Innes - Inferior politics: social problems and social policies in eighteenth-century Britain

The Past & Present Book Series

General Editor
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

Inferior Politics

Social Problems and Social Policies
in Eighteenth-Century Britain

JOANNA INNES

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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Joanna Innes 2009

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First published 2009

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Innes, Joanna.
Inferior politics : social problems and social policies in eighteenth-century
Britain / Joanna Innes.
p. cm.(Past and present book series)
Includes index.
ISBN 9780198201526 (alk. paper)
1. Great BritainSocial policy. 2. Great BritainSocial conditions18th century.
3. Great BritainSocial policyCase studies 4. Great BritainSocial
conditions18th centuryCase studies. I. Title.
HN385.I66 2009
320.6094109033dc22 2009023068

Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India
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ISBN 9780198201526

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

In memory of Evan Innes 19212001

Two of the eight chapters in this collectionthe chapters on the Kings Bench prison and on William Paynegrow out of discoveries I made during my first year of research, in 19756, when I was employed by John Brewer as a research assistant on an SSRC-funded project into the political culture of the Wilkite era. In the course of the more than thirty years that have since elapsed I have of course accrued innumerable debts, so many that were they money debts and were this the eighteenth century, if my creditors chose to pursue me, no act of grace would ever release me. Debts incurred particularly in the writing of individual chapters are mostly acknowledged in those chapters. What follows are my more general acknowledgements.

First, as to institutions, I am deeply indebted to the material and moral support provided at various points by Newnham College and Girton College Cambridge, and by Somerville College Oxford, doughty supporters all of womens academic labours, and to the History Faculty and University of Cambridge (who financed three years of my graduate research) and the History Faculty and University of Oxford (who have supported me generously but who have had their moneys worth). Also to my colleagues and friends at all those institutions. Also to the Research School of Social Sciences, Canberra, and Ludwig Maximilian Universitt Munich, on whose payrolls I drafted sections of what follows.

I am equally indebted to the staffs of many libraries and record offices, especially Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, and The National Archives, as it now is. I am forever grateful to the scholarly generosity of the late Sheila Lambert, who freely turned over to Julian Hoppit and me her extensive notes on failed legislation, and who courteously shared her own hard won understanding with us.

Linda Colley first suggested that I write a book along these lines. The idea was to save me wasting time rewriting material. That was a long time ago. Since then I have tried the patience of a series of long-suffering OUP editors: Robert Faber, Tony Morris, Ruth Parr, Rupert Cousens, and finally Seth Cayley.

I have been extremely fortunate to be informed by the learning, enriched by the generosity, stimulated by the enthusiasm, and warmed by the companionship of a remarkably committed, humane, and sociable collection of historians with interests overlapping mine, notably (in roughly the order that I came to know them) John Brewer and John Styles, David Lieberman, Pete King, Julian Hoppit, Nick Rogers, John Beattie, Doug Hay, Norma Landau, Donna Andrew, Henry Horwitz, Paul Slack, Paul Langford, David Eastwood, Mark Philp, Richard Smith, John Robertson, Roey Sweet, Fara Dabhoiwala, Randall McGowen, Michael Roberts, Sarah Lloyd, David Lemmings, and Simon Devereaux. No one could wish for a more supportive and inspiring community of scholars (it would be easy to extend the list). I am also grateful to the many undergraduate and especially graduate students who have let me try out my ideas on them and who have tried out theirs on me.

I would also like to acknowledge debts intellectual and personal to my parents (who were there from the start), Eric Rothschild, Gill Sutherland, Jane Caplan, Janet Coleman, Gareth Stedman Jones, Michael Ignatieff, John Walsh, Barbara Harvey, Ruth Harris, Jeri Johnson, the late Raphael Samuel (with whom I once spent a memorable evening wandering around Soho discussing William Payne), the late Gerald Aylmer, the late Lawrence Stone, and the late Colin Matthew. I would like to acknowledge the formative influence of Susan Pennybacker, the late Raj Chandavarkar, Alastair Reid, and Jonathan Zeitlinamong the spikier presences of my graduate-student years; to thank Tom Ertman, Eckhart Hellmuth, Iain McCalman, Nicholas Canny, Sean Connolly, David Hayton, Tadgh OSullivan, Kazuhiko Kondo, Toshio Kusamitsu, Takao Matsumura, and most recently Mariana Saad, Philippe Minard, and Renaud Morieux (among others) for broadening my intellectual horizons, and Ted East, Charles Philpin, and Hubert Stadler for diversifying my life experience. Chris Crocker shared more than ten years of his life with me; Im grateful for the many distractions he provided.

I gratefully acknowledge permission to republish some previously published work as follows: the Royal Historical Society, for permission to republish Parliament and the Shaping of Eighteenth-Century English Social Policy from Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xl (1990), 6392; Cengage Learning Services, for permission to republish The Domestic Face of the MilitaryFiscal State: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain from Lawrence Stone ed.,