The Revival of Religion in the Eighteenth Century

John S. Simon

Our inquiry concerns the general condition of morals in England during the reigns of the Georges, and especially in the period before the Great Revival had exerted its utmost force in this country.

The character of a people can be judged by its amusements. The chief amusement of English Society in the eighteenth century was provided by the theatre. It is important to discover the estimate of theatrical managers of that day concerning the taste of the people for whom they catered. No men knew more accurately the innermost mind of the play-going public. They selected the things, which would attract, and their selection proceeded upon a profound knowledge of the current thought and character of the people. There were some managers who discerned the better side of human nature, and appealed to it. They were convinced that by pertinacity and genius they could make the stage one of the great educational forces of the day. We cannot withhold our admiration from these men; neither can we deny them our compassion. In the eighteenth century we greet with respect the figure of David Garrick. With a superb courage, and with a prodigal expenditure, he fought against the evils, which had dragged the stage through the mire. He succeeded in cleansing it from some of its most startling evils. It is undoubted that his example has been an inspiration to some of our modern playwrights and managers. But, as we have said, we pay him the meed of our compassion. The battle was too hard, and gradually it broke him down. He rescued a plot from the desert, and made it bright with blossoms; but round his tiny garden the rank weeds grew. When a little plot of cultivated ground lies in a weedy wilderness, we know its doom.

In speaking of the condition of the English theatre in the eighteenth century, we will not forget Garrick and those who shared with him the arduous toils of the Shakespearean revival. We think that it is scarcely fair to judge the stage by the testimonies of those who have a violent prejudice against theatrical performances. We therefore select our witnesses from the ranks of those who do not suffer from this defect. Lecky, who regrets the opposition of religious people to the theatre, admits that, in the eighteenth century, although English play-writers borrowed very largely from the French, the English stage was far inferior to that of France in decorum, modesty, and morality (History of England, vol.i. p.540). No one can deny that Lecky delivers his verdict with remarkable self-restraint. Let us listen to a man who lived in the eighteenth century, and who was himself a writer of plays. Addison, in the Spectator of 1712, confesses that it was one of the most unaccountable things in that age, that the lewdness of the theatre should be so much complained of, so well exposed, and so little redressed.

As matters stand at present [he says] multitudes are shut out from this noble diversion by reason of those abuses and corruptions that accompany it. A father is often afraid that his daughter should be ruined by those entertainments, which were invented for the accomplishment, and refining of human nature … The accomplished gentleman upon the English stage is the person that is familiar with other men’s wives and indifferent to his own, as the fine woman is generally a composition of sprightliness and falsehood.

It may be said that Addison wrote before Garrick’s attempt to purify the stage. That is so; but Garrick’s success may be easily exaggerated. Speaking of the year 1782, Sydney says -
With regard to the character of the plays, this much only needs be said, that, although Garrick and others worked hard during the second half of the century to eliminate the coarse, obscene, and scandalous elements which entered only too largely into the composition of many of them, the state of the stage was very far from satisfactory, even in the closing decades of the century, although, by that time, the stream of public opinion was being fairly directed against the coarseness by which it had been so long disfigured (England and the English, vol.i. p.165).

Dr. Wendeborn, whose love of theatrical performances made him lenient in his judgement, says -

The English stage has been blamed, particularly during the reign of Charles II, for being exceedingly licentious but it has been, in this respect, much reformed; though there occur frequently such expressions and double entendres as may put modesty to the blush; which, however, seem not to be disliked by the majority even of female spectators, who either bestow a smile upon them, or hide their titter behind their fans (A View of England, vol.ii. p.255).

