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THE SAXON REPUBLIC AND ANCIENT CONSTITUTION IN THE STANDING ARMY CONTROVERSY, 1697–1699

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2018

ASHLEY WALSH
ASHLEY WALSH*
Affiliation:
Downing College, Cambridge
*
Downing College, Regent Street, Cambridge, cb2 1dqajw246@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The pamphlet controversy caused by the proposal of William III to maintain a peacetime standing army following the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) tends to be understood as a confrontation of classicists and moderns in which the king's supporters argued that modern commerce had changed the nature of warfare and his opponents drew on classical republicanism to defend the county militia. But this characterization neglects the centrality of the Saxon republic and ancient constitution in the debate. English opponents of the standing army, including Walter Moyle, John Trenchard, and John Toland, went further than adapting the republicanism of James Harrington, who had rejected ancient constitutionalism during the Interregnum, to the restored monarchy. Their thought was more Saxon than classical and, in the case of Reverend Samuel Johnson, it was entirely so. However, the Scot, Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, adapted neo-Harringtonian arguments to argue that modern politics could no longer be understood by their Gothic precedents. Above all, the king's supporters needed either to engage ancient constitutionalists on their own terms, as did one anonymous pamphleteer, or, as in the cases of John, Lord Somers, and Daniel Defoe, reject the relevance of ancient constitutionalism and Saxon republicanism completely.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 663 - 684
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

I thank Mark Goldie, Callum Murrell, Katherine A. East, and the two peer reviewers for offering perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am grateful to the Sir John Plumb Charitable Trust for financial support in undertaking this research.

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