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Sermons of Sedition: The Trials of William Winterbotham

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Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions

Part of the book series: Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice ((PHPPJ))

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Abstract

William Winterbotham was tried and convicted at two trials at Exeter assizes in summer 1793 of having spoken seditious words in two sermons he had delivered to his Baptist congregation at Plymouth and for which he was condemned to four years in Newgate prison. Winterbotham was the only person during the 1790s to be prosecuted for having delivered a sermon. His case prompts legal questions pertaining to words spoken rather than printed texts. The chapter gives an account of the two trials and considers how the local community mobilized itself to create the terms of the trials.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charles Pigott, A Political Dictionary: Explaining the True Meaning of Words (London, 1795), 99.

  2. 2.

    A Pennyworth of Politics (Edinburgh, 1797), 5.

  3. 3.

    Thomas Belsham, Memoirs of the Late Reverend Theophilus Lindsey, M. A. (London, 1812), 275–77; Jenny Graham, “A Hitherto Unpublished Letter of Joseph Priestley”, Enlightenment and Dissent, 14 (1995), 46.

  4. 4.

    E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963), 113. See, however, Michael Durey, “William Winterbotham’s Trumpet of Sedition: Religious Dissent and Political Radicalism in the 1790s”, Journal of Religious History, 19 (1995), 141–157; John Robert Parnell, “Baptists and Britons: Particular Baptists in England and English Identity in the 1790s”, PhD diss. (University of North Texas, 2005), chap. 5; Emma Macleod, “Civil Liberties and Baptists: William Winterbotham of Plymouth in Prison and Thinking of America”, Baptist Quarterly, 44 (2011), 196–222; Wil Verhoeven, Americomania and the French Revolution Debate in Britain, 1789–1802 (Cambridge, 2013), chap. 6.

  5. 5.

    William Howard Winterbotham, The Rev. William Winterbotham, A Sketch (London, 1893), 1–20; W. J., “Memoirs of the Rev. William Winterbotham”, New Baptist Miscellany, 4 (January 1830), 1–5; Henry M. Nicholson, Authentic Records Relating to the Christian Church Now Meeting in George Street and Mutley Chapels, Plymouth. 1640 to 1870 (London, 1870), 82–83.

  6. 6.

    See Kathleen Wilson, “Inventing Revolution: 1688 and 18th-Century Popular Politics”, Journal of British Studies, 28 (1989), 347–86.

  7. 7.

    David L. Wykes, “‘The Spirit of Persecutors Exemplified’: The Priestley Riots and the Victims of Church and King Mobs”, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 20 (1991), 17–39; Joseph Ivimey, A History of the English Baptists, 4 vols (London, 1830), IV: 58–61.

  8. 8.

    Robert Hole, Pulpits, Politics and Public Order in England, 1760–1832 (Cambridge, 1989), chap. 1; idem, “English Sermons and Tracts as Media of Debate on the French Revolution, 1789–99”, in The French Revolution and British Popular Politics, ed. Mark Philp (Cambridge, 1991), 18–37.

  9. 9.

    J. E. Cookson, The Friends of Peace: Anti-War Liberalism in England, 1793–1815 (Cambridge, 1982), 134–37.

  10. 10.

    Peter Denney, “Popular Radicalism, Religious Parody and the Mock Sermon in the 1790s”, History Workshop Journal, 74 (2012), 51–78.

  11. 11.

    Nicholas Rogers, “Burning Tom Paine: Loyalism and Counter-Revolution in Britain, 1792–1793”, Histoire Sociale/Social History, 32 (1999), 139–71; Frank O’Gorman, “The Paine Burnings of 1792–1793”, Past and Present, 193 (2006), 111–55.

  12. 12.

    See Robert Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country (Lexington, 1983), chap. 3; H. T. Dickinson, “Popular Conservatism and Militant Loyalism”, in Britain and the French Revolution, 1789–1815, ed. Dickinson (London, 1989), 103–26; Dickinson, “Popular Loyalism in Britain in the 1790s”, in The Transformation of Political Culture; England and Germany in the Late 18th Century, ed. Eckhart Hellmuth (Oxford, 1990), 503–33.

