A Pyrrhic Victory in the Printers’ Case

In Parliament, 250 years ago this season, there was a big step forward in press freedom to report about how English-speaking governments worked.

Back in 1731, Edward Cave launched the Gentleman’s Magazine, which among its features included detailed reporting on the debates in Parliament, going beyond the official House Journals record of motions and whether or not they were adopted. Cave had actually been jailed a few years earlier for publishing such reports. This time he issued his proceedings only during parliamentary recesses, which provided legal cover.

According to James Boswell, Cave passed “scanty notes” on the debates to a young writer named Samuel Johnson to turn into oratorical arguments. It’s not that surprising, therefore, that these reports were often distorted—or so the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, complained.

In 1738, the House of Commons resolved:

That it is a high indignity to, and a notorious breach of the privilege of, this House for any news-writer in letters or other papers…to give therein any account of the doings or other proceedings of this House, or any Committee thereof, as well during the recess as the sitting of Parliament, and this House will proceed with the utmost severity against such offenders.

The London Magazine and Gentleman’s Magazine then started to report on the debates as if they had taken place in ancient Rome, Lilliput, or the Robin Hood Society, thinly disguising legislators’ names. Another trick was to replace some letters of the Members’ names with asterisks or dashes. Because of the magazines’ slow publishing schedule and upper-class audience, it appears, the government didn’t press its objections.

In the 1760s, however, John Wilkes brought more populist politics to London, with the business community and big crowds behind him. The capital’s newspapers increased their coverage of Parliament’s debates. That meant quicker reporting to a larger and closer readership.

The Houses responded by clearing all spectators out during debates, sometimes by force. At the end of 1770 the Whig M.P. Isaac Barré complained about how he’d been pushed out of the House of Lords as if by “a very extraordinary mob” headed by two earls.

On 5 Feb 1771, a Member named George Onslow asked for Parliament’s old rule against printing the proceedings to be read again. Onslow had started in Parliament as a Rockingham Whig, opposing the prosecution of Wilkes and the Stamp Act, but he’d become a strong supporter of Lord North’s government, and he didn’t like how printers were representing it.

Opposition members of the House disagreed with Onslow’s proposal. Charles Turner argued that “not only the debates ought to be printed, but a list of the divisions [i.e., votes] likewise.” Edmund Burke said he wished all debates were fully recorded in the House Journals.

Naturally, the press reported on that debate. John Horne, a radical clergyman, prefaced the coverage in the Middlesex Journal for 7 February with this line:

It was reported, that a scheme was at last hit upon by the ministry to prevent the public from being informed of their iniquity; accordingly, on Tuesday last, little cocking George Onslow made a motion, that an order against printing debates should be read.

Onslow took the bait on 8 February, rising solemnly to complain that the Middlesex Journal and another paper, the London Gazetteer, had misrepresented Parliament and brought it into poor repute. He demanded that the printers Roger Thompson and John Wheble be summoned to explain themselves. By a vote of 90 to 50, the House adopted Onslow’s resolution.

But those printers didn’t show up. They didn’t come to their front doors to accept warrants. On 8 March the Crown issued a proclamation offering £50 for apprehending the two men. Meanwhile, newspapers heaped more criticism on Onslow: “That little insignificant insect, George Onslow, was the first mover of all this mighty disturbance.”

On 12 March, Onslow demanded to hear from six more publishers who continued to run parliamentary reports. On the first vote the House supported him, 140 to 43. Another member suggested summoning not only the proprietor of each newspaper but “all his compositors, pressmen, correctors, blackers and devils,” which produced more argument over both legalities and language. The Whigs kept moving to cancel the discussion and adjourn; the majority kept voting to proceed.

One account said, “There were so many divisions, and such strong and personally offensive expressions used during the course of this debate, that the Speaker [Fletcher Norton, shown above] said, ‘This motion will go into the Journals—what will posterity say?’” After more votes Norton declared, “I am heartily tired of this business.” Barré spoke up: “I will have compassion on you, sir; I will move the adjournment of the House.” That motion produced another round of debate.

Of all the printers Onslow had named, two appeared in the House, ritually knelt in penance, and paid fines. The rest made excuses to stay away or just lay low. Some replied that they would come when the legal situation was resolved.

Wilkes orchestrated the next move. Wheble and Thompson let themselves be apprehended by fellow printers and brought before the aldermen of London—namely Wilkes and his political allies. Those officials demanded to know under what authority the printers had been seized. When the captors pointed to the proclamation, Wilkes declared such an order “contrary to the chartered rights of this city, and of Englishmen.”

The conflict between levels of government grew. The Crown arrested Alderman Richard Oliver and the Lord Mayor, Brass Crosby, for defying parliamentary authority. They remained in the Tower of London until the end of the legislative session, then came out to a twenty-one gun salute and a parade of carriages. Crowds hanged Onslow and Norton in effigy on Tower Hill.

