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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2017
During his own lifetime John Bright (1811-1889) assumed an iconic status in the history both of Quakerism and of middle-class radical politics as “the Tribune of the people.” Yet he remains an anomalous figure, difficult to place in the frameworks that presently organize the historiography of modern Quakerism, and of reform politics in the nineteenth century. In large part this reflects a failure among his biographers and social historians of this period to analyze in any depth the relation between his politics and his spiritual life. His religious values have been variously denied or given a nodding acknowledgment as fundamental to his radicalism. And where the religious basis of John Bright’s radicalism is accepted, there are varying and contrasting accounts of that relationship.
My thanks to participants in the “Religion and Modernity: Re-thinking Secularisation” symposium, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, May 1999, and the “Max Weber, Religion and Social Action” symposium at the Humanities Research Centre, the Australian National University, Canberra, October 1999 who heard and commented on earlier versions of this article.
1 Mills, J. Travis, John Bright and the Quakers, 2 vols. (London, 1935)Google Scholar, provides a painstaking account of his social origins and religious affiliation in volume 1, and a comprehensive survey of his political career in volume 2. Mills is suggestive concerning the particular character of Quakerism in the Rochdale area, but his study largely avoids directly addressing the relationship between politics and religion. Briggs, Asa, “John Bright,” in his Victorian People. Some Reassessment of People, Institutions, Ideas and Events, 1851-1867 (London, 1954), p. 213Google Scholar, asserts “the religious core of his conception of government,” quoting John Bright himself: “I could not be otherwise than Liberal…. I was then, as I am now, a member of the Society of Friends.” All Quakers were not, of course, Liberals, but this remark illustrates the closeness Bright himself believed there to between his political activism and his religious values. Robbins, Keith, John Bright (London, 1979)Google Scholar provides a sympathetic examination of Bright’s religious outlook and his relationship with the Society of Friends at a number of points, e.g., pp. 5, 16, 20, 34, 117-18.
2 Jones, Rufus M., The Later Periods of Quakerism, 2 vols. (London, 1921), 2:630–31Google Scholar.
3 Ibid. pp. 636-37.
4 Trevelyan, George Macaulay, The Life of John Bright (London, 1913), pp. 1–2, 14, 18Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 23. See also, Read, Donald, Cobden and Bright. A Victorian Political Partnership (London, 1967), pp.70–73Google Scholar.
6 See, for example, Ausubel, Herman, John Bright, Victorian Reformer (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, which has no index entry for “religion,” and only three under “Quakers and Quakerism,” a neglect perhaps reflecting the author’s iconoclasm, as he argues with some justice that a “great deal of nonsense was written about John Bright during his lifetime,” and that “the myths about him continue to be far more influential than the truth” (p. viii).
7 Read, Cobden and Bright, p. 91, explains Bright’s “virulent political tone” on occasion by his “sense of religious penalty” as a Quaker very aware through family history of the substantial sufferings of his co-religionists.
8 Robbins, John Bright, pp. 117-18.
9 Trevelyan, John Bright, puts perhaps the greatest emphasis on Bright’s class location, as scourge of the aristocracy and spokesman for the manufacturing classes, especially in his account of Bright’s origins and early career, but see also, Briggs, “John Bright,” pp. 217-19; Ausubel, John Bright, pp. viii, 6-9; Robbins, John Bright, pp. 48, 79-82.
10 Joyce, Patrick, Democratic Subjects. The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994), p. 104, and 1-20, 126-36, 158–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Ibid. pp. 105, 107.
12 Gregg, Howard F., “John Bright: Called to the Lord’s Service,” Quaker Religious Thought 73 (Summer, 1990): 8Google Scholar.
13 Exploration of the issues discussed here arose out of my other research on the Bright kinship circle of women Friends, among private papers held in the Archives of C. &. J. Clark, Street Somerset. I thank the trustees of the archive for permission to research that material and present some preliminary findings here. It was my inability to “place” this circle within the existing frameworks of either Quaker or feminist history that led me to such questions. Simultaneously, it uncovered some new sources on John Bright’s family background. G. M. Trevelyan had access to some of this material through Bright’s eldest daughter, Helen Priestman Bright Clark, who helped gather the collection known as the Millfield Papers in the Clark Archive (hereafter cited as MP, CA). Her daughter, the historian of women’s work, Alice Clark, transcribed some of Bright’s correspondence among the family papers for Trevelyan. Keith Robbins also used some parts of the Millfield Papers. In addition to exploring the Millfield Papers more extensively, I have been able to draw on material on family history in the papers of Sarah Bancroft Clark in the same location (hereafter cited as SBCP, CA).
14 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1992), pp. 40, 92, and 182Google Scholar.
15 See note 12 above.
16 See Vann, Richard T., The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655-1755 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Christopher, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Reay, Barry, The Quakers and the English Revolution (London, 1985)Google Scholar.
