his publication was being received. In a letter to the Welsh evangelist Howell Harris, Whitefield confided that he wished to “know what effect my sermon on the rebellion has had” back in England. Calling it “much blessed in these parts,” Whitefield also hoped that the sermon would make a definitive public statement regarding his own loyalties and contribute to the rehabilitation of his public image. To another friend Whitefield later wrote, “My State Sermon has gone through two editions. They have also my five last sermons, which have convinced my friends that I am firm to my principles.” His efforts seemed to work. The Boston Gazette dedicated the front page of September 23, 1746, to an editorial penned by “Methodistus” supporting Whitefield:
The Gentlemen at the Head of the Administration … have given it as their Opinion, that the Methodists in general and Mr. Whitefield in particular, are great Friends to his Majesty, and all that are set in Authority under him.
The writer went on to say,
I DOUBT NOT but everybody in the British Dominions will, upon reading that Sermon, be convinced (if anyone ever stood in need of such a Conviction) that Mr. Whitefield is as zealous a Protestant, as a warm a Friend to Liberty, and therefore as dutiful a Subject to his present Majesty, as any Man living.
Whitefield’s public image was well on the way to recovery. His politics were public, and his friends did not hesitate to point it out to the public.