_Atalantis Major_ is a thinly veiled allegory describing the November
1710 election of the representative Scottish peers. The circumstances
which surrounded this election were produced by the outcome of the
previous month's General Election--a landslide for the Tories--and, to
understand these circumstances, the impact of that Tory victory must be
seen within the context of the political events of 1710.
By early in 1710 it had become obvious that the Whig Ministry of Sidney
Godolphin was unable or unwilling to negotiate an end to the long,
expensive, and consequently, unpopular war with France. The quarrel
between Queen Anne and her confidante, the Duchess of Marlborough,
smouldered until, on 6 April 1710, the breach between them became
final. The Queen's confidence in the Duke of Marlborough began to erode
as early as May 1709 when he sought to be appointed "Captain-General
for Life." Godolphin's decision to impeach the popular Rev. Dr. Henry
Sacheverell for preaching "a sermon which reasserted the doctrine of
non-resistance to the will of the monarch" was ill-advised, for not
only did it give the High-Church Tories a martyr, it also gave the
Administration the appearance of being against the Church. In securing
the impeachment of Sacheverell on 20 March 1710, the Whigs discovered
that they had lost the support and the confidence of both the
Parliament and the country.
Dissention within and intrigue from without further hastened the fall
of the Administration. Godolphin, a moderate, had, after the General
Election of 1708, found himself allied with the "Junto" of five
powerful Whig Lords--Wharton, Sommers, Halifax, Orford, and
Sunderland--but it was, at best, an uneasy alliance. Throughout 1709
and into the early months of 1710, personal jealousies drove the
Godolphin-Marlborough interest farther and farther away from the Junto.
Robert Harley and the Dukes of Somerset and Shrewsbury, in their
determination to overthrow the Administration, exploited every chance
to widen the rifts between Anne and her Ministers and between the two
ministerial factions. Abigail Hill Masham, who soon became an agent of
Harley, replaced the Duchess of Marlborough as Anne's confidante.
When the Ministry fell, it fell like a house of cards. On 14 April 1710
Shrewsbury was made Lord Chamberlain over the unavailing protests of
Godolphin. Two months later, at the instigation of Somerset, the Queen
replaced Sunderland with the Tory Lord Dartmouth as Secretary of State.
Finally, on 8 August, Godolphin was ordered to break the White Staff of
his office and Harley was appointed Treasurer. One by one the remaining
Junto Ministers were replaced by Tories. By September the work was
complete. The Duke of Marlborough alone remained, in command of the
army, but this was only to be until the new Ministry could negotiate a
peace and his services would no longer be required.
It had been Harley's intention to govern by means of a "moderate"
Administration, a "Queen's Ministery above party," but he had not
reckoned on the outcome of the General Election called in October. "On
the day Godolphin fell, Harley expounded his 'moderate' programme in a
letter to the Duke of Newcastle: 'The Queen is assured you will approve
her proceedings, which are directed to the sole aim of making an
honourable and safe peace, securing her allies, reserving the liberty
and property of the subject, and the indulgence to Dissenters in
particular, and to perpetuate this by really securing the succession of
the House of Hanover.'"[1]
Alone, either the antagonism to the war or the intensity of feeling for
the High-Church cause which the Sacheverell affair engendered, would
have been sufficient to sweep the Whigs from power. Together, and
combined as they were with the prestige of the Queen's public support
of Harley and the newly appointed Tory Ministers, these issues were
irresistible. Harley found himself with an "immoderate" House of
Commons. The Tories held 320 seats, the Whigs only 150, and there were
40 seats whose votes were "doubtful."[2] Many of the new
Parliamentarians were High-Church zealots, and most were anxious to
turn the nation away from the policies of the Whig Administration of
Godolphin.
