Revolutionaries in London

Disaffected Patriots: London Supporters of Revolutionary America, 1769-1782

John Sainsbury, 1987

Actually, the title is a bit misleading. John Sainsbury showed that there were many London supporters of rebellious America against the North government. There were also “Americans” in high positions such as sheriff and alderman in Wilkite London. And there were a possibly even a few Brits who supported American independence. The more interesting claim Sainsbury made and I think sustained was for a mutual influence between the resistance and reform groups on both sides of the Atlantic. This is an interesting story and probably one not well known to young Americans.

Sainsbury was careful to note that support for America’s cause had a distinct beginning. “During the 1760s,” he said, “few people in England, including members of the metropolitan opposition, sympathized with...American complaints, or with the perception of empire that prompted their expresssion. In 1767 Benjamin Franklin noted...‘Every man in England seems to consider himself as a Piece of a Sovereign over America; seems to jostle himself into the Throne with the King, and talks of OUR Subjects in the Colonies.’” When the press took up the Wilkite cause, the plight of the colonies became “intimately associated”. Franklin and Arthur Lee “had direct access to newspaper space for publicizing American grievances in pseudonymous essays.” Sainsbury explained, the Virginian “Lee had been educated at Eton and the University of Edinburgh, and in 1768 he returned to Britain to study law and engage in radical politics. Even before he left Virginia, Lee was contemplating a scheme for uniting the causes of Wilkes and America.” In contrast, “Benjamin Franklin was hostile to the popular movement. He detested Wilkes and chided the colonists for supporting such a miscreant.” The stories of the Lees, Franklin, Wilkes and Sayre are interesting and I should look at them more closely.

In June 1771, Arthur Lee was a member of a Bill of Rights committee in London. He wrote to Samuel Adams and “detailed his plans...to organize provincial corresponding societies.” Adams borrowed this idea “for a less ambitious, though remarkably effective society, the Boston Committee of Correspondence. It reveals much about the transatlantic character of radical opposition,” Sainsbury said, and “moreover, suggests that there was something other than paranoia in the charges of American loyalists, such as Peter Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson, that the Boston opposition caucus received its tutelage in radical activity from London.” In June 1773 “Arthur Lee wrote elatedly to Samuel Adams: ‘We have just carried Mr. Sayre, Sheriff for London...in great triumph, solely on public ground, and in the interest of the Bill of Rights. No men can be more determined in the cause of Liberty, than the Livery of London.” When Sayre’s running-mate refused to serve in July, Lee’s brother William “was unanimously returned.” The cause was seen by Londoners as being the same, on both sides of the Atlantic. But this was before the Boston Tea Party.

Sainsbury cited two letters from Franklin to illustrate the change in popular attitude brought about by the Tea Party. “On 1 November 1773 Franklin wrote: ‘The general Sense of the Nation is for us; a Conviction prevailing that we have been ill-us’d, and that a Breach with us would be ruinous to this Country’. But on 22 March 1774 he was writing: ‘I suppose we never had since we were a People so few Friends in Britain. The violent Destruction of the Tea seems to have united all Parties here against our Province.” This may have been, however, a reaction of merchants Franklin knew to destruction of property rather than of London people offended by insurrection. Or Franklin may have been exaggerating in a letter sent to America, in an effort to convince the sons of Liberty to tone down their demonstrations. In May 1775 (after the outbreak of hostilities but before word of it had reached London), William Lee was elected alderman for Aldgate by a wide margin. When news arrived of fighting in Massachusetts, four days after Lee’s election, it was covered sympathetically by the Essex Gazette and the London Evening Post. The colonists were treated as victims. “John Horne, on behalf of the Constitutional Society, wrote and inserted in nine London newspapers an advertisement which stated that £100 had been raised for ‘the Relief of the WIDOWS, ORPHANS, and AGED PARENTS of our BELOVED American Fellow Subjects, who, FAITHFUL to the character of Englishmen, preferring Death to Slavery, were, for that Reason only inhumanly murdered by the KING’S troops at or near Lexington and Concord.” The newspaper editors who printed the ad were indicted by the attorney-general for seditious libel. Five were tried, convicted, and fined £100. John Horne, whose “trial conduct was more of a provocation than a defence...was found guilty and in November 1777 sentenced to a year in prison and a £200 fine; he was also obliged to lodge £400 as a security for future good behavior.”