  13. 13.

    Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998), 195–200; Michael T. Davis, “The British Jacobins and the Unofficial Terror of Loyalism”, in Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism, eds Brett Bowden and Davis (Brisbane, 2008), 92–113.

  14. 14.

    Exeter Flying Post, 26 December 1792; Francis Freeling to J. Moore, 28 December 1792, British Library [BL], Add. Ms. 16,923, fol. 146.

  15. 15.

    “A Loyalist” to Reeves, 9 December, 1792, BL, Add. Ms. 16,927, fols. 41–43; George Cherry to J. Moore, 19 January 1793, Add. Ms. 16,924, fol. 108.

  16. 16.

    Exeter Flying Post, 13 December 1792. Thanks to Nick Rogers for generously sharing notes from this source.

  17. 17.

    True Briton, 1 February 1793; London Gazette, 22–25 December 1792, 967, town meeting to express attachments to king and country; Exeter Flying Post, 20 and 27 December (parade), 1792.

  18. 18.

    “Memoirs”, New Baptist Miscellany, 4 (March 1830), 93; Nicholson, Authentic Records, 91.

  19. 19.

    “Memoirs”, New Baptist Miscellany, 4 (February, 1830), 46.

  20. 20.

    Exeter Flying Post, 8 November 1792.

  21. 21.

    The Trials of William Winterbotham for Seditious Words (London, 1794), 12–13.

  22. 22.

    William Foot to J. Moore, 24 February 1793, BL, Add. Ms. 16,925, fol. 106; Bere Alston Loyalist Address, Add. Ms. 16,929, fol. 8.

  23. 23.

    Trials, 76; “Memoirs”, New Baptist Miscellany, 4 (January 1830), 48.

  24. 24.

    Nicholson, Authoritative Records, 88–89.

  25. 25.

    London Gazette, 18–22 December 1792, 953, offering a 100 pounds reward for each; Exeter Flying Post, 27 December 1792.

  26. 26.

    William Foot to Chamberlayne and White, 17 January 1793, The National Archives [TNA], Treasury Solicitor [TS] 11/458 (1524).

  27. 27.

    See Clive Emsley, “An Aspect of Pitt’s ‘Terror’: Prosecutions for Sedition during the 1790s”, Social History, 6 (1981), 155–84; Philip Harling, “The Law of Libel and the Limits of Repression, 1790–1832”, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 107–134, particularly 110–11.

  28. 28.

    Timothy Kenrick to Samuel Kenrick, 26 February 1793, “Kenrick Letters”, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 4 (1927–28), 177; W. Byng Kenrick, ed., Chronicles of a Nonconformist Family: The Kenricks of Wynne Hall Exeter and Birmingham (Birmingham, 1932), 68–69. Kenrick had his own problems due to his “political” preaching.

  29. 29.

    See Emsley, “Aspect”, 157–58, 176–84; Steve Poole, “Pitt’s Terror Reconsidered: Jacobinism and the Law in Two South-Western Counties, 1791–1803”, Southern History, 17 (1995), 80–83.

  30. 30.

    Trial of Thomas Briellat, for Seditious Words … 6 December 1793, Session-House, Clerkenwell-Green (London, 1794), 33–34, 49.

  31. 31.

    The version published in State Trials, XXII: 823–906 is based on Winterbotham’s publication. In quoting from the trials, I have followed State Trials in removing italics and capitalization.

  32. 32.

    William Winterbotham, The Commemoration of National Deliverances, and the Dawning Day: Two Sermons Preached … at How’s Lane Chapel, Plymouth (London, 1794), 2–5; Trials, 75–76.

  33. 33.

    William Elford to Chamberlayne and White, 24 April 1793, TNA, TS 11/954.

  34. 34.

    Trials, 86, 132. Foot expressed concerns about the reliability of juries at the assize sessions. Foot to Chamberlayne and White, 16 and 24 April, 1793, TNA, TS 11/954.