The House of Lords, however, remained a bastion of Whig strength. As an
hereditary body the House of Lords was simply not subject to the same
opportunity for change as the elected House of Commons. Consequently,
in 1710, as a result of the Glorious Revolution, the long reign of
William III, and the Godolphin Ministry, the majority of the members of
the House of Lords were of Whig or Revolution Settlement policies.
Therein lay Harley's problem in late October of 1710: to obtain a Lords
to match the Commons he had been given.
Any early eighteenth-century Ministry--Whig or Tory--could count on
having the support of those peers whose poverty made them dependent on
governmental subsidies, but this number would not have given Harley
even a bare majority in the strongly Whig House of Lords. And there
Harley needed at least enough strength to ensure success for some of
the measures designed to satisfy the demands of the newly Tory House of
Commons, particularly if his Ministry was to be able to negotiate a
satisfactory treaty of peace with France.
To obtain a Tory majority in the House of Lords commensurate with the
one in Commons, Harley could have seen to the creation of a sufficient
number of new peerages; but this would have alienated too many factions
and the recently completed Union with Scotland (1707) offered what
appeared to be a far simpler expedient. The Act of Union provided for
the election of sixteen Scottish peers who would represent all of the
Scottish nobility in the House of Lords.[3] If he could ensure that all
sixteen of these peers were Tory, Harley would be certain of a large
block of loyal votes in the upper house, or, at worst, he would have to
arrange for the creation of only a few new peers to neutralize the
Whigs' strength. To John Campbell, the second Duke of Argyll, Harley
assigned the task of orchestrating a Tory sweep in this election.
The Duke of Argyll sat in the House of Lords as the Earl of Greenwich
(an English title), not as one of the elected peers, and, as such, he
was not elegible to stand as a candidate or to vote in this election.
Argyll had supported the Whig Junto and held the rank of Lieutenant
General under Marlborough in France, but in 1710 (seeing the direction
the political tide was taking) he abandoned his support of Godolphin's
Ministry. So that, "by the time the [Sacheverell] Trial was finished,
it was known that the great chief of the Campbells and of the Scottish
Whigs had gone into opposition to the Government [of Godolphin] in
league with Harley, although he voted for the Doctor's condemnation...."[4]
Argyll and the sixteen representative peers (if they were all Tories),
together with the votes of those peers who were dependant upon
Government subsidies would give the new Ministry of Harley enough votes
in the upper house for almost any eventuality--even the impeachment of
Marlborough. It is possible to speculate that this was the
plum--command of the British armies in Europe--that induced Argyll's
change from Whig to Tory in 1710. Argyll's jealousy and resentment of
his commander had been a well known bit of gossip for some time, and it
is very possible that Argyll saw a new Government as his chance to
steal a march on Marlborough. Although Harley's Ministry did give the
Order of the Garter to Argyll on 20 December 1710, he was never
promoted over Marlborough, but that was not due to any lack of success
in assuring a Tory victory in the election of the peers. Argyll's
heavy-handed management of that election is the subject of Defoe's
_Atalantis Major_.
By birth and education Daniel Defoe was a member of the mercantile
middle class. He was a Dissenter and his political and economic
sympathies generally coincided with those of the moderate Whigs. A
limited monarchy, the destruction of France's commercial empire,
liberty of conscience for Dissenters and Nonconformists, and a
Protestant (that is, Hanover) Succession were the imperatives which lay
behind much of his political and economic thinking and writing. From as
early as 1694 he had served William III as a pamphleteer-propagandist
for the vigorous prosecution of the war with France. After his
five-month imprisonment in 1703 for writing _The Shortest Way with
Dissenters_, Defoe was employed as an agent and pamphleteer of the
Government. First, in the service of Robert Harley, Godolphin's
Secretary of State during the early moderate years of the Godolphin
Administration (1704-08), and thereafter working for Godolphin himself,
Defoe's _Review_ preached the gospel of national unity above party
faction. When Harley replaced Godolphin as Treasurer in 1710, Defoe
returned to his service.
