Most people today have little or no idea about the 'Stuart' kings' tyrannies of the 1600s. It is easier to promote the concept of loyalty (or, as we'll see below, passive obedience) if the evils of all monarchs are airbrushed away, or "varnished over" as John Adams says in the quote below, which is from this famous and sparkling letter of 1818.
Adams takes aim at the mega-history that had been published before the Revolution, at the key moment when King George III settled onto the throne in 1760, written by the Scottish writer David Hume.
The rewriting of history is nothing new. History is often appropriated, not to inform about the past, but to recruit in the present. Here is Adams' own copy, sold a while ago at Christies.
"...Another gentleman who had great influence in the commencement of the Revolution, was Doctor Jonathan Mayhew, a descendant of the ancient Governor of Martha's Vineyard. This Divine had raised a great reputation, both in Europe and America by the publication of a volume of seven sermons in the reign of King George the Second, 1748, and by many other writings, particularly a sermon in 1750, on the thirtieth of January, on the subject of Passive Obedience and Non Resistance, in which the saintship and martyrdom of King Charles the First are considered, seasoned with witt and satyre, superior to any in (Jonathan) Swift or (Benjamin) Franklin. It was read by everybody, celebrated by friends, and abused by enemies. (see previous post on the Boston pastor Mayhew here).
During the reigns of King George the First and King George the Second, the reigns of the Stewarts – the Two Jameses, and the two Charleses – were in general disgrace in England. In America they had always been held in abhorrence. The persecutions and cruelties suffered by their ancestors under those reigns, had been transmitted by history and tradition, and Mayhew seemed to be raised up to revive all their animosity against tyranny, in church and state, and at the same time to destroy their bigotry, fanaticism and inconsistency or David Hume's plausible, elegant, fascinating and fallacious apology in which he varnished over the crimes of the Stewarts had not then appeared (Hume's multi-volume history was published from 1754-1761).
To draw the character of Mayhew would be to transcribe a dozen volumes. This transcendant [by choices] threw all the weight of his great fame into the scale of his country in 1761, and maintained it there with zeal and ardour till his death in 1766..."
• Adams was of course creating a narrative too. His thinking and justification for the 1776 revolution in America leaned heavily upon the 1688 revolution in Europe. It doesn't matter that there was a revolution - what matters is why there had to be one. Or two.
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