17 Mack, Phyllis, Visionary Women. Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Trevctt, Christine, Women and Quakerism in the Seventeenth Century (York, 1991)Google Scholar.
18 Mills, , John Bright, 1:27Google Scholar.
19 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
20 Isichei, Elizabeth, Victorian Quakers (London, 1970), p. 145Google Scholar.
21 Ingle, H. Larry, First Among Friends. George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York, 1994), p. viiGoogle Scholar, and idem, “The Future of Quaker History,” Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society 58 (1997): 1-16.
22 See note 16 above.
23 Christianson, Paul, Foreword, in Bailey, Richard, New Light on George Fox and Early Quakerism. The Making and Unmaking of a God (San Francisco, 1992)Google Scholar, which offers a challenging reinter-pretation of Fox’s theology. Cf. Mack, , Visionary Women and Crawford, Patricia, Women and Religion in England 1500-1720 (London, 1993)Google Scholar.
24 On the various schisms in the London Yearly Meeting over the course of the nineteenth-century, see Isichei, Victorian Quakers, ch. 2. On subsequent challenges to evangelical dominance within the Society of Friends see especially, Kennedy, Thomas C., “Heresy-Hunting among Victorian Quakers: the Manchester Difficulty, 1861-73,” Victorian Studies 34 (1991): 227–53Google Scholar.
25 On these issues, see especially the influential nineteenth-century critical history written from a liberal-Quaker perspective, Rowntree, Joseph S., Quakerism Past and Present (London, 1859)Google Scholar. See also, Walvin, James, The Quakers, Money and Morals (London, 1997)Google Scholar.
26 See, e. g., Isichei, Victorian Quakers, ch. 1; Wright, Sheila, Friends in York. The Dynamics of Quaker Revival 1780-1860 (Keele, 1995)Google Scholar.
27 See the detailed comparison of origins, outlook and theology of two contrasting leaders of Quaker opinion, who even so shared a commitment to quietism, in Kerman, Cynthia Earl, “Elias Hicks and Thomas Shillitoe: Two Paths Diverge,” Quaker Studies 5 (2000): 19–47Google Scholar.
28 Further confusion is added by the adjectives conventionally applied to evangelicals and Hicksite schismatics: thus the former are usually termed “orthodox” Quakers while the latter regarded themselves as holding fast to the faith of the founders of their church. As Mills, John Bright, 1:35 suggests: “which section was truly orthodox has been precisely the question in dispute.” Equally, quietist Quakers are often termed “conservative,” see, e. g. Isichei, Victorian Quakers, p. 21, though their theology was more liberal than that of the evangelicals, especially in terms of an emphasis on the “Light within” rather than scriptural authority as the best guide to piety.
29 This account draws largely on Mills, John Bright, vol. 1, but see also Robbins, John Bright, p. 5. It is also based on my research among the correspondence of two aunts of John Bright concerning the role of their United States kin in the Hicksite separation, see, e. g. Margaret Wood to Margaret Bancroft, 6 May 1827, Ban 1/13; Margaret Wood to John Bancroft, 14 September 1829, Ban 1/81; Esther Crosland to Dear Brother [John Bancroft], 14 May 1828, Ban 2/3, all SBCP, CA.
30 Bronner, Edwin B., “Moderates in London Yearly Meeting, 1857-1873: Precursors of Quaker Liberals,” Church History 59 (1990): 356–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Sturge, Joseph, quoted in Tyrrell, Alex, Joseph Sturge and the Moral Reform Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain (London, 1987), p. 193Google Scholar, which, in identifying this current, emphasizes within it the presence of both evangelical and non-evangelical Quakers.
32 Thus, John Bright’s purported evangelicalism is sometimes extrapolated, incorrectly, from his social and political activism, for example, Joyce, Democratic Subjects, p. 87.
33 Watts, Michael, The Dissenters. Volume 11 Reformation to French Revolution, (Oxford, 1995), p. 575Google Scholar.
34 Quoted in Mills, John Bright, 1:34 n.l.
35 On the importance of religious dissent to political radicalism in the period preceding the 1832 Reform Bill, see Clark, J. C. D., English Society 1668-1832, (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar.
36 John Bancroft to David Bancroft, 18 July and 2 September 1821, 23 June 1832; John Wood, reported in John Bancroft to David Bancroft, 16 July 1821, all Ban 2/11, SBCP, CA. John Bancroft had also been a sympathizer of Queen Caroline’s, and an admirer of Napoleon.
37 Mills, John Bright, 1:127-129, 163.
38 Ibid. pp. 259-61. Robertson, William, The Life and Times of the Right Hon John Bright (Rochdale, n.d., c. 1877), pp. 56-7, 41–47Google Scholar.
39 Weber, Protestant Ethic, p. 52, 95, 97, 182.
40 Ibid. pp. 124, 131, 145, 81.
41 Ibid. p. 86
42 John Woolman was especially revered among northern Friends. Among the few books in the library of Ackworth, the Quaker school attended at one point by Bright, following in the footsteps of his mother, father, and several of his aunts, was to be found John Woolman’s Journal, but no copy of Barclay’s Apology (Mills, John Bright, 1: 114).
