"THE QUIET AND STABILITY OF THIS FREE STATE": A NEW LOOK AT THE "INDEPENDENT WHIGS," JOHN TRENCHARD AND THOMAS GORDON (TORY, JACOBITE, LOCKE, WALPOLE, ENGLAND)

Historians usually view John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, early Hanoverian publicists, as "Country" opposition writers. They consider Trenchard and Gordon's criticisms of Court corruption an outstanding expression of "Country" opposition ideology. This view fails to encompass Trenchard and Gordon's major concerns and objectives. Trenchard and Gordon collaborated in the writing and publishing of The Independent Whig and Cato's Letters, weekly essays that first appeared in the London press for almost four years in the early 1720s, with "a View to the Quiet and Stability of this Free State." The assiduous inculcation, by High Churchmen, of doctrines antithetical to the security of English Protestantism in the House of Hanover and seditious High-Tory exploitation of popular discontents deeply disturbed Trenchard and Gordon. As "Cato" and "the Independent Whig," they sought to secure the constitutionally limited English monarchy in the recently established, Protestant House of Hanover against a popular High-Tory Church party whose propaganda and agitation threatened the destruction of political and religious liberty with the Stuart restoration High Tories desired. The authors of The Independent Whig and Cato's Letters combatted High-Tory doctrines and methods. As Independents they challenged High-Church politico-religious orthodoxy in order to vitiate the Anglican lower clergy's capacity to destabilize society with treasonable, "popish" dogma. As "Cato" and convinced that High Tories manipulated popular discontents to serve Jacobite aims, Trenchard and Gordon instructed the King and his Whig ministry to fully redress grievances. "Cato" took up the people's cause against the corruption surrounding the South Sea crisis and made a concerted effort to lead popular discontents down loyal, legal paths and deter what "Cato" considered the seditious political ploys of High Tories who merely exploited libertarian rhetoric to serve the Stuart cause. Trenchard and Gordon publicly propagated Lockean political and religious principles when contractarianism, natural rights, and resistance theory remained anathema and most Whigs would not publicly espouse them. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon wrote as concerned, Hanoverian loyalists. They provided a libertarian defense of the Protestant religion and the limited English monarchy in the House of Hanover against High-Tory counterrevolution and counterreformation.