An Account of Denmark. Robert Molesworth
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committed to universal liberty, and independent of religious confession, would encourage each to use their “Body, Estate, and Understanding, for the publick Good.”7 The end of such a community was to provide the grounding for improvement so that each could “securely and peaceably enjoy Property and Liberty both of Mind and Body.”8 By such provision both individuals and the entire community benefited: as he clarified, “the thriving of any one single Person by honest Means, is the thriving of the Commonwealth wherein he resides.”9 Molesworth’s conception of the purpose of political society was to enable a flourishing and industrious civic life.
Molesworth’s political reputation as “the patriot brave and sage” was shaped by the reception and afterlife of his first and most infamous work, An account of Denmark as it was in the year 1692 (1694), a republican counterblast to modern tyranny.10 Combined with his defense of the Glorious Revolution of 1689, his translation of François Hotman’s Francogallia (1574), and the evidence of a parliamentary career (in England and Ireland) that spanned three decades, Molesworth has been recognized as the last of the “Real Whigs.” Understood through the historiographical prism of Caroline Robbins’s The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, Molesworth and his friends exercised a powerful influence over the “Republican fringe” of eighteenth-century Whiggism. It is worth citing her conclusions at length:
The Whiggish malcontents or Commonwealthmen in varying ways provided a deterrent to complacency, and reminders of the need for improvement and the continual adaptation of even good governments to economic and political changes. . . . In an age when Englishmen stressed the sovereignty, not of a divinely appointed king but of a triumphant parliament, the Real Whigs reminded them of the rights of electors and of the unenfranchised, of the virtues of rotation in office and of the necessity of constant vigilance against the corruptions of power whether wielded by king, ministers or estates. Molesworth and his friends admonished their countrymen about present dangers. They called attention to the lessons of history and the possibilities of the future.11
This account of the powerful and persisting legacy of Molesworth’s republican critique of monarchy and public power is worth reassessing in the light of more contemporary historical writing, which characterizes the eighteenth century as an age of ancien régime institutions and cultural values.
The rallying call of what Thomas Hollis admiringly referred to as Molesworth’s “golden prefaces” continued, decades later, to exercise an enchanting authority over oppositional ideologies, most notably mobilizing support around John Wilkes in the 1760s and those defending colonial independence in the 1770s.12 The longer works, which presented a neo-Tacitean account of the mechanics of modern tyranny, meshed with the writings of Trenchard and Gordon to provide a standard source for the analysis of political corruption. Unlike Locke, Molesworth provided insight into processes of corruption rather than simply a set of prescriptive juristic values. In the Account of Denmark especially, Molesworth established how tyranny worked, identifying the contaminating ideologies and institutions. De jure divino claims to authority—the “designs of priestcraft”—especially from the Church, lay at the root of all perfidy.13
Molesworth’s works, reprinted throughout the eighteenth century, were read in the British Islands, continental Europe, and North America— where Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and James Logan all owned copies. The Elegy printed upon his death celebrated Molesworth’s deeds, not just as a defender of the Revolution but as “the labourers friend.” Just as his political and diplomatic acts saved the kingdom from “a proud oppressing slave,” so his improving economics “found work for one hundred-thousand hands.”14
The Life
For Molesworth, associated as he was with many of the leading political figures of the period, his political career promised more than it achieved. Concerned with principle as much as place, Molesworth was never cautious about advancing either his own opinions or abilities, or (later) those of his sons, to the ministers and even kings of the day.
Outspoken against political and religious corruption, Molesworth was rewarded with a measure of recognition after 1714 by the Hanoverian regime, only (as he saw it) to be thrust into opposition by corrupt men after the debacle of the South Sea Bubble. It is a measure of his charisma and vitality of commitment that as a man in his late sixties he was considered by others, and indeed considered himself, a suitable candidate for contesting the parliamentary seat of Westminster in 1722.
Molesworth was not a lone commonwealthman but gathered a circle of like-minded men into his milieu. The most notorious of these was John Toland, with whom he had been acquainted since the early 1700s.15 Like many of his relationships, this connection, although driven primarily by political ambition, also had literary dimensions. While Molesworth hoped to persuade his friend to collaborate on a “history of the late wars,” Toland had certainly seen a now lost work of Molesworth’s resembling “so nearly Cicero’s de respublica.”16
Molesworth moved freely in circles of political influence and sociability in Dublin, London, and Yorkshire. His surviving correspondence with men like Shaftesbury, Godolphin, and William King allows a detailed reconstruction of this political life. Molesworth’s correspondence also gives an intimate and at times touching account of his family life and political connections.17 His involvement with diplomatic and political circles is manifest, while his continual disappointment at the conduct of leading ministers, the missed opportunities for personal advancement, and the cost of promoting himself and his sons are persistent themes. At times all these themes merged, as he noted in November 1695: “My election, if I carry it, will cost me sauce, so that we must endeavour to make it up by good husbandry.”18
Insight into his self-esteem and political commitments is unparalleled. As he wrote to Mrs. Molesworth in September 1712, he managed to combine a reflection on the death of his friend Godolphin with remarks about his own continual disappointment not to be called to great office: “My dear Lord Godolphin is dead! The greatest man in the whole world for honesty, capacity, courage, friendship, generosity, is gone: my best friend is gone! As if my friendship were fatal to all that ever take it up for me. So now there is another great article to be added to the misfortunes of my family this year, which indeed are insupportable. This great patriot could not survive the liberties of his country, whilst I like a wretch, am like to live a slave, and have reared up children to no better an end.”19
His letters deliver (among many other topics of the day) commentaries on the Peace of 1711, the South Sea Bubble, the conduct of the High Church faction in Convocation, and, interestingly, drafts of his position in regard to the issue of Irish independency in 1719.20 Molesworth’s persistent parliamentary defense of liberty and the Hanoverian succession was associated with a formal political thought premised on the vindication of liberty and a profoundly anticlerical commitment to religious toleration. It shows that Molesworth was a man driven not just by political commitments and opportunities for agricultural improvement but also by the life of the mind. Although his collaborative reading with Toland is evidence enough of this, his archive also contains glimpses of a broader intellectual culture that saw Molesworth at the center of a community involved in the circulation of scribal works.21
After Toland’s death, when Molesworth withdrew from the mainstream of national politics, he became the focus of another circle of younger thinkers and writers. Unfortunately, no records of Molesworth’s library or book purchases survive, but there is some evidence to suggest that Molesworth encouraged reading and learning in his own household. His daughter Lettice noted that her child “Little Missy” was learning to spell as a precondition for reading: “I take all possible care of her eyes and hold her books as you desired.”22
That Molesworth had encouraged his daughters as well as sons into commerce with books and learning is clear from the life and work of his daughter Mary Monck (1677–1715), whose poems were posthumously published in 1716 and edited by her father. Marinda: Poems and translations upon several occasions [by Mary Monck] was published in London by Jacob Tonson. The work was dedicated to Caroline, Princess