43 Jones, Later Periods of Quakerism, 1:315-17. Though not acknowledged, it is possible that Jones was here seeking to apply some of the ideas of Max Weber, as Weber had drawn on some of Jones’s own early work, which emphasized the mystical origins of Quakerism. Weber visited Haverford College in 1904, where Rufus Jones was then professor of history, and cited the latter’s biography of George Fox in Protestant Ethic. For a further reassessment of Jones’s role in Quaker historiography, see Baily, New Light on George Fox, pp. 11-19.
44 Elizabeth Priestman to John Bright, quoted in Robbins, John Bright pp. 20-21; Rachel Priestman to John Bright, quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, p. 102.
45 Quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, pp. 105-06.
46 Ceadel, Martin, The Origins of War Prevention. The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1730-1884(Oxford, 1996), pp. 110, 350, 409, 428, 465, 479, 490, 497, 508–10Google Scholar, explores some of the ambivalence evident in Bright’s stance on war and concludes that most likely he never fully accepted the peace testimony of Friends.
47 Ausubel, John Bright, p. 77 reads this breakdown as a consequence of “frustrated ambition and outraged patriotism,” but Robbins, John Bright, pp. 117-18 is more sympathetic in suggesting some “existential” crisis: “He was not content to be a mere prophet apostrophizing a heedless generation,” and explains the breakdown in terms of Bright’s failure to comprehend the strength of war fever and hence his own failure to turn public opinion against it, alongside his dissatisfaction with what he termed the “grievous errors” in the polity and organization of the Society of Friends.
48 Quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, p. 142.
49 Weber, Max, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber (New York, 1946), pp. 93-128, esp. pp. 78-79, 121–26Google Scholar.
50 Even when the legal obstructions to their becoming magistrates, were lifted, many Quakers refused such a position because of the duties that might follow from it, notably the raising and deployment of militias during civil unrest or external threat.
51 Weber, Protestant Ethic, p. 79, and 206-11 ns 2, 3; and his “Politics as a Vocation.”
52 Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” pp. 79-85.
53 Bright quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, pp. 43-44. This story is also reiterated in Robbins, John Bright, p. 32; Joyce, Democratic Subjects, p. 127; Jones, Later Periods of Quakerism, 2:638. Read, Cobden and Bright examines in greater detail how Bright helped construct the legends that arose around him.
54 John Bright to Rachel Priestman, 21 November 1842, quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, pp. 102-03.
55 Anne Boyce, quoted in ibid. p. 104-05.
56 Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge, p. 192 recounts Sturge’s similar response to this epistle (p. 197), offers a parallel interpretation to that presented here, when he insists that Quaker involvement in radical politics did not reflect any process of secularization: “the aim was still the conversion of the world.”
57 Edward Leatham to Mrs. Leatham, quoted in Robbins, John Bright, p. 68.
58 John Bright to Rachel Priestman, November 1842, quoted in Trevelyan, John Bright, pp. 102-03.
59 Hence, Bright’s account of his calling prefigured Weber’s analysis of the importance of oratory to modern politics. Weber, “Politics as a Profession,” pp. 95-96
60 Trevelyan, John Bright, p. 1.
61 John Bright to J. Moss, 27 December 1845, cited in Robbins, John Bright, p. 61.
62 Joyce, Democratic Subjects, pp. 98-104, esp. p. 99.
63 Quoted in ibid. p. 102.
64 Quoted in Jones, Later Periods of Quakerism, 2:634.
65 In this paragraph my understanding of radical constitutionalism draws especially on Epstein, James A., Radical Expression. Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790-1850, ch. 1.Google Scholar
66 His role as mediator between middle-class and working-class radicals, especially in an appeal to their shared interests vis-à-vis the landed classes and as together constituting the industrious classes, is argued, for example, in Briggs, “John Bright,” pp. 209-10, which also suggests the ambiguous nature of Bright’s identification with the working classes, p. 219; Ausubel, John Bright, pp. 10-13, 32-34; Robbins, John Bright, pp. 37-38, 49, 79-80.
67 Quoted in Robbins, John Bright, p. 153-54.
68 Trevelyan, John Bright, p. 103
69 Robbins, John Bright, p. 68.
70 Weber, “Politics as a Profession,” pp. 125, 120
71 Quoted in Tyrrell, Joseph Sturge, p. 148.
72 It is also worth remembering here that Gladstone was the figure from which Weber extracted his ideal type of the modern political leader, see Weber “Politics as a Vocation,” p. 105.
73 See, Allott, Stephen, John Wilhelm Rowntree, 1868-1905 (York, 1994), p. 3Google Scholar.
74 See, Trevelyan, John Bright, p. 1, and Joyce, Democratic Subjects, pp. 194-97.