Sainsbury continued, “In September 1775, John Wilkes...laid before the Common Hall a letter from the Continental Congress, signed by its president, John Hancock, thanking the City of London for its stand in the defence of ‘the violated rights of a free people’.” The livery, cautious in the face of government threats, did not respond to Hancock; but they did “secur[e] its publication in the newspapers.” Less than a month later, Sayre was arrested “for allegedly formulating a plot to kidnap George III while the King was on his way to open Parliament on 26 October. The plan was...to imprison the king in the Tower before dispatching him to his German dominions.” After five days of incarceration “Sayre, attended by Wilkes, Arthur Lee, and John Reynolds, was brought on a writ of habeas corpus...No further proceedings were taken against him and he remained a free man” and sued the government for £1000, which he was never able to collect.” Despite the fact Sayre wasn’t prosecuted, Sainsbury says he “was not squeamish about the ultimate necessity of violent opposition” in London. The previous April he had written to Adams “that in order to save the Mother Country ‘high Convulsions’ were necessary, which if started in America might ‘prove salutary even to us in England.’ Significantly, on the day of Sayre’s arrest thousands of papers were distributed among the population in London encouraging them to rise up and prevent the opening of Parliament.” Sainsbury said the coincidence “strongly suggests the implication of Sayre and perhaps some of his political associates in attempted insurrection.”

Of course, there was no coup. There wasn’t even a strong pro-American movement for very long. Several factors reduced the interest and sympathy of Londoners for their overseas cousins. Edmund Burke, never a friend of the London radicals, “was convinced that the ‘Haut Gout of a Lucrative War’ was undermining commercial opposition to the government as early as August 1775.” The war with France and Spain engaged Londoners’ patriotism. But the worst blow to the pro-American faction in London was their discovery that Americans no longer wanted to be their fellow subjects. They didn’t want to believe it. Sainsbury said, “Joseph Priestley thought that the Declaration of Independence did not reflect ‘the general sentiment.’ Richard Price wrote that, among the colonists, ‘independency is, even at this moment, generally dreaded.’ Paine’s Common Sense...was not well received by the main body of the colonists’ English friends. They were affronted by its message and downplayed its popular appeal.” It wasn’t until the American rebels had actually gained their freedom (which most of the British had never believed possible) that English some reformers and radicals began to reconsider the meaning of the Revolution.

Opposition to Lord North’s government gained strength as the war dragged on. After “news of Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga...Opponents of the war pressed the government to conclude peace with the colonists before the anticipated intervention of France.” But France’s entry into the war naturally stripped support for America from the radicals’ list of concerns. And the 1780 Gordon Riots tore Londoners’ attention away from earlier issues and forced many to rethink their positions. Sainsbury said, “Wilkes played a vigorous role in the suppression of public disorder,” which made him seem to have jumped to the government’s side. After the riots, “many of the ‘middling sort’ were permanently deterred from further engagement in opposition politics.” Recriminations and the horror of the event split the popular movement and set reform back a generation.

“On 27 February 1782 General Conway’s motion condemning any further prosecution of hostilities in North America was carried by nineteen votes.” This seemed a small margin, since the November 1781 news of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown had caused a “resurgence of articulated popular opposition to the American war.” But apparently it was enough. “In London, on the evening of 28 February, houses were illuminated, and firecrackers were exploded.” On March 20th, “Lord North only averted passage of a motion calling for the removal of the ministers by announcing his administration’s collective resignation.” Sainsbury concluded that “as the imperial crisis intensified the emphasis of reformers shifted and became more modern. While retaining their desire for a more virtuous Parliament, these reformers began stressing changes that would have guaranteed a more representative one.” The achievement of representative government in America (even if it was now outside the empire) provoked “a categorical break with the idea of virtual representation.” Artisan members of the London Corresponding society, writing in the 1790s, “were quite explicit in acknowledging an integral connection between their earlier support for America and their later political demands.” They said “the revolution had taught them the necessity of, and the proper basis for, representative government.” Less than thirty years later, Richard Carlile would be writing his columns for The Republican from the Manchester gaol, where he was incarcerated for reprinting Thomas Paine.