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At the end of the 18th century Britain entered the period known as the Industrial Revolution, brought about by the use of machinery and steam power for the manufacture of goods as a result of the invention of the steam engine by James Watt in 1769. The Industrial Revolution led to a rapid increase in national prosperity. At the beginning of the 18th century the population of England and Wales reached five and a half million. A third of the total population lived in south-eastern England. The birth-rate rose slowly because killer diseases such as smallpox, dysentery, consumption, and typhus were widespread. Shortage of food, inadequate housing conditions and also excessive drinking of cheap gin had disastrous effects on the poorer classes. The rich were hardly less exposed to disease due to a general disregard of hygiene. However, throughout the 18th century important improvements in living conditions were made, and by the early 19th century the population of England and Wales had almost doubled. This was mainly due to increased production of food, including potatoes, cheese, and fresh meat. Thanks to the availability of coal, homes could be warmer in winter. In general clothing and soap were cheaper than previously. Nevertheless, about 80 per cent of the population remained poor.

The majority of people still lived in the countryside and their main occupations were agriculture and rural crafts. Most farmers were smallholders renting up to 8 hectares of land. Freeholders owned their land and were socially superior to smallholders. At the bottom of the social structure were the landless labourers who worked on large farms, especially in summer; in winter they were often out of work. At the top of the social hierarchy were the nobility, who held the highest offices and accumulated the greatest wealth, and the gentry, who included the major landowners in a county but were not necessarily of noble birth. The chief landowner in a village was called the squire.

The conditions of women were difficult. They did not have many rights and were financially dependent on their husbands or families. An average wife spent some 15 years either in a state of pregnancy or in nursing a child for the first year of its life.

This surge in population was to some degree the result of falling mortality, which itself was partly the result of widespread smallpox inoculation in the early 19th century.

But it resulted more from a rise in marital fertility, which came primarily from more people marrying and, moreover, marrying at a younger age, thereby maximising women’s childbearing years.

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Improved material circumstances in industrialising parts of the nation explain the trend towards earlier and more extensive marriage and larger families.

Britain already had a thriving economy in the early 18th century, with productive agriculture, scientific ingenuity, a strong commercial and middling sector, and extensive manufacturing.

§ 9. The Agricultural Revolution.

In the 18th century there was an agricultural revolution in England. It began with Jethro Tull. In the 17th century seed was sown by hand. The sower simply scattered seed on the ground. However in 1701 Tull (1674– 1741) invented the seed drill. This machine dropped seeds at a controllable rate in the straight lines. A harrow at the back of the machine covered the seeds to prevent birds eating them. Tull also invented a horse drawn hoe, which killed weeds between rows of seeds.

Furthermore new forms of crop rotation were introduced. Under the old system land was divided into 3 fields and each year one was left fallow. This was, obviously, wasteful, as one third of the land was not used each year. In the 17th century the Dutch began to use new forms of crop rotation with clover and root crops such as turnips and swedes instead of letting the land grow fallow. (Root crops restored fertility to the soil). In the 18th century these new methods became common in England. A man named Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend (1674–1738) did much to popularise growing turnips.

Turnips had another advantage. They provided winter feed for cattle. Previously most cattle were slaughtered at the beginning of winter because there was not enough food to keep them through the season. Now fresh milk and butter became available all year round.

Moreover in the early 18th century farmers began to improve their livestock by selective breeding. One of the most famous pioneers of selective breeding was Robert Bakewell (1725–1795).

There were other minor improvements. On light soil farmers used marl (clay with a lime content). Other farmers drained their fields with stone lined trenches. Manure has always been used as fertiliser but in the mid18th century farmers began to build underground tanks to protect manure from the weather.

Finally in the 18th century there was a wave of enclosures. In the Middle Ages land in each village was divided into strips. Each farmer held some

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strips in each field. In the 16th and 17th centuries some enclosures took place. Many more followed in the 18th century. When an act of enclosure was passed commissioners divided up the land in the village so each farmer had all his land in one place, which was an inefficient way of doing things.

