Further reading
- D. E. Ginter, 'Loyalist Association movement of 1792–3 and British public opinion', Historical Journal, ix (1966).
- Austin Mitchell, 'The Association movement of 1792–3', Historical Journal, iv (1961).
The Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, also known as the Crown and Anchor Society [1] or Crown and Anchor Association, was an English loyalist, anti-Jacobin, anti-Radical society active between late 1792 and June 1793.
The Association was founded on 20 November 1792 by John Reeves at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, London. It proved to be "staggeringly successful, outstripping even the Constitutional societies", with more than 2,000 local branches established before long. [2] They disrupted Radicals' meetings, attacked printers of Thomas Paine's works, initiated prosecutions for sedition and published loyalist pamphlets. [3] A letter to Reeves of 1792 proposed the use of ballads for propaganda: [4]
It occurred to me, that anything written in voice [?verse] & especially to an Old English tune … made a more fixed Impression on the minds of the Younger and Lower Class of People, than any written prose, which was often forgotten as soon as Read … By printing copies of the enclosed, as Common Ballads, and putting them in the hands of individuals, or by twenties in the hands of Ballad Singers who might sing them for the sake of selling them, I own I shall not be displeased to hear Re-echoed by Every Little Boy in the Streets during the Christmas Holidays – Long May Old England, Possess Good Cheer and Jollity Liberty, and Property and no Equality.
The Crown and Anchor association met for the final time on 21 June 1793. [5] These loyalist associations mostly disappeared within a year "after successfully suppressing the organizations of their opponents". [6]
The Reign of Terror, commonly The Terror, was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First French Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.
The Levellers were a political movement during the English Civil War (1642–1651) committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populism, as shown by its emphasis on equal natural rights, and their practice of reaching the public through pamphlets, petitions and vocal appeals to the crowd.
The London Corresponding Society (LCS) was a federation of local reading and debating clubs that in the decade following the French Revolution agitated for the democratic reform of the British Parliament. In contrast to other reform associations of the period, it drew largely upon working men and was itself organised on a formal democratic basis.
The Society of the Friends of the Constitution, renamed the Society of the Jacobins, Friends of Freedom and Equality after 1792 and commonly known as the Jacobin Club or simply the Jacobins, was the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789. The period of its political ascendancy includes the Reign of Terror, during which time well over ten thousand people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes.
The Girondins, or Girondists, were members of a loosely knit political faction during the French Revolution. From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention. Together with the Montagnards, they initially were part of the Jacobin movement. They campaigned for the end of the monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards. They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and eventual mass execution of the Girondins. This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
Loyalism, in the United Kingdom, its overseas territories and its former colonies, refers to the allegiance to the British crown or the United Kingdom. In North America, the most common usage of the term refers to loyalty to the British Crown, notably with the loyalists opponents of the American Revolution, and United Empire Loyalists who moved to other colonies in British North America after the revolution.
Voluntaryism is used to describe the philosophy of Auberon Herbert, and later that of the authors and supporters of The Voluntaryist magazine, which, similarly to anarcho-capitalism, rejects the state and supports the system of private property.
The Society of United Irishmen, also simply known as the United Irishmen, were a sworn society in the Kingdom of Ireland formed in the wake of the French Revolution to secure "an equal representation of all the people" in a "national government." Despairing of constitutional reform, in 1798 the Society instigated a republican insurrection in defiance of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Protestant Ascendancy Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain.
The Society of the Friends of the People was an organisation in Great Britain that was focused on advocating for Parliamentary Reform. It was founded by the Whig Party in 1792.
The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized secret society in the Thirteen American Colonies to advance the rights of the European colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It played a major role in most colonies in battling the Stamp Act in 1765. The group disbanded after the Stamp Act was repealed. However, the name was applied to other local separatist groups during the years preceding the American Revolution.
Radicalism was a historical political movement within liberalism during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and a precursor to social liberalism. Its identified radicals were proponents of democratic reform in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radicals in the United Kingdom.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but some Libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions. Different categorizations have been used to distinguish various forms of libertarianism. Scholars distinguish libertarian views on the nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines.
The 1794 Treason Trials, arranged by the administration of William Pitt, were intended to cripple the British radical movement of the 1790s. Over thirty radicals were arrested; three were tried for high treason: Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall. In a repudiation of the government's policies, they were acquitted by three separate juries in November 1794 to public rejoicing. The treason trials were an extension of the sedition trials of 1792 and 1793 against parliamentary reformers in both England and Scotland.
John Reeves was a legal historian, civil servant, British magistrate, conservative activist, and the first Chief Justice of Newfoundland. In 1792 he founded the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers, for the purpose suppressing the "seditious publications" authored by British supporters of the French Revolution—most famously, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Because of his counter-revolutionary actions he was regarded by many of his contemporaries as "the saviour of the British state"; in the years after his death, he was warmly remembered as the saviour of ultra-Toryism.
John Bowles was an English barrister and author. He is known as an opponent of Jacobinism, a prominent conservative writer after the French Revolution.
Henry Redhead Yorke, in early life Henry Redhead (1772–1813) was an English writer and radical publicist.
Thomas Walker (1749–1817) was an English cotton merchant and political radical.
William Hamilton Reid was a British poet and hack writer. A supporter of radical politics turned loyalist, he is known for his 1800 pamphlet exposé The Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this Metropolis. His later views turned again towards radicalism.
John Baxter (1756-1845?), was a radical British writer and silversmith, living in St Leonards parish, Shoreditch during the 1790s and until at least 1817. He is noteworthy as chairman of the London Corresponding Society in 1794 and as one of the twelve indicted during the 1794 Treason Trials. He also compiled and published ‘’A new and impartial history of England’’ in 1796.
The Crown and Anchor, also written Crown & Anchor and earlier known as The Crown, was a public house in Arundel Street, off The Strand in London, England, famous for meetings of political and various other groups. It is no longer in existence.
