RADICAL REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND, AMERICA, AND THE IMPERIAL ATLANTIC, 1624-1661 by John Donoghue B.A., Westminster College, New Wilmington, PA, 1993 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1999 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Faculty of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by John Donoghue It was defended on December 2, 2005 and approved by William Fusfield, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Janelle Greenberg, Professor, Department of History Jonathan Scott, Professor, Department of History Dissertation Director: Marcus Rediker, Professor, Department of History ii Copyright by John Donoghue 2006 iii RADICAL REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND, AMERICA, AND THE IMPERIAL ATLANTIC, 1624-1661 John Donoghue, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, April 30, 2006 This dissertation links the radical politics of the English Revolution to the history of puritan New England. It argues that antinomians, by rejecting traditional concepts of social authority, created divisive political factions within the godly party while it waged war against King Charles I. At the same time in New England, antinomians organized a political movement that called for a democratic commonwealth to limit the power of ministers and magistrates in religious and civil affairs. When this program collapsed in Massachusetts, hundreds of colonists returned to an Old England engulfed by civil war. Joining English antinomians, they became lay preachers in London, New Model Army soldiers, and influential supporters of the republican Levellers. This dissertation also connects the study of republican political thought to the labor history of the first British Empire. Although intellectual historians of the English Revolution often explore classical, renaissance and religious sources to explain political thinking, they regularly neglect the material contexts, in England and elsewhere, where political ideas took shape. The world of the university, the halls of Parliament, and the rank-and-file of the New Model Army inspired republicanism, but so too, dialectically, did the new worlds of colonial courts, plantations, and imperial armadas. As the English Revolution gave birth to the first British Empire, the circulation of experience between the old and new worlds transformed port cities like Boston, London, and Bridgetown into ideological entrepôts, where radical networks forged republican programs during a period of revolutionary upheaval. Confronting slavery, the destruction of Native American societies, and impressment for imperial wars in Ireland and the West Indies, radicals created a language of practical Christian liberty that defined the abolition of coerced labor as a principle of republican justice. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that labor history can illuminate the intellectual history of a trans-national political movement organized for, and often by, the working classes of the seventeenth-century imperial Atlantic. iv Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One The Godly City: Coleman Street Ward and Puritan London, 1624-1634……………………………………………………27 Chapter Two “Combustions in the Commonwealth”: Liberty of Conscience in New England, 1630-1638…………………………….73 Chapter Three “The New Creature”: Radical Politics on the American Strand, 1638-1652…………………………………………………...120 Chapter Four “Hell Broke Loose”: An Atlantic History of ‘England’s Troubles’, 1638-1649………………………………………………..163 Chapter Five “That Crimson Stream of Blood”: The English Empire in Ireland and the Caribbean, 1649-1655……………………………226 Chapter Six “The Accursed Thing”: Empire, Unfree Labor, and the Politics of Practical Christianity, 1655-1657…………………………….….299 Chapter Seven “Soldiers in the Army of the Lord”: Republican Revolution in London, 1657-1661………………………………………………351 Conclusion……………………………………………………………….….381 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...388 v Acknowledgements I cannot hope in the space available to properly acknowledge all of those who have made this dissertation possible; despite its flaws, this work is in part a monument to the support that I have received from a community of mentors, colleagues, friends, and family over the past decade. I owe an enormous debt to my dissertation committee, William Fusfield, Janelle Greenberg, Jonathan Scott, and Marcus Rediker. Bill helped me understand the importance of political rhetoric in republicanism, and gave early and consistent support to my project. Janelle introduced me to the rich world of seventeenth century English intellectual history, advised me on shrewd approaches to revisionism in English historiography, and waged an uphill battle in helping to transform me into a competent writer. The countless hours she spent writing her extensive and always illuminating comments vastly improved both the content and style of the manuscript, and her high- spirits and good cheer helped sustain me when things grew dark. In a stroke of good luck, Jonathan Scott arrived at the University of Pittsburgh as I began to conceptualize this project. The reader will see me shamelessly borrowing from his path-breaking works on republican thought. Jonathan’s careful readings of the various drafts, his perceptive commentary, and his insistence on concision, deep historiographic context, and thorough proof-reading were critical to my development as a scholar and have made this a much better work than it might otherwise have been. And finally, to my advisor, friend, and mentor Marcus Rediker, I owe the most of all. His patience and dedication as an advisor, his thoughtful mentorship, and his intellectual depth and wise counsel helped me chart a course through some very stormy seas, and for this I