  35. 35.

    Trials, 23.

  36. 36.

    Sermons, 1–3.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., 16–20, 25–26.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 37. Plymouth was an Admiralty borough. 112 voted at the 1790 election. R. G. Thorne, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols (London, 1986), II: 118.

  39. 39.

    Sermons, 32–36

  40. 40.

    Trials, 1–4.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 4–5.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., 7–13.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., 17–21, 23.

  44. 44.

    Trials, 23–36, passim.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 42–3, 45–6, 48–51, 53, 57–59, 62–64.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 39, 41–42. Winterbotham explained that eight dissenters formed a partnership to provide employment for the poor and clothing and education for indigent children, and that he had been forced to withdraw from the business due to “popular prejudice”.

  47. 47.

    Sermons, 65. Brend heard the same false reports, 47.

  48. 48.

    State Trials, V: 1116–46.

  49. 49.

    Sermons, 65, 51–52, 57–8. It is unclear if Mrs. Gibbs, a widow, was related to Reverend Philip Gibbs.

  50. 50.

    Trials, 75–81, 85–86.

  51. 51.

    Deposition of Lyne, TNA, TS 11/458 (1524); Trials, 97.

  52. 52.

    Depositions of Lyne and Derby [sic], and statements of Joan Palmer (Lyne’s landlady) and Anna Maria Champion, TNA, TS 11/458 (1524); William Elford to Chamberlayne and White, 24 April 1793, TNA, TS 11/954.

  53. 53.

    Trials, 90–91.

  54. 54.

    Sermons, 54–60.

  55. 55.

    Trials, 91–100; Depositions of Lyne and Derby [sic], TNA, TS 11/458 (1524).

  56. 56.

    Sermons, 41.

  57. 57.

    Trials, 109–10, 121–22, 127; Sermons, 50–51.

  58. 58.

    Trials, 131–32

  59. 59.

    Winterbotham, Sketch, 49–51.

  60. 60.

    State Trials, XXII: 906–08; True Briton, 28 November 1793; Morning Chronicle, 22 and 28 November 1793.

  61. 61.

    Winterbotham, Sketch, 36; “Memoirs”, New Baptist Miscellany, 4 (February 1830), 49.

  62. 62.

    Winterbotham, Sketch, 36–41; “Memoirs”, 4 (1830), 89–91; “Patriots in Prison”, in Newgate in Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Prison Literature in the Age of Revolution, eds Michael T. Davis, Iain McCalman and Christina Parolin (London, 2005), ix-xxv.

  63. 63.

    Trials, 80–81.

  64. 64.

    British Critic, 3 (1794), 704–05. See also Critical Review, 11 (June 1794), 224–25.

  65. 65.

    Trials, 68–69. Thompson, Making, 31, notes the Baptists remained the “most plebeian” among the ranks of old dissent, but we can only infer that Winterbotham’s congregation was drawn from the middling and lower ranks of society.

  66. 66.

    Cambridge Intelligencer, 15 March 1794.

  67. 67.

    Tribune, 50 [April] 1796, 327; TNA, TS 11/951/3495.

  68. 68.

    For the climate of suspicion, see John Barrell, The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s (Oxford, 2006).

  69. 69.

    TNA, TS 11/954/3498, report of 13 February 1794, reprinted in Mary Thale, ed., Selections from the Papers of the London Corresponding Society, 1792–1799 (Cambridge, 1983), 113.

  70. 70.

    For the work’s publication history, see Tim Fulford and Rachel Crawford, eds, Robert Southey: Later Poetic Works, 1811–1838, 4 vols (London, 2012), III: 441–60.

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  1. Department of History, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    James Epstein

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  1. School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia

    Michael T. Davis

  2. Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

    Emma Macleod

  3. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Gordon Pentland

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Epstein, J. (2019). Sermons of Sedition: The Trials of William Winterbotham. In: Davis, M., Macleod, E., Pentland, G. (eds) Political Trials in an Age of Revolutions. Palgrave Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98959-4_5

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