The CulTure of equiTy in resToraTion and eighTeenTh-CenTury BriTain and ameriCa drawing on politics, religion, law, literature, and philosophy, this interdisciplinary study is a sequel to mark fortier’s book The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England (ashgate, 2006). The earlier volume traced the meanings and usage of equity in broad cultural terms (including but not limited to law) to position equity as a keyword of valuation, persuasion, and understanding; the present volume carries that work through the restoration and 18th century in Britain and america. fortier argues that equity continued to be a keyword, used and contested in many of the major social and political events of the period. further, he argues that equity needs to be seen in this period largely outside the aristotelian parameters that have generally been assumed in scholarship on equity. This page has been left blank intentionally The Culture of equity in restoration and eighteenth- Century Britain and america mark forTier University of Guelph, Canada First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2015 mark fortier mark fortier has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: fortier, mark, 1953- The culture of equity in restoration and eighteenth-century Britain and america / by mark fortier. pages cm includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 978-1-4724-4186-7 (hardcover) 1 . english literature--18th century--history and criticism. 2. american literature--18th century--history and criticism. 3. english literature--early modern, 1500-1700--history and criticism. 4. literature and society-- great Britain--history--18th century. 5. literature and society--united states--history-- 18th century. 6. equity--great Britain--history. 7. equity--united states--history. i. Title. Pr442.f67 2015 820.9’005--dc23 2014023599 isBn: 9781472441867 (hbk) isBn: 9781315615233 (ebk) Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 Restoration Equity 23 2 Rights and Revolutions 63 Epilogue: Judith Sargent Murray and Thomas Gisborne 119 Bibliography 131 Index 147 This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgments I want to thank the University of Guelph, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies for their financial assistance with this project. I also want to thank the libraries that have welcomed me and my research: the University of Guelph, the British Library, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA, and the Huntington Library. I also want to thank Erika Gaffney at Ashgate, who has always been a supportive editor who makes everything go smoothly. The anonymous reader for Ashgate provided judicious and helpful comments. Leslie Allin provided the index. My deepest scholarly and intellectual debts for this project are owed to the community of those working in law and literature and in equity studies. The stimulus being part of such a community provides is a large part of the joy of doing work like this. A part of the Introduction and a part of Chapter 1 previously appeared as “Education, Aesop, Roger L’Estrange, and Equity” in Law and Humanities 5.2 (2011): 283–302. The cover image, from Fables of Aesop and Others: Newly Done into English (London, 1722), is courtesy of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. It is an illustration of the fable “The Boy and His Mother.” I dedicate this book to Gloria, Debra, Charlotte, Julia, Sarah, Courtney, Louisa, and Tugboat. This page has been left blank intentionally Introduction Equity as a Keyword This present volume is in large measure a sequel to my previous study, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England.1 The culture of equity, as I see it, is not limited to law (as equity has most commonly been approached), but is at least as importantly at play in religion, politics, poetry, and revolution. My work began in the early modern period because I am trained as an early-modernist. Of necessity I glanced back at the long traditions, classical and Judeo-Christian, that have shaped equity, but a history of equity before the sixteenth century (and in contexts other than Anglo-American) is not something I have ever felt prepared to envision. My study, however, ended with an awareness of the differences between early modern equity and equity in our own time: equity remains an important word and set of ideas, but it is not the same complex that it was 400 years ago. That is to be expected. The present volume is an attempt to begin to bridge the history of equity, again largely outside narrowly legal parameters, from 1660 till now (leaving two centuries’ worth of the story to be told by others). My familiarity with and focus on equity have given me the temerity to venture into a period of which my knowledge is otherwise decidedly that of a generalist. Once again, I limit myself to the English-speaking world, specifically Britain and British North America. I have come to see the two books together as constituting a sprawling and incomplete supplement to Raymond Williams’s Keywords. Williams’s project was to select some of the words (he had to pare back his list a great deal in order to make it manageable) that have most influenced western culture and society and to show in relatively brief entries how the meaning and significance of these words have changed over time (equity is not one of Williams’s keywords; neither is justice). Two aspects of Williams’s work have particular resonance for me. First is that words matter—“some important social and historical processes occur within language.”2 Like Williams, I have a respect for rhetorical power. People write about important issues because they think words can make a difference. Equity is one of the words they have turned to, believing others will find it compelling. Second is that what often matters about words is not their definition but rather the 1 Mark Fortier, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005). Much of the background material touched on in this present introduction is treated more elaborately in the earlier book. 2 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revised and expanded edition (London: Fontana, 1983), 22.