will always be grateful. But even more so, his marriage of scholarship and activism exemplify the highest form of academic integrity, and have been an inspiration to me as they have been to all of his students. I am proud to work with Marcus in the vital tradition of bottom-up, social history, one that he has helped to re-map and refine through the vehicle of Atlantic history. I am grateful to several institutions that provided grants and fellowships to finance research trips to London, Oxford, and Boston. At the University of Pittsburgh, I would like to thank Professor Dennis Looney, interim director, Center for Western European Studies, and the Hays Summer Research Grant committee (2003) from the Department of History. I must also take this opportunity to thank Molly Estes and Grace Tomcho of the history department for their help in negotiating the university’s bureaucratic labyrinths. The American Historical Association’s Michael Kraus Research Grant helped cover travel expenses, and a Mary Catherine Mooney Fellowship allowed me to spend a very pleasant and productive month at the Boston Athenaeum, where the kindness and collegiality of Stephen Nonack, Curator of Manuscripts, and Stanley Cushing, Curator of Rare Books, was greatly appreciated. I also thank Michael Webb of the Bodleian Library vi for assisting me in my initial foray into the manuscript collection of that wonderful archive. For over a decade now, the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at Harvard University has provided young scholars with both funding and an exciting venue to discuss their own research. My time at the 2003 and 2005 seminars helped shape the dissertation in invaluable ways. Thanks go to Director Bernard Bailyn and Administrator Pat Denault for presiding over and organizing the annual conference. I would also like to thank Billy Smith and Simon Middleton for convening the intellectually provocative Conference on Class and Class Struggles in North America and the Atlantic World (2003). In the crisp autumn air, under impossibly blue western skies, the conference’s profound debates on class as a descriptive and analytical category compelled me to re-think my approach to labor history, and took the dissertation in new and fruitful directions. I am especially grateful to the administrators, teachers, and students of Mt. Lebanon High School. The administration provided valuable funds and time off for research, and here I should pay particular thanks to Stephanie Ross of the conference committee, my supervisor, Steve Bullick, and senior high principal, Dr. Zeb Jansante. Karen Banks and Gina Stein helped me manage a spirit-crushing volume of paperwork. My friends in the Social Studies Department are not celebrated enough for their intellectual depth, professional skill, and bottomless devotion to their students: let me pay tribute here, for I am constantly humbled by them as teachers and as human beings. They have displayed inexhaustible patience with their distracted, disorganized, and forgetful colleague, whose preoccupation with this project has magnified his many professional shortcomings. The work ethic, enthusiasm, and intellectual curiosity of my American history and world cultures students continues to impress, and can be counted on to rejuvenate their teacher on even the dreariest of Mondays; also, their toleration of my romantic exegeses on all things Irish has not gone unrecognized. This project owes much to the encouragement of an ever-expanding circle of friends. For decades now, I have relied on Joe O’Malley and Father Matthew McClain to keep my ego in check and the stories (and beer) flowing. At Mt. Lebanon High School, Patt McCloskey, Joe Figura, Chris Haering, Tom Jackson, Suzi Walters, Pete Dinardo, George Savarese, Dave Black, Dr. James M. Mooney, and Tina Raspanti have supplied support, advice, and good-humor. The camaraderie I enjoyed and perspective I gained from Scott Giltner and Craig Marin at the University of Pittsburgh helped make life as a grad student bearable. Mentors Barbara Kern, John Canning, and Mark and Mary Ann McCloskey have taught me more than they know, and more than I can adequately thank them for. Robert Sherry’s wisdom gave me strength, and Drew and Jen Haberberger have provided unflagging encouragement and many warm and welcome occasions to celebrate our friendship. I thank them for introducing me to another mentor, Dr. Todd DePastino, a wonderful scholar whose professional guidance has been instrumental throughout my life as a graduate student. John and Trish McAdoo’s hospitality, generosity, and many selfless kindnesses, especially during the long summer of 2003, have been sources of joy. Chris and Jen Hayward’s charisma, enthusiasm, and loyal vii friendship have been constants; their zeal for life reveals the diminishing returns that result from spending too much time in the study. I have yet to attempt the daunting task of expressing gratitude to my family. They have helped me recognize that scholarship is as much a vocation as a profession, and contains ethical imperatives larger than academic subject matter. With open hearts, my in-laws, Ray and Fran Golli, chose to ignore my less than attractive prospects (a penniless graduate student who lived in a creaking garret), and have always treated me as a son. Their warmth and generosity are boundless, and I thank them for raising such a strong and beautiful woman. My many hilarious adventures with my brother-in-law Jon Golli in and out of the country came as welcome respites from long periods of work. My uncle and namesake, Father John Donoghue, showed me the nature of “radical love,” a truth that has become an unfolding epiphany in my life. To my aunt, Margaret Wickham, thank you for your prayers and encouragement. My brother Patrick has borne more