If an audience may be judged by a play, a play may also be judged by an audience. What was the character of the people who trooped into the theatres in the eighteenth century? Writing in 1786, Dr. Wendeborn says -

The great propensity of the present English to see plays of all kinds performed; the crowded play-houses in London; the private theatres, and the spouting clubs make a fine contrast with the times in which Dryden lived. It might, perhaps, be wished, for the sake of morality, that the reservedness and seriousness of that age were not, as it seems, totally given up. Numbers of women of easy virtue are to be seen within the theatres, and in the avenues leading to them, which contributes not a little to increase that immorality which play-houses are said to promote. Formerly, this class of females, when they frequented the theatre, were obliged to wear either masks or hats with a black crape, and they were not admitted into every part of the house. At present, they are seen in numbers in the boxes, or any division of the house, among the rest of the company, without the least distinctive mark, impudence perhaps excepted. Nay, they often give the ton in dress, and in an easy and free deportment, to those of their sex who are reputed modest; so that it is attended with some difficulty to distinguish innocence lost from that which is supposed still to exist (ibid. vol.ii. pp. 261, 262).

Lest it should be said that this description of the audience in an English theatre bears the marks of a foreigner’s spite, we will quote the words of Sydney. He says -

The reader would err, and that very considerably, were he to suppose that it was the attractions of the stage that induced the majority of fine gentlemen in the last century to resort to the three principal theatres in London. Contemporary light literature bears its emphatic testimony to the fact that it was the attractions presented by the saloons of the playhouses, establishments that partook as much of the nature of brothels as they did of taverns, which filled the benches of the theatres with visitors, and the purses of those who kept them with the coin of the realm. The existence of these resorts was the chief inducement for hundreds of men, old and young, to resort to Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket Theatres (England and the English, vol.i. p.161).

Weighing the evidence we have collected, and giving due allowance for the reforms introduced by David Garrick, we see no reason to dispute the substantial accuracy of John Wesley’s verdict, that the English theatre of his day was ‘the sink of all profaneness and debauchery.’

The classes, which had some claim to be considered, educated, found their amusement not only at the theatre, but also in the perusal of the books, which poured from the ‘Minerva Press.’ These were eagerly devoured, and the character of the readers may be gauged by the novels they read.

Jeffrey, in his Essays, describing these books, says -

A greater mass of trash and rubbish never disgraced the press of any country than the ordinary novels that filled and supported circulating libraries down nearly to the time of Miss Edgeworth’s first appearance ... The staple of our novel market was beyond imagination despicable, and had consequently sunk and degraded the whole department of literature, of which it had usurped the name. Sydney informs us that ‘these trashy productions’ were, in most cases, the composition of women; and their plots turned chiefly upon amorous intrigue. ‘Rotten is the one adjective that, with some few exceptions, best describes them one and all.’ He continues -

The perusal of these detestable novels was, in great measure, the sole recreation of young people of either sex whose education had been utterly neglected, or of persons whose morbid cravings after excitement could be satisfied by no other means.

Novel reading was one of the chief employments of women, and the quickest way to coarsen the moral fibre of a nation is to pollute the minds of its women. Speaking of the general literature of the period, Overton, in The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, says -

Notwithstanding the improvement, which such writers as Addison and Steele had effected, it was still very impure. Let us take the evidence of the kindly and well-informed Sir Walter Scott: ‘we should do great injustice to the present day by comparing our manners with those of the reign of George I. The writings, even of the most esteemed poets of that period, contain passages, which now would be accounted to deserve the pillory. Nor was the tone of conversation more pure than that of composition; for the taint of Charles II’s reign continued to infect society until the present reign [George III], when, if not more moral, we are at least more decent.’ (vol.ii. p.45)

While mawkish women were enervating themselves with sentimentality, and besmirching their minds with the scenes and suggestions of infamous novels, their fathers and brothers pursued a more exciting form of pleasure. The men of the eighteenth century have an evil reputation for their passion for gaming. That passion was cultivated and inflamed by the rulers of the nation. The State lotteries affected thousands of men and women, and filled them with a burning desire for gain. The patronage of lotteries continued until the latter end of the eighteenth century, and we agree with Sydney when he says: ‘Of all the baneful things that the evil propensities of Government ever induced it to patronize, assuredly they were the worst.’ (England and the English, vol.i. p.224.)

