This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual rela- tions between the British Isles and America in a momentous period which witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the overthrow of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. Jonathan Clark integrates evidence from law and religion to explain these events by revealing how the dynamics of early modern societies were essen- tially denominational. In a study of British and American political dis- course, he shows how law and religion were profoundly related and how rival conceptions of liberty were expressed in the conflicts created by Prot- estant Dissent's hostility to an Anglican hegemony. The book argues that this model provides a key to collective acts of resistance to the established order throughout the period. Its final section focuses on the defining episode for British and American history, and shows the way in which the American Revolution can be understood as a war of religion. The Language of Liberty stands as part of a project aimed at revising our map of early modern English-speaking societies, which includes Dr Clark's previous books English Society 1688-1832 (1985) and Revolution and Rebellion (1986). This work has implications for both Britain's and the USA's under- standings of their historical identities and present predicaments. THE LANGUAGE OF LIBERTY THE LANGUAGE OF LIBERTY l66o—1832 Political discourse and social dynamics in the Anglo-American world J. C. D. CLARK SI CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY I 00 I I -4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1994 First published 1994 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data ISBN o 521 44510 8 hardback ISBN o 521 44957 x paperback Transferred to digital printing 2004 Contents Preface Page xi Acknowledgements xv List of abbreviations xvi INTRODUCTION: THE STRUCTURE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE I I Law, religion and sovereignty i II Constitutional innovations and their English antecedents 6 III The genesis of political discourse 10 IV Transatlantic ties and their failure 13 V The Commonwealth paradigm 20 VI Denominational discourse 29 VII The implications of theological conflict 35 VIII Denominational dynamics and political rebellions 41 I THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LAWS! SOVEREIGNTY AND STATE FORMATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES 46 I Law, nationality and nationalism: monarchical allegiance and identity 46 II The creation of the United Kingdom, 1536-1801: religion and the origins of the common-law doctrine of sovereignty 62 III Sovereignty in political theory from Justinian to the English jurists 75 IV Natural law versus common law: the polarisation of a common idiom 93 V Sovereignty, Dissent and the American rejection of the British state 111 VI Sovereignty and the New Republic: the American constitution in transatlantic perspective 125 viii Contents 2 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DENOMINATIONS I THE RELIGIOUS IDENTITY OF EARLY-MODERN SOCIETIES 141 I Before redefinition: politics and religion in the old society 141 II Anglicanism as an agency of state formation: the question of establishment 153 III Canon law, heterodoxy and the American perception of tyranny 167 IV The Anglican ascendancy as the hegemony of discourse 180 V The Anglican dream: harmony and conflict in the English parish 190 VI The Anglican nightmare: sectarian diversity in colonial America 203 3 PREDISPOSITIONS: REBELLION AND ITS SOCIAL CONSTITUENCIES IN THE ENGLISH ATLANTIC EMPIRE, 1660-1832 2l8 I Rebellions and their analysis in the Anglo-American tradition 218 II Covenanters, Presbyterians and Whigs: resistance to the Stuarts in England and Scotland, 1660-1689 225 III Colonial American rebellions 1660-1689 and transatlantic discourse 240 IV The rights of Englishmen, the rhetoric of slavery, and rebellions in Britain and America, 1689-1760 249 V The right of resistance and its sectarian preconditions in North America, 1760-1799 257 VI The rhetoric of resistance and its social constituencies in England and Ireland, 1733-1832: some transatlantic analogies 282 VII Denominations, social constituencies and their activation 290 4 POLITICAL MOBILISATION: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AS A WAR OF RELIGION 296 I The American Revolution as a civil war 296 II Predispositions, accelerators and catalysts: the role of theology 303 III Heterodox and orthodox in the Church of England 311 IV The divisions and disruptions of English Dissent 317 V Heterodoxy and rebellion in colonial America, 1760-1776 335 Contents ix (A) The American Anglicans 339 (B) The American Presbyterians 351 (C) The American Gongregationalists 363 (D) The American Baptists 372 CONCLUSION: 'DESOLATING DEVASTATION': THE ORIGINS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN DIVERGENCE 382 Index 392