'From Behind the Counter': The 1742 Select Vestry Campaign. (2nd September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Williamson, Gillian
• Is Part Of: London journal. Volume 42:Number 3(2017:Nov.)
• Page Start: 218
• Page End: 237
• Publication Date: 2017-09-02
• Subjects: 1740s -- Vestries -- Elections -- Westminster -- St George Hanover Square -- Middling Sort; London (England) -- History -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 942.1005
• DOI: 10.1080/03058034.2017.1332889
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-8034

Abstract

Abstract : This article explores an overlooked archive of papers of a 1742 committee of 81 men from the five largest parishes in the City of Westminster formed to petition Parliament for the reform of their oligarchic select vestries. It argues that, despite the limiting impact of patronage described by Nicholas Rogers, an adversarial, masculine, middling-sort political identity was emerging in the mid-eighteenth century. This identity was based on the publicly engaged, rate-paying male householder. The vestry campaign deployed national anti-Walpole, anti-corruption political language. Close analysis of committee participation in St George Hanover Square also reveals how it developed from experience of parish politics, especially conflict with their social superiors of the political elite. It was an oppositional identity that is recognizable later in the century in the controversies around John Wilkes and in the American colonies.