When we get a clear sight of the men of the time, we cease to wonder at the action of Parliament. Both Houses of the Legislature were filled with gamblers. The name of Charles James Fox springs up in the mind at once. Before he had reached his twenty-fourth year he was indebted to the Jews for something like £100,000, which he had lost at cards and dice. Gibbon says that Fox strengthened himself for the memorable debate in the House of Commons on the relief of the clergy from subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles by indulging in a twenty-two hours’ recreation at hazard, at the cost of £600 per hour - that is £11,000 in all. Pitt, at one period of his life, was a keen gamester. At the Boar’s Head, Eastcheap, he made a great impression on William Wilberforce by the intense earnestness, which he displayed when joining in games of chance. But Pitt perceived his danger in time, and, by a strong effort of will, broke loose from the gaming table, and abandoned it forever. It is strange to watch William Wilberforce at Brooks’s so late as 1780, sitting at the faro-table, where George Selwyn kept the bank. He explains that he joined in play ‘from mere shyness.’ But the fascination seized him, and it was not until he won £600, ‘much of it lost by those who were only heirs to future fortune’ that ‘the pain he felt at their annoyance cured him of a taste which seemed but too likely to become predominant.’

Diverting our glance from the Legislature, we find that the whole of English society was infected with the passion for gaming. Trevelyan, in his Early Life of C. J. Fox, declares that -

Society was one vast casino. On whatever pretext and under whatever circumstances half a dozen people of fashion found. themselves together, whether foil music, or dancing, or politics, or for drinking the waters or each other’s wine, the box was sure to be rattling, and the cards were being cut and shuffled (p.89).

Beneath the level of ‘Society,’ the same craze for games of chance existed. There is no reason to doubt the correctness of the assertion that it may be fairly questioned whether the passion for gambling ever wielded such absolute sway in any country as it did in England during the whole of the eighteenth century.

Let us apply another test to the character of the English people in the eighteenth century. The character of a nation is revealed by the manner in which it treats the lower animals. Since the eighteenth century we have learned reverence for that which is beneath us. The virtue of humaneness has appeared in the English character, and its advent signifies much in the eyes of a man who knows how to test the moral progress of a people. At the time of which we write, in town and country, one of the most popular forms of public amusement was cock fighting. The pencil of Hogarth has made us realize the scenes of cruelty that were enacted in order to give a mild excitement to dull country squires and debauched men about town. In Hogarth’s picture of the cockpit there is one figure that specially impresses us. It is that of a Frenchman, who is turning away from the brutal spectacle with an expression of unqualified disgust. Our insular pride is wounded by this keen touch of the satirist’s pencil. Latimer, in his Annals of Bristol records the occurrence of great cockfights. In March 1724, a match took place between the ‘gentlemen’ of Bath and Bristol. The stakes were six guineas on each battle, and sixty guineas on the concluding fight. The tournament extended over three days. The ‘gentlemen’ of the two cities must have been glutted with blood (Latimer’s Annals, p.140). In February 1778, a fight took place at the Ostrich Inn, Durdham Down. It was attended by a great number of country squires, the match having been arranged between the gentry of Somerset and Devon. Fifty-one birds contended on each side, for prizes amounting to about 350 guineas (p.432). In April 1786, there was a great cock-fighting tournament in Bristol. The promoters were the gentry of Gloucester-shire and Dorset. The stakes were £350, and the betting was heavy. In Leicester, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, it is on record that as many as one hundred cocks were slain in the course of a single day.

What strikes us in reading the descriptions of eighteenth-century cock fighting is the fact that the nation at large seemed utterly unable to feel any disgust at the scenes in the pit. It is singular that the sport was considered so harmless that boys might enjoy it without rebuke. At Wimborne School, an annual cockfight was held with the approval of the masters (p.25). The pastime was numbered among the recreations of some of the clergy. In 1656 Parson Allambrigge, of Monkton Farleigh, fought a main of cocks with a neighbour, and was so delighted by his victory that he recorded it in the parish register (Latimer’s Annals, p.25). The mantle of this clerical sportsman seems to have fallen on Samuel Creswicke, the Dean of Bristol in 1730, and the incumbent of St. James’s Church in that city. In 1739 he was promoted to the deanery of Wells, holding still his Bristol parish. At his residence, Haydon, near Wells, he ordered a cock-pit to be constructed, so that he and his guests could witness the ‘sport’ from his dining-room, the window of which was enlarged for the purpose (ibid. p.170). Roberts, in his Social History of the Southern Counties, informs us (p.421) that the church bells at times announced the winning of a long main.