Legally the “printers’ case” of 1771, as it was called, ended in a victory for the House of Commons. Courts upheld its authority to determine how its proceedings would be published. But politically everyone realized that the press and society were operating under new rules. British citizens now expected to read full reports of what their legislators were saying. Parliament never tried to exercise its authority so strictly again.

The only way legislative houses could regain control of the reporting process was to issue their own official or semi-official transcriptions of debates. John Almon and John Debrett launched the Parliamentary Register in 1775. William Cobbett began publishing more detailed Parliamentary Debates in 1802, and that became the modern standard Hansard Debates. That tradition transferred over to the U.S. of A., with the Congressional Record, the Capitol press galleries, and C-SPAN as the offshoots.

Chasing Down an Unsuccessful Suitor

After I read the exchange of letters between Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and William Fitzwilliam on 6 Apr 1771, I decided to track down who this young suitor was.

For a long time I was stymied because the most prominent “Lord Fitzwilliam” of the time was the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833), an active member of the House of Lords who voted with the Rockingham Whigs. He was a nephew and, in 1782, heir of the Marquess of Rockingham. He was also some sort of cousin to Gov. John Wentworth of New Hampshire. He appears here in a portrait by Joshua Reynolds.

But in 1771 the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam was only in his twenties and therefore couldn’t have had a son seeking a bride in Boston.

Then in the Irish peerage I came across the sixth Viscount Fitzwilliam of Meryon or Merrion (1711-1776), and the puzzle pieces fell into place. That less prominent and lower-ranking Lord Fitzwilliam had four sons; according to Wikipedia (but not older print sources), all but one of those men eventually succeeded to the title without leaving more sons, so the peerage disappeared.

The only son of the sixth viscount who never got to be a viscount was the second, the Hon. William Fitzwilliam (1749-1810). He was the right age for the Boston wooer, though I can’t confirm that he was in Boston in 1771. Some Hutchinson biographers who have written about Fitzwilliam have assumed he was an officer in the Royal Navy, but I haven’t found evidence for that.

I did confirm a connection between the Hon. William Fitzwilliam and George Onslow, the British politician who thanked Gov. Hutchinson for how he’d handled this affair. Hutchinson wrote that Onslow was Fitzwilliam’s uncle. The relationship wasn’t that close. Onslow’s wife was Henrietta Shelley, a granddaughter of Sir John Shelley, third baronet of that line. Sir John’s only daughter, Frances, had married the fifth Viscount Fitzwilliam, the grandfather of the young wooer. That makes Onslow the husband of the Hon. William Fitzwilliam’s first cousin, once removed.

The Hon. William Fitzwilliam eventually did marry, in August 1782, to the only daughter of John Eames (c. 1716-1795), a master of chancery and tax commissioner. Aside from that marriage and his death, I haven’t been able to nail down any more facts about the man.

Fitzwilliam’s unsuccessful proposal of marriage was first published in James K. Hosmer’s 1896 biography of Hutchinson, then reprinted as a curiosity in several American newspapers. Probably not how he’d have wished to be remembered.

“A person more suitable to your birth & rank”

Yesterday I quoted a letter that Gov. Thomas Hutchinson received from William Fitzwilliam on 6 Apr 1771, asking for his youngest daughter Peggy’s hand in marriage.

As I said, Hutchinson knew that that young man was the son of a nobleman back in Britain. For many colonial politicians, the prospect of allying his family with the imperial aristocracy would have been very enticing.

Hutchinson wasn’t that sort of person. He loved his daughter dearly, and he also loved his late wife, who had died giving birth to her. He no doubt knew that the marriage of two young people who had never even spoken was unlikely to lead to happiness. A native Bostonian, Hutchinson collected offices at home but showed no ambition to join the noble class in Britain.

The governor was also a firm believer in the social order, and that gave him a way to let Peggy’s suitor down easy. He wrote back the same day:

I am not insensible that such an Alliance as you have proposed would be doing the greatest honour to me & my Family.

I am at the same time very sensible that it cannot be approved of by the Noble Family to which you belong—In my station, from Respect to My Lord FitzWilliam I should think it my duty to do all in my power to discourage one of his Sons from so unequal a match with any person in the Province and I should most certainly be highly criminal if I should countenance & encourage a match with my own daughter

I hope Sir you will think this a sufficient reason for my not acceding to your proposal & sincerely wish you happy in a person more suitable to your birth & rank & who may be approved of by your Honorable Parent

I have the honor to be
Sr. Yr. most obedt.
humble Sert.
Thomas Hutchinson

This action turned out to benefit Gov. Hutchinson in a small way. On 8 Nov 1774, after moving to London, he visited the British politician George Onslow. At the end of that conversation, which seems to have been full of mutual flattery, came this exchange, as Hutchinson recorded it in his diary:

He thanked me for conducting an affair of his nephew, Ld FitzWilliam’s son, in America. I had forgot he was his nephew. He hoped to cultivate an acquaintance, &c.

Peggy Hutchinson joined her father in London. She died three years later, never having married.

TOMORROW: Who was William Fitzwilliam?