An Account of Denmark. Robert Molesworth
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in his Letters to Serena (1704), dedicated to the Queen of Prussia. Molesworth made this connection explicit when he applauded Caroline’s “frequent and intimate conversation with that incomparable princess, the late Electress Sophia, and your indefatigable Reading the best books in all the modern languages.”23
Molesworth presented his deceased daughter’s work to the new court as a product worthy of public emulation for its liberty, honor, and virtue. Mary’s poems were the result of her reading in a “good library.” Spending her leisure hours reading, this gentlewoman had acquired several languages and “the good morals and principles contain’d in those books, so as to put them in practice.” Some of Mary’s work was already in scribal circulation through the agency of the young Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but this impressive volume (with parallel pages of the original text and an English translation) broadcast her learning to a wider audience, and, most important, was framed within the political languages of liberty and what Molesworth called “the Good Old English Customs.”
The importance of good reading and a virtuous education in the principles of liberty and true religion (rather than bigotry and superstition) underlay much of Molesworth’s political commitment to the reform of the universities after 1716. This commitment took an even more academic turn in late 1722, when Molesworth became involved in the affairs of the University of Glasgow, where he had been appointed Rector by popular assent of a clique of radical students. One correspondent, William Wishart, writing in October 1713, applauded Molesworth for his role in “the dawnings of a revival of ancient virtue and the love of true liberty.”24 Holding up the model of Molesworth’s preface to the Account of Denmark, which distinguished the educational principles of philosophy and priestcraft, Wishart bewailed the fact that “the abettors of savage zeal, fierce bigotry and dire superstition have the advantages of those corrupt passions and inveterate prejudices of men’s minds to favour their designs.”25
The anticlericalism of this correspondence was profound: in a later letter George Turnbull condemned the “proud domineering pedantic priests, whose interest it is to train up the youth in a profound veneration to their sensible metaphysical creeds and catechisms.”26 Such tuition was not only bewildering but was also “admirably fitted . . . indeed to enslave young understandings and to beget an early antipathy against all free thought.”27 Both Wishart and James Arbuckle acknowledged that they had read Molesworth’s work on Denmark and “Cato’s letters,” but they also made inquiry about suitable further reading.28
Molesworth not only recommended books but even sent copies of his own works. As George Turnbull wrote, “There is nothing I would be prouder of than to have your works in my library ex dono the worthy author.”29 Molesworth offered detailed directions toward further reading. William Wishart in passing his thanks to the older man explained what he had done with his “excellent instructions.” He started by reading Buchanan’s De jure regni apud Scotos, which gave him excellent notions “of the nature and design of government and the just boundaries of it,” describing the beautiful lineaments of a good king and the ghastly picture of a tyrant. This was followed by reading Machiavelli on Livy, “by which I have received a great deal of light into the true principles of politics.” The final books recommended by Molesworth were Harrington’s works (edited by Toland, of course) and Confucius’s morals, which the student had only “dipped into.”30
Led by Molesworth’s reading lists, these young men gathered as a literary club to discourse “upon matters of learning for their mutual improvement.” The club attracted a reputation for heterodoxy, and its members were vilified as “a set of Latitudinarians, Free-thinkers, Non-subscribers, and Bangorians, and in a word, Enemies to the jurisdictions, powers, and the divine authority of the clergy.”31
The Ideas
There is little doubt that Molesworth, who had Toland design electoral propaganda representing himself as Cato, was a key figure in preserving the republican tradition into the eighteenth century (as well as founding a short-lived dynasty of Whig politicians). Ample testimony to this reputation is evident in Thomas Hollis’s admiration for the Irishman’s life and works. As Hollis recorded, he regarded Molesworth as the author who most neatly captured “My Faith.” Indeed, Hollis was very active in disseminating Molesworth’s writings (which were included in his list of “canonical books”). Blackburne recorded (in his edition of the Memoirs of Thomas Hollis) that Hollis had given away twenty copies of the Account of Denmark.32 Hollis placed a high value on Molesworth’s contributions to the republican tradition, noting him as one of the “last of the English.”
This admiration took a variety of forms. The most public was the reprinting and distribution of Molesworth’s works, but Hollis also commissioned an engraved portrait of Molesworth from Thomas Snelling. A more intimate commemoration can be seen in the “invisible pantheon” inscribed into the landscape at Dorset. As Patrick Eyres has explained, a key signal of Hollis’s admiration for Molesworth’s contributions is embodied in his naming the highest fields on the downland ridge above his Urles farm after him (and his political intimate, Shaftesbury). So Molesworth was not only central to the Whig canon but also stands at the apex of Hollis’s Dorset pantheon.33
Hollis personally owned two volumes of Molesworth’s works and related pieces, which although evidently specially bound in red morocco, are not decorated with any of his commonplace characteristic symbols of liberty embossed in gilt on the spine or covers.34 As many have noted, Hollis typically annotated his volumes with a record of his intellectual dispositions. So it was with copies of Molesworth’s works. On the initial blank leaves of both volumes, there are scribal notes made by Hollis consisting of a quotation of six lines from the poet Mark Akenside’s Odes and on the following blank page: “The Preface to the Account of Denmark, and the Translator’s Preface to the Franco-Gallia, are justly esteemed two of the most manly, & noble Compositions, in their kind, in the English Language.”
In volume 2 of these works (which includes a copy of the 1721 printing of Hotman’s Francogallia), Hollis has written on the title page “A most curious valuable Treatise.” Above “The Translator’s Preface” he commented, “Observe this Preface. The Translator’s preface to the Francogallia, and the preface to the Acc. of Denmark are two of the NOBLEST prefaces in the English language.”35 These “Golden prefaces” were to remain a staple of the eighteenth-century-commonwealth outlook in Europe and North America.36
The high-water mark of Molesworth’s reputation, prompted especially by the reception of the Account of Denmark, was achieved in the second half of the eighteenth century. On this subject he was, as Aylmer has noted, “much the most controversial writer of the whole century.”37 Molesworth had inside knowledge of the Danish context, having been chosen by William III in 1689 as envoy to counter Louis XIV’s influence at that court. More specifically, his task was to organize the supply of Danish troops for William’s campaigns. The difficulty of arranging the exchange of subsidy for arms—and the deceitful behavior of the French faction—set the tone for Molesworth’s hostility to the Danish monarchy.38 Molesworth, a convinced follower of Sidney’s anticourt disposition, clearly held no deference for Danish regality, as William King, a hostile source, reported. Molesworth broke protocols of access and indeed poached the Danish king’s hares without remorse. As one hostile account noted, “These Actions being represented to the King, his Majesty was extreamly offended at them, and showed it by the cold Reception the Envoy afterwards met with at Court.”39 There was little surprise then that Molesworth, declared persona non grata, took pleasure in reproducing Sidney’s notorious annotation of the ambassadorial commonplace book: manus haec, inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.40
Molesworth’s account of the constitutional revolution of the lex regia in Denmark of 1660 (which saw Gothic liberty displaced by a formal legal hereditary absolutism) remained dominant for a century. His bold question, “How did the Danes lose their freedom?” was a persistently urgent one not only for those contemporaries in the British Isles, but for Frenchmen living under Louis