At one time bear baiting was a favourite amusement in England. It was enjoyed, more especially by ‘gentlemen,’ but the rabble entered with great zest into the ‘sport.’ But the bear disappeared from the arena in favour of the bull. Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century bulls were tortured to make an English holiday. In London, in Queen Anne’s time, they were baited twice a week; and Lecky tells us that there was no provincial town to which the practice did not extend.

It was regarded on the Continent as peculiarly English. The tenacity of the English bull-dog, which would sometimes suffer itself to be cut to pieces rather than relax its hold, was a favourite subject of national boasting, while French writers pointed to the marked difference in this respect between the French and English taste as a conclusive proof of the higher civilization of their own nation (Lecky’s History, vol.i. p.552).

The torture of animals for amusement is one of the most hideous forms of human cruelty. Prize fighting between men, in comparison with it, is an innocent form of physical exercise. But the eighteenth century could not allow even this form of amusement to stand in its native simplicity. The readers of the newspapers, in the first half of the century, often caught sight of the advertised challenges of women. Sydney reproduces advertisements from the London Journal and the Daily Post in confirmation of this fact. As the nation was callous to the spectacles of the cockpit and bullring, it is scarcely necessary to say that it was indifferent to the batterings of a prizefight. All the evidence shows that the sport was not considered brutal. We presume that some fastidious persons objected to look at the combat between the Stoke Newington ass-driver and the European championess, or the contest in which ‘the famous boxing woman of Billingsgate’ pounded her adversary; but, as to the fights between men, even members of Parliament held that they were conducive to manliness, and that the national character and the constitutional liberties of the country were closely bound up with them.

According to Dr. Wendeborn (A View of England, vol.i. p.364), some foreigners were accustomed to call the English ‘the wild nation of Europe,’ and notwithstanding the natural resentment we feel at the criticism, it must be admitted that, in the eighteenth century, we deserved the epithet. The ‘wildness’ of the English people was especially illustrated, in times of excitement, by the swift gathering and desperate onslaught of the mob. Fielding calls the English rabble the ‘Fourth Estate.’ There were occasions, such as the Sacheverell, the Wilkes, and the Lord Gordon riots, when the mob ruled London. Outside the metropolis the rabble often reigned. In the provincial towns there seemed always to be a large number of people who, on provocation, would break out into tumults, disgraced by murder and the burning of the houses of obnoxious persons. In many places the magistrates were held in contempt. As for the constables, instead of hunting they were hunted. Nothing tamed the madness of the mob save the sight of soldiers and a discharge of musketry. Then the coward, so often latent in the rioter, revealed himself, and the crowd scattered and ran for its hiding-places. The mob also existed in sparsely peopled neighbourhoods. By some evil instinct the most violent men and women of the villages got to know that some obnoxious person was coming into the district, and they swiftly assembled to drive him out with cudgels and brickbats. They gathered quickly, and gave themselves up to the luxury of fury. The unbridled brutality of the English rabble may be traced, in part, to the indifference for the sufferings of other people, which is acquired by long indulgence in cruel sport. There is not much difference between the baiting of a bear or a bull and the hounding of a man through a village street. In an age when gallant deeds on battlefields were common, we doubt whether any soldier displayed a finer heroism than was shown by the evangelists of the Great Revival, who, knowing their danger, stood in perfect peace in the midst of the raging ruffians who sought their lives.