Although it may appear from this that Defoe's pen was for hire by
whichever party was in power, in point of fact, Defoe's political views
were remarkably congruent with those of both Harley and Godolphin. All
three were staunch supporters of England's commercial interests, the
Hanoverian Succession, liberty of conscience for Dissenters and
Nonconformists, and the terms of the Revolution Settlement. It must be
remembered that Godolphin and Harley were both moderates, each trying
to chart his course between the extremes of the parties. They, like
Daniel Defoe, saw their loyalty being to England and to the Queen, not
to a party. Like Defoe, they both discovered that politics often make
strange bedfellows. Godolphin, faced with a large Whig majority in the
House of Commons after the General Election of 1708, found that his
fortunes were bound to those of the Junto. Harley, after the General
Election of 1710, discovered the necessity of courting the High-Church
Tories far more than he would have liked.
Argyll's slate of Scottish peers for the November election included men
who were even more extreme in their Toryism than the majority of
High-Church English Tories. Most of the sixteen were High-Church, many
had strong Catholic leanings; all of them were against increasing the
religious liberties of the Scottish Presbyterians (and thus those of
the English Dissenters and Nonconformists). Several of these peers had
been openly professed Jacobites and all were, in some degree,
sympathetic to France. To have men with such beliefs in Parliament
meant, to Defoe, the chance that Marlborough's victories in France
would be negotiated away, the loss of what the Toleration Act of 1689
had gained, and finally, the spector of the Pretender on the throne. In
short, such men could mean the loss of all that the Revolution and the
war with France had won. Yet, in the late autumn of 1710, Defoe found
himself in Edinburgh, the agent and propagandist of the man on whose
behalf Argyll had engineered the election of men of such politics.
Defoe's mission in Edinburgh that autumn was to allay the fears of the
Presbyterian clergy and Whig merchants about the new Tory Ministry. His
message to them was, in Professor Sutherland's words, that
What the country needed ... was steady, moderate men, whether they
called themselves Whig or Tory, men who would uphold the Protestant
succession and avoid extreme measures; and that on the whole was
what it had now got [appearances to the contrary notwithstanding].
The Ministry was not going to give way to the clamours of the High
Tory rank and file; and the Queen would certainly not countenance
any form of persecution.[5]
In short, Defoe was charged with convincing his Scottish friends and
associates (and, by means of the _Review_, the nation at large) the
opposite of all that Argyll's actions and words bespoke of Harley's
intentions.
Defoe wrote Harley from Edinburgh on 18 November (eight days after the
election of the peers) to voice his dismay at the tactics that had been
used by Argyll. By them his own mission on Harley's behalf had been
impaired:
I hint this Sir to Confirm my Censure of the Conduct aforesaid as
Imprudent and as what has rendred [sic] the quieting these people,
which was Easy before, Very Difficult now.[6]
Further, he suggests that Harley's heretofore moderate allies, the
Squadrone, have been pushed by Argyll into league with the old Court
Party that had supported the Godolphin Ministry. This letter also
contains a brief summary of the main events which were to form the plot
of _Atalantis Major_, but it does not attack Argyll with the same
bitterness that the longer work does. Defoe writes:
In the late Election, the Conduct of the D of 60 [Argyll], the E of
163 [Islay], and the Earle of 194 [Mar] is Very Perticular....
[They] Declared Openly [that] the Quallification of those to be
Chosen ... [was] their agreeing to Impeach 140 [Godolphin] and 193
[Marlborough], Nor did the Impudence End there, but On all
Occasions to Say in So Many Words They had her Majties Orders to
Choose Such and Such and it must be don: This was So abandonning
all Reserves, that it has disgusted the Generallity, and has Put
them Upon Measures of Uniteing, which may shut the door upon all
future Measures, what Ever the Occasion may be....
