The Politics of Economic Distress in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1702

Abstract

The economic problems of the 1690s spurred an extraordinary surge in politicised debates and complaints about commercial, financial and other material affairs. This article begins by examining the magnitude of the shift in economic fortunes between the reigns of James II and William III (1689-1702, highlighting the main sources of concern: wartime disruption to trade, rising taxes, the currency crisis associated with the recoinage of 1696, and the high food prices of 1693-9. More significantly, it assesses the nature and extent of the public response. Trade, finance and fiscal impositions became increasingly pervasive topics of public conversation and printed debate, as evidenced both in anecdotal reports and in a crude but telling analysis of published titles. Moreover, national political divisions -between Williamites and Jacobites, Whigs and Tories, Court and Country, anti-French and anti-Dutch -were absolutely central to this economic discourse. Perceptions of the monarch and parliamentary leaders were directly linked to how people interpreted the hardships of this decade. This manifested itself in innumerable short tracts, broadside ballads, seditious conversations, riotous protests and many other modes of public communication. Finally, through comparisons with earlier and later periods such as the 1540s, 1590s, 1640s and the early eighteenth century, this article demonstrates that the tumult of the 1690s had a longterm impact and has been unjustly neglected in the historiography of economic crisis and political conflict. The Politics of Economic Distress in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1689-1702For many people, the Revolution of 1688 that brought William III and Mary II to the throne seemed to coincide with a sharp reversal in the nation's economic fortunes. The reign of James II was a period of relative plenty and prosperity, but the 1690s were a decade in which England faced an unhappy conjunction of war, hunger, currency failure and financial dislocation.A conversation in a shop on London Bridge on 6 June 1696 offers an initial glimpse of how people interpreted the distressing conditions of the time. A man named Robert Morgan came in to buy a handkerchief and fell to talking with Edmund Baker, the shopkeeper's apprentice. Morgan was apparently angry about the current scarcity of lawful money -he had only old clipped shillings -and also questioned the official account of a recent assassination attempt against the king. In his eyes, England was a nation in decline:'Was not the tradeing better when King James was here then now?', asked Morgan. '[T]hen our Lives must have paid for it', Baker replied. ' [O]ur Livelyhoods & Lives goes now', countered Morgan. Here we have the views of both opponents and supporters of the Revolution neatly encapsulated. From the perspective of Morgan and many other dissidents, the consequences of 1688 were currency shortages, commercial 'decay' and the spread of economic misery. In contrast, Baker -like most loyal Williamites -saw any material hardships as...

The Politics of Petitioning: Parliament, Government, and Subscriptional Cultures in the United Kingdom, 1780–1918

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Review of periodical literature published in 2015

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