We have tested the moral character of the people of England by the condition of the criminal code and by their amusements. In concluding our sketch of that condition we will avail ourselves of the keen eyes of John Wesley. He was a seer, and he had unparalleled opportunities for observing the state of the nation. His verdict was that the outstanding evils of his day were the prevailing habits of ‘taking the name of God in vain, the profaning the day of the Lord, and drunkenness.’ Wherever he rode, through city, town, or village, these were the signs, which revealed the moral condition of England.

Let us take one of the ‘evils’, which Wesley indicates. The student of the moral condition of the people of England in the eighteenth century is especially impressed with the prevalence of drunkenness. It was a vice affecting all ranks of society. The clubs, the coffeehouses, and the city taverns ministered to the corruption of the upper and middle classes, and the beer- and gin-shops intensified the miseries of the labourer and the herder in the slums. The vice desolated both town and country; it mastered the English people in the eighteenth century.

Lecky, in his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, gives a sketch of the rise and progress of this curse of our nation. Drunkenness extensively prevailed during the time when beer was the ordinary beverage of the people. But the starting-point of our career as a pre-eminently drunken race is to be found in the early Hanoverian period, when gin drinking began to be the rage in this country. Under Charles I a company was formed with the sole right of making spirits and vinegar in the cities of London and Westminster, and within twenty-one miles of the same. Other distilleries were subsequently started; but, according to Lecky, up to the time of the Revolution their number was inconsiderable. In 1689, in order to exclude French brandies, the importation of spirits from all foreign countries was absolutely prohibited; and the trade of distilling, on the payment of certain duties, was thrown open to all English subjects. For a time the consequences of this fatal step were not seen. In the days when French-made brandies were imported, they were so expensive that they were consumed, almost exclusively, by the moneyed classes. But the spirits produced in English distilleries were purchasable by all sections of the population; and spirit-drinking gradually became a habit in England. Lecky mentions 1724 as the year when gin drinking began to spread with ‘the rapidity and the violence of an epidemic.’ He says -

Small as is the place which this fact occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the eighteenth century - incomparably more so than any event in the purely political or military annals of the country. The fatal passion for drink was at once, and irrevocably, planted in the nation (History, vol.i. p.479).

The progress in the drinking of spirits at this period may be gauged from the following facts: In 1684 the average of British spirits distilled was 527,000 gallons. In 1714 the quantity rose to 2,000,000; in 1727 to 3,601,000; and in. 1735 to 5,394,000 gallons. In 1742 more than 7,000,000 gallons were distilled. In 1750 and 1751 more than 11,000,000 gallons of spirits were annually consumed.

With these figures before us, we can understand the indignant words, which were uttered by humane men who watched the physical deterioration of the English race. The London physicians stated that, in 1750, there were in and about the metropolis no less than fourteen thousand cases of illness, most of them beyond the reach of medicine, directly attributable to gin. Fielding, in his pamphlet On the late Increase of Robbers, declared that ‘gin was the principal sustenance of more than a hundred thousand people in the metropolis,’ and he predicted that ‘should the drinking of this poison be continued at its present height during the next twenty years, there will, by that time, be very few of the common people left to drink it.’ It seems to be a well-authenticated fact that retailers of gin were accustomed to hang out painted boards, announcing that their customers could be made drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and that they should have straw to lie upon for nothing. Cellars, strewn with straw, were accordingly provided, into which those who had become insensible were dragged, and where they remained until they had sufficiently recovered to renew their orgies.