Now they have Returnd their Number, it were to be Wished they Could
have Avoided a few who are Declar'd profest Jacobites, Such as 197
[Marischal], Kilsyth, Blantire, Hume &c. who are known to aim in
all they do at the Pretender, and whose being Now Chosen has many
ill Effects here What Ever may be as to Over-ruleing them in
England, I mean as to Encreasing the Insolence of Jacobitisme in
the North, where its Strength is far from being Contemptible.[7]
What Defoe hoped to obtain from Harley by this and succeeding letters
on this subject is not clear. He may have been seeking Harley's public
repudiation of the Jacobite peers, or at least some private assurances
that what Argyll had told the peers did not represent the new
Ministry's policies. Whatever it was he sought, by late December it was
obviously not forthcoming from Harley or his Ministry. And on 20
December Argyll was made a Knight of the Garter. It was during this
December that the bulk of _Atalantis Major_ was written, most probably
between 30 November and 26 December. On 26 December 1710 Defoe wrote
Harley of the existence of "Two Vile Ill Natur'd Pamphlets ... both of
which have fallen into My hands in Manuscript, and I think I have
prevented both their Printing. The first Was advertised in the Gazette
here and Called the Scots atalantis[8] ... The Other Pamphlet is called
_Atalantis Major_." The letter concludes with a short description of
the work, a disavowal of any knowledge of its authorship, and the hope
that he can suppress its publication:
The Other Pamphlet is called _Atalantis Major_; and is a Bitter
Invective against the D of Argyle, the E of Mar, and the Election
of the Peers. It is Certainly Written by Some English man, and I
have Some Guess at the Man, but dare not be positive. I have
hitherto kept this also from the Press, and believe it will be
Impossible for them to get it printed here after the Measures I
have Taken. The Party I Got it of pretends the Coppy Came from
England, But I am of Another Opinion. I shall Trouble you no
farther about it because if possible I can get it Coppyed, I will
Transmit the Coppy by Next post, for I have the Originall in My
hand. They Expect I shall Encourage and assist them in the
Mannageing it, and Till I can Take a Coppy I shall not Undeciev
them.[9]
There is no evidence to suggest that Harley doubted Defoe's disclaimer
or that Defoe sent the copy to Harley.
Since Defoe was back in London on 13 February 1711, _Atalantis Major_
must have been seen through the press sometime between 26 December and
the end of January, not, as Moore lists it, "before 26 December
1710."[10] Internal evidence suggests an even narrower range of
probable dates of publication. The last four pages of _Atalantis Major_
deal with the Duke of Argyll being given command of the English forces
in Spain and the singular lack of grace with which he undertook this
command. Since Argyll was not given command of the Peninsula campaign
until 11 January 1711, it could not be until after this date that the
manuscript could have been finished and printed.
The work bears few signs of being hastily printed. There are only nine
typographical errors,[11] and four of these are catchwords. There is no
evidence to suggest that there was more than one printing of the
pamphlet,[12] and the use of several Scotticisms[13] seems to offer
support for the contention that the pamphlet was intended for a
primarily Scottish audience.
William Lee was the first to ascribe the work to Defoe, and this
ascription has been accepted by both Dottin and Moore.[14] The evidence
for assigning this work to Defoe seems to rest on the two letters to
Harley quoted above. Another proof of Defoe's authorship of _Atalantis
Major_ is to be found in the remark it contains, "That the Southern
Part of the Island [that is, England] was the most remarkable of any,
as to the Policy of their Government, and the Character of the People;
and excepting _Englishmen_ and _Polanders_, there is not such another
Nation in the World" (p. 12). In 1704 Defoe had written _The Dyet of
Poland_, a poem in which he had made a similar unflattering comparison
between England and Poland. A far more substantial case for Defoe's
authorship can be made from the existence of the anecdote of John
White, Edinburgh's hangman, in both a letter to Harley (18 November
1710) and the _Review_ (for 30 November 1710), as well as in _Atalantis
Major_ (pp. 22-3).