§ 10. The Industrial Revolution.

In the late 18th century everyday life in Britain was transformed by the industrial revolution. Towns, industry and trade had been growing for centuries but about 1780 economic growth took off.

Economic growth was helped by vast improvements in transport. In the early and mid 18th century many turnpike roads were built. Local turnpike trusts were formed. They maintained a road and charged people to travel on it.

In the late 18th century a network of canals was built. One of the first was built for the Duke of Bridgewater by James Brindley. It opened in 1761 from Worsley to Manchester.

A number of technological advances made the revolution possible. In 1709 Abraham Darby (1677–1717), who owned an ironworks, began using coke instead of charcoal to melt iron ore. (It was a much more efficient fuel). Darby and his family kept the new fuel secret for a time but in the late 18th century the practice spread.

Meanwhile in 1698 Thomas Savery made the first steam engine. From

1712 Thomas Newcomen made steam engines to pump water from coalmines. Then, in 1769, James Watt patented a more efficient steam engine and in the 1780s it was adapted to power machinery.

The first industry to become mechanised was the textile industry. In 1771 Richard Arkwright opened a cotton-spinning mill with a machine called a water frame, which was powered by a water mill. Then, in 1779, Samuel Crompton invented a new cotton-spinning machine called a spinning mule. Finally in 1785 Edmund Cartwright invented a loom that could be powered by a steam engine. As a result of these new inventions cotton production boomed.

Iron production also grew rapidly. In 1784 a man named Henry Cort (1740–1800) invented a much better way of making wrought iron. Until then men had to beat red hot iron with hammers to remove impurities. In 1784 Cort invented the puddling process. The iron was melted in an extremely hot furnace and stirred of ‘puddled’ to remove impurities. The result was a vast increase in iron production.

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§ 11. Religion in the 18th century.

The early 18th century was noted for its lack of religious enthusiasm and the churches in England lacked vigour. However in the mid-18th century things began to change. In 1739 the great evangelist George Whitefield (1714–1770) began preaching. Also in 1739 John Wesley (1703–1791) began preaching. He eventually created a new religious movement called the Methodists. His brother Charles Wesley (1707–1788) was a famous hymn writer.

John Wesley traveled all over the country, often preaching in open spaces. People jeered at his meetings and threw stones but Wesley persevered. He never intended to form a movement separate from the Church of England. However the Methodists did eventually break away. After 1760 Methodism spread to Scotland.

In Wales there was a great revival in the years 1738–1742. Howell Harris (1714–1773) was a key figure. Scotland was also swept by revival in the mid-18th century. William McCulloch and James Robe were the leading figures.

That time Anglican Church was very conservative. Both Church and parliament were influenced by the landed gentry and aristocracy. The monarch was the Head of the Anglican Church. Religion was comfortable and respectable. Most people’s interest in religion was generally academic and pragmatic.

Church of England was considered to be a political institution. Bishops were appointed for their political leanings rather than for their spirituality, and could make or break legislation.

§ 12. Art and Science in the 18th century.

During the 18th century England produced two great portrait painters, Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) and Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792). Meanwhile the artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) painted scenes showing the harsh side of 18th century life. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768.

In theatre the greatest actor of the 18th century was David Garrick (1717–1779).

In science Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) discovered oxygen. Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) discovered hydrogen. He also calculated the mass

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and density of the earth. William Herschel (1738–1822) discovered Uranus. The Scottish engineer Thomas Telford (1757–1834) built roads, canals and the Menai suspension bridge.