It must not be supposed that Parliament was wholly indifferent to the prevalence of the evil, which the Legislature had, in a sense, created. In 1736 Sir J. Jekyll brought in and carried a measure imposing a duty of twenty shillings a gallon on all spirituous liquors, and prohibiting any person from selling them in less quantities than two gallons without paying a tax of £50 a year. This stringent law produced violent riots, and created a clandestine trade. In 1749 more than four thousand persons were convicted of selling spirituous liquors without a licence, and it was estimated that more than seventeen thousand private gin-shops existed within the Bills of Mortality. In 1751 a measure was carried in Parliament, which had a considerable effect on the liquor trade. Distillers were prohibited, under a penalty of £10, from either retailing spirituous liquors themselves, or selling them to unlicensed retailers. Debts contracted for liquors, not amounting to twenty shillings at a time, were made irrecoverable by law. Retail licences were conceded only to £10 householders within the Bills of Mortality, and to traders, who were subject to certain parochial rates, without them; and the penalties for unlicensed retailing were greatly increased. For the second offence the clandestine dealer was liable to three months’ imprisonment and to whipping; for the third offence he incurred the penalty of transportation. Two years later another useful law was carried, restricting the liberty of magistrates in issuing licences, and subjecting public houses to severe regulations. Lecky considers that these later Acts improved the morals and physical health of the people, but, he says, ‘these measures formed a palliation, and not a cure; and from the early years of the eighteenth century, gin-drinking has never ceased to be the main counteracting influence to the moral, intellectual, and physical benefits that might be expected from increased commercial prosperity.’ (History, vol.i. pp. 481, 482.)

The destructive effects of drinking spirituous liquors are graphically depicted in Hogarth’s picture of Gin Lane. It is a little bit of eighteenth-century London cut out as a specimen of scenes, which were being enacted over the whole country. Dr. Martin Benson, the Bishop of Gloucester, writing to Bishop Berkeley in 1752, says: ‘Our people are now become - what they never before were - cruel and inhuman. Those accursed spirituous liquors, which, to the shame of our Government, are so easily to be had, and in such quantities drunk, have changed the very nature of our people. And they will, if continued to be drunk, destroy the very race of the people themselves.’ (Sydney, England and the English, vol.i. pp. 62, 63.)

It is difficult to trace the evils produced by drunkenness. It is a vice, which never stands alone. One effect, however, is sufficiently conspicuous. We have mentioned the creation of a clandestine trade in spirituous liquors, which was produced by the action of Parliament. When the Government of the Revolution took the false step of ‘encouraging the home industry’ of distilling, they were blind to the fact that another step would soon have to be taken. When the liquor trade is fostered, it flourishes so prodigiously that restraints have to be applied to it lest it should rule the country and endanger the morals and health of the people. But when a Government has so legislated as to create a taste, a passion, for strong drink, its subsequent efforts to restrain the evil it has created meet with strenuous resistance. When the Government remedy is increased taxation, which either raises the price of liquor or impairs its quality, then an effort will be made to obtain strong spirits that are cheap because they have escaped duty. It seemed like a nemesis that the French brandy which was so obnoxious to the Government that it determined to shut it out by encouraging home distilleries, should have been a means of setting on foot a contraband trade that produced innumerable evils in English life. Nor was this all. Holland was ready to send any quantity of gin into England. Round our coasts, as a direct consequence of the action of the Government, smugglers’ boats ran into creek and cove, and immense quantities of duty-free spirits were landed, and conveyed by packhorses to the towns and villages of England. Dr. Wendeborn says -

I have frequently seen, on the public roads leading to London at midday, gangs of smugglers, between fifteen and twenty, mounted on the best horses, provided with pistols and cutlasses, carrying their contraband goods behind their saddles in packages, and sufficiently resolute to repel any excise or custom-house officers who should attempt to stop them. If these should happen to have soldiers along with them for assistance, bloody engagements will ensue, and many on both sides will lose their lives (A View of England, vol.i. p.212.).

There can be no doubt that the life of the smuggler lends itself to picturesque description; but those who recognize the fact that the smuggled ankers of brandy and Hollands were confirming Englishmen in their drunken habits see the black shadows that blot the sketches painted by graphic writers.
It is impossible to challenge with any success the doleful descriptions, which have been given of the moral condition of the masses of the people of England in the eighteenth century. Mark Pattison, in his essay on Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688 - 1750 expresses our own conviction when he says - The historian of moral and religious progress is under the necessity of depicting the period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language - a day of ‘rebuke and blasphemy.’ It was an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of ‘light without love,’ whose ‘very merits were of the earth, earthy.’ (Essays, vol.ii. p.42.)