than his share of academic posturing from his psuedo-intellectual brother. Without “defining his terms,” he has helped me discover new ways to write and think, and to paraphrase his favorite author Henry Thoreau, to advance confidently in the direction of my dreams. I have my sister Ann Haring to thank for introducing me to puritan studies, for lively conversations about the course of my research, and for her insights into the more transcendental aspects of my conclusions. She has also been a gracious hostess for my many research trips to Washington, DC; I look forward to enjoying more of these with her and her husband Paul. In regard to my parents, I scarcely know where to begin or how to end; suffice to say, their many sacrifices for family have been a model of selflessness, their faith always an anchor, their compassion an inspiration, and their humility empowering. Their love, encouragement, and support have sustained me always, and I hope that the wisdom distilled from this dissertation reflects the values they continue to instill in my siblings and I. And finally, a special note of thanks to my wife and daughter. Meredith’s birth last winter rescued me from an abyss of fruitless agonizing over the final draft and gave me a compelling reason to declare the project complete. I look forward to putting her to sleep with bedtime readings of dissertation footnotes. My wife Laura has inspired me as a scholar and as a human being, and whatever progress I have made in either category, I owe completely to her. She has felt every ounce of the project’s stress, strain, and struggle as intensely as I have, and her patience and optimism helped me through many difficult periods when the work seemed to overtake both of our lives. Her claim of payback through a long and growing list of house repairs notwithstanding, I can only hope to give back all that she has given to me. Laura has long been my compass star; her love has been my guide in this work, as it has in everything, and for this I will always be grateful. viii Introduction On January 17, 1661, in a cold, crowded London courtroom, Thomas Venner was slowly bleeding to death. Despite the pain of his nineteen wounds and the jeers of Royal officials, the wine cooper faced his indictment without remorse. Venner’s head remained unbowed as the court clerk announced his arraignment for treason. Two weeks before, Venner had led a band of fifty men in open rebellion against the newly restored King Charles II. As one of the rebels explained to a friend, they had taken up arms “to pull Charles down, and settle a free state” so that an English Republic might once again rise on the ashes of monarchy.1 Venner and his tiny militia, which included veterans of the New Model Army and Navy, seemed to appear everywhere in the city during that first week in January, “scattering” their revolutionary manifesto “about the streets,” as the book seller George Thomason noted, while battling the trained bands and the King’s Life Guard in hand-to-hand fighting. The rebels spilled first blood at St. Paul’s Cathedral as dusk descended on January 7, and then melted away to Ken Wood, only to reappear on Coleman Street two days later “like wild enthusiasts…besotted with hellish notions.”2 By the middle of that January morning, Venner’s rebels had thrown London into a state of panic. Shop owners shuttered their windows, citizens gathered arms, and while the fighting raged not far from 1 A Relation or History of the Rise and Suppression of the Fifth Monarchy within the Kingdom of England, the Chief of which Sect was one Thomas Venner, a Wine Cooper (London, 1661), n.p. 2 Archdeacon Laurence Echard, The History of England (London, 1707), 104. 1 his home, Samuel Pepys wrote that gentlemen would only venture out into the streets armed with pistols and swords.3 By evening, a troop of Royalists led by Colonel Cox had put down the uprising, capturing Venner and over twenty of his men after killing the rest. When the smoke cleared on January 10, Pepys noted in his famous diary that the rebels had broken through the city gates twice, put the King’s Lifeguard to flight, and repulsed repeated charges by the trained band. In light of this impressive display, Pepys estimated that the rebel force numbered at least five hundred. He was incredulous to learn that he had overestimated the size of Venner’s militia tenfold. “A thing that never was heard of,” wrote Pepys reflecting on the desperate fighting, “that so few men should dare and do so much mischief.”4 Dragged into the Old Bailey on a bloody litter a week later, Venner delivered a remarkable account as to the reasons why he and his men had embarked upon their ill- fated venture. After lamenting the Restoration, Venner explained the course of his political education in a way that few readers today might expect. According to multiple witnesses, he began a “bottomless discourse” about how the “testimony of his twenty-two years in New England” had inspired his faith in the ideals of the English Revolution.5 As Venner’s rebels proclaimed in a manifesto, the crusade of the saints “was much more 3 P.G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy Men (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 114-115. 4 Ibid., 116. 5 “A Relation of the Arraignment and Trial of those who made the late Rebellious Insurrection in London, 1661,” in Sir Walter Scott, ed., A Collection of the Most Scarce and Valuable Tracts on the Most Interesting and Entertaining Subjects: but Chiefly as Such that Relate to the History and Constitution of these Kingdoms. Selected from an Infinite Number in Print and Manuscript, in the Royal, Cotton, Sion, and other Private, as Well as Public Libraries; Particularly that of the Late Lord Sommers (London: 1809- 1815), 4: 470. Cited hereafter as Somers Tracts. 2