Invention of the microscope and telescope. In earlier periods, the universe had often seemed a small place, less than six thousand years old, where a single sun moved about the earth, the center of the cosmos. Now time and space exploded, the microscope and telescope opened new fields of vision, and the “plurality of worlds,” as this topic is called, became a doctrine endlessly repeated. The authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy was broken; their systems could not explain what Galileo and Kepler saw in the heavens or what Hooke and Leeuwenhoek saw in the eye of a fly. As discoveries multiplied, it became clear that the moderns knew things of which the ancients had been ignorant. This challenge to received opinion was thrilling as well as disturbing. In Paradise Lost, Book 8, the angel Raphael warns Adam to think about what concerns him, not to dream about other worlds. Yet, despite the warning voiced by Milton through Raphael, many later writers found the new science inspiring. It gave them new images to conjure with and new possibilities of fact and fiction to explore.

§ 13. Language in the 18th century.

The King’s English: Eighteenth-Century Language. Two points about eighteenth-century English and English-American society are important to keep in mind when considering any type of public behavior in those societies. First of all, they were stratified societies and the ways in which people interacted with one another reflected their relative social positions. Not only how something was said, but when it was said, were reflective of the social positions of the speakers. For example, it was not proper for someone of a lower social rank to offer a greeting to a person of higher rank without having been first addressed by that person. Nor was it proper for the social inferior to end the conversation. Secondly, there was some fluidity between the levels of society. Money was not enough to lift a person to a higher level, however. Deportment was also important. Deportment included dress, bodily carriage, and using the polite forms of conversation. During the course of the eighteenth century, the middling sort were increasingly able to afford the trappings of gentility, and they were eager to acquire the accomplishments as well. By the late eighteenth century, therefore, many had acquired the rudiments of polite conversation.

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Forms of address. Sir, alone, was a common form of address used by all classes in conversation with gentlemen, or with men of the middle classes. Gentry wives called their husbands Sir, and the children called their fathers Sir. It is entirely appropriate to call adult male visitors Sir. Some examples include:

How does your lady, Sir?

Sir, if you please, may I speak with you a moment?

Madam, alone, was used to address gentry women, married or unmarried, young and old. Whether or not the middling sort were using it is not clear. Gentry children called their mothers Madam. It is appropriate to call adult female visitors Madam:

Madam, I am quite amazed.

Madam, I do greatly admire your gown.

Mr., Mrs., and Miss were used, as appropriate, in conjunction with the surname when addressing gentry or prosperous middle-class persons. For example, Mr. Burwell, Mrs. Page, Miss Blair. Husbands and wives often addressed one another in public as Mr. or Mrs., plus the surname. Some colonial officials were addressed using Mr. plus the title of the office held by that person.

Mr. Speaker [Speaker of the House of Burgesses] Mr. President [President of the Council]

Mr. Attorney [Attorney General]

People in the eighteenth century also addressed each another according to their relationship to one another, including:

To be sure, Husband, you know these matters better than I. I am glad to see you, Cousin.

Addressing a visitor as Friend was acceptable.

Step-relations and in-laws often addressed one another as if they were blood kin. Thus, step-brothers could address one another as Brother, as

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could brothers-in-law. The same applies to Father, Mother, Daughter, Son, and Sister. Sons-in-law and daughters-in-law sometimes addressed their spouse-s parent(s) as Mother or Father, plus the parent’s surname. For example: Mother Nelson, Father Page.

Young children also addressed their parents as Papa and Mama. Daughters, at least, continued to address their fathers as Daddy and Papa, even after marriage. Father seems to have been the form used by older boys and men. At least one young Virginia boy called his grandfather Grandpapa.

Good morning, good day, good evening, and other similar greetings were used widely by polite society in the eighteenth century. A good day to you, Sir or A good morning to you, Robin (or any nickname) were used informally by the gentry and were more likely than the abbreviated forms above to be used by the middling sort and lower in addressing the gentry as well as each other.

How do you do? was a common greeting in genteel society during the eighteenth century. It survives in the now-casual “How ‘ya doin’?” How do you do? was often followed by either an inquiry after the other person’s family, or by an expression of pleasure at seeing the other person. Sometimes an inquiry after the family of