Men of ideas
Pat Rogers
The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720 M C. Jacob (Harvester Press £10.50) Bloodless and respectable in its time, the Whig Revolution, of 1688 kicks up intellectual dust these days. Historians and political theorists fight over the issues, like a Sealed Knot Society in the closet. It was not only our last constitutional upheaval: it was almost the last time ideas penetrated the government of this realm. One group glad to see the end of James II was the bench of latitudinarian bishops, and for generations they kept the highflying lesser clergy— with convocation suspended—impotent in the shires. It is this group Professor Jacob studies, and especially their interest in the Newtonian world-view. She argues that the low-church party found Newton's thought convenient to their social purposes. 'The Revolution secured Anglican hegemony, yet weakened the church's political power' — thus the task was to enlist Newton's stable and God-directed universe as a model of political organisation.
To detect .a divine plan in the jumble of seventeenth-century history certainly required some pretty fancy optics, and Newton's physics was forced to keep strange intellectual company. The flamboyant Bentley and the dotty Whiston were leading figures in the movement, and even solid old John Evelyn (he of the diary, the Royal Society and silviculture) held some odd beliefs regarding biblical prophecy. ProfessorJacobshows that millennial sentiments were not confined ,to fringe radical sects: the latitudinarian party, too, 'came to see the 12,zvolution as a step along the prophetic path revealed in the Scripture'.
The opposition was led by that doughty freethinker, John Toland. He was a formidable figure, in touch with Bayle, Leibniz and Shaftesbury. the inventor of Pantheism, a political spy and a Grub Street publicist--the archetypal marginal man. Professor Jacob shows his connections with early freemasonry. and stresses his radical politics.
Professor Jacob exaggerates the church's loss of political influence—the era of Gibson. Hoadly and Seeker. was soon to dawn, and as late as 1713 a Bishop of Bristol was Lord Privy Seal and chief negotiator at the Utrecht peace talks. Nor is it right to see the Phalaris controversy as a battle over Revolution politics: the real leader of the Ancients against the Moderns was Sir William Temple, a true Williamite if ever there Was one. But the book's main thesis stands up well: it is tough, original, and backed by impressive reading in pub
lished and manuscript sources. The author does not seem quite to approve of the latitudinarians' ready conversion to Newtonianism, and perhaps she does not care for the Revolution itself. In her own version of the war-game, perhaps she has Muggletonians or Ranters coming out on top. That's certainly livelier • than what did happen in 1688.
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