BEHIND THE HEADLINES
1765: the rule of law is established
When four men burst into writer John Entick’s house, it was the start of a process that was to transform British law and limit the power of the state.
Entick was born in 1703 and lived in Stepney in the Parish of St Dunstan’s, East London. He earned his living as a writer and was said to have been kept in constant work by booksellers, who in the 18th century were the people who commissioned books. Entick wrote a Latin dictionary, a spelling dictionary and English grammars, and saw these works going through many editions.
He also wrote long works on contemporary matters, such as his five-volume history of the Seven Years’ War which Britain had won in 1763. He appeared in clerical dress on his frontispieces and put an MA (for ‘Master of Arts’) after his name, but both of these were assumed.
His skills were so appreciated that satirist John Shebbeare and printer Jonathan Scott asked Entick to write for their new anti-government publication, a 2d weekly called The Monitor, or, the British Freeholder.
This lashed the Government in coruscating language, saying ministers “engross to themselves the riches of the nation” and the House of Commons was “constituted chiefly of a set of profligate and unprincipled individuals, chosen by a ministerial mandate, the offspring of corruption”. The power of the Crown was “prostituted to serve the low designs of party”. It declared, “There never was a crisis that called more loudly for the aid of every
Briton than the present”, which was close to revolutionary talk.
The Government did not react well to the Monitor, and Lord Halifax, secretary of state for the Northern Department (later to be the Home Office), sent four king’s messengers led by the chief messenger Nathan Carrington. Their task was “to make strict and diligent search” for “the author, or one concerned in the writing of several weekly very seditious papers entitled,
The Monitor, or British
Freeholder”. The objective was in fact simply the intimidation of a critic. They broke into John Entick’s home “with force and arms” and made a thorough search, breaking locks and doors and going through all the rooms over a four-hour period. They took away 200 items.
Most people greeted these excesses of government with a shrug, but Entick refused to be cowed. He sued the authorities for illegal seizure, and this year the case of Entick vs Carrington was heard in Westminster Hall by Lord Camden, chief justice of the common pleas. Messenger Carrington and his colleagues said that the warrant under which they acted gave them legal authority. The judge found, however, that Lord Halifax had no right to issue a warrant, since there was no statute law or established principle of common law to allow him to do it, and had acted illegally. Simply put, Lord Camden ruled that the state may do nothing except what is expressly authorised by law.
Entick was awarded £300 in damages but, rather more importantly, had established a basic principle of civil liberties: that the Government must not be above the law. It was a standard that was to be spread throughout the world.
The best of bad options
These were legalistic times. William Blackstone this year published his influential The Commentaries on the Laws of England, which described what he boasted was the best judicial system in the world. In fact the law had many deficiencies, particularly in its crude operation of criminal justice, but it might still have been the best because the alternative systems in other countries were all so bad.
John Entick received the large sum of £200 a year from his contract to write antigovernment journalism for the Monitor. The big money involved shows the rise of the printing industry and the public appetite for written work. Another indication of the dominance of print was the income of a skilled printer, who could receive £50 a year. This was at the highest rate for skilled workers, and double what a policeman or watchman would earn.
A craftsman received £24–29 per annum, and a labourer £16–19. However, agricultural labourers were not as impoverished as this sum might suggest, because they often also had tied accommodation that went with their jobs, plus a small patch of land for subsistence farming, and the right to graze cattle or keep chickens on common land.
If your ancestors were fortunate and industrious enough, they might have set up a bank. This is what button-maker John Taylor and iron producer Sampson Lloyd did this year. They established Taylors and Lloyds in Dale End, Birmingham, with the symbol of a beehive, representing industry and productivity. The Taylor family’s association with the business ended in 1852, and the bank continued under the name Lloyds alone.
A changed Man
Your Manx ancestors experienced some changes this year. The British exchequer was smarting because of lost revenue: brandy, rum, wine, tea and tobacco were entering Britain from the Isle of Man with no revenue paid. The island was therefore considered a nest of smugglers that needed to be brought under control. The Manx people responded that the goods had not been smuggled – Manx customs duties had been paid on them.
To resolve this issue, the British government acquired the Isle of Man for £70,000 this year, purchasing the feudal rights of the Lord of Atholl.
There were plans to merge the island into the English county of Cumberland, but this was fiercely resisted by the Manx people who had their own language and culture such as music and dance. The island was allowed to retain its parliament, the House of Keys, but ‘smuggling’ was brought under control by the Mischief Act, “for more effectually preventing the mischiefs arising to the revenue and commerce of Great Britain and Ireland from the illicit and clandestine trade to and from the Isle of Man”. The ‘father of children’s literature’ John Newbery introduced a new character this year in The History of Little Goody Two
Shoes. This was the tale of a poor but virtuous orphan girl who has only one
ENTICK WON £300 AND ESTABLISHED THAT THE GOVERNMENT MUST NOT BE ABOVE THE LAW
shoe until a rich gentleman gives her a complete pair. Her virtue is further rewarded when she becomes a teacher and marries a rich widower. ‘Goody Two-Shoes’ became a nickname for people making excessive displays of virtue.
Newbery was the first publisher to have a specialist list for children’s books and to commission illustrators and authors to create his highly attractive volumes. His works were all of an ‘improving’ kind, calculated to “infallibly make Tommy a good boy, and Polly a good girl”, starting a tendency towards didactic themes in children’s fiction.
Newbery produced 500 children’s books, which shows your ancestors’ developing interest in infancy as a separate state, because children had previously been seen simply as little, part-formed adults. Children’s independent consciousness now became important as puritanism emphasised individual salvation, so it was urged upon children that they were moral agents and must choose good over wickedness. The family was becoming central to your ancestors’ idea of themselves, with good child-rearing and family loyalty being particularly meritorious.
Musical youth
Some children your forebears may have been talking about were those of the Mozart family, who were taking advantage of the vogue for performing child prodigies by touring Europe. Leopold and Anna Maria Mozart were showing off their talented children, 12-year-old Nannerl and eightyear-old Wolfgang. The family originally lodged above a barber’s shop in Cecil Court, Westminster, but they soon moved to smarter premises.
Armed with letters of introduction from royal families in Europe, the Mozart children were soon playing for young George III and Queen Charlotte, then for the public. Wolfgang was the star of the show, billed as “the celebrated and astonishing Master Mozart, a Child of Seven Years of Age… justly esteemed the most extraordinary Prodigy, and most amazing Genius, that has appeared in any Age”. In fact a year had been taken off the boy’s age in the advertisements, to make his talent seem even more remarkable. Well-off ancestors of yours might have taken the opportunity of a private performance by the musical children for 5s. If they could only manage half that sum, they could join other members of the public to see the “young Prodigies” playing at the Swan and Harp Tavern in Cornhill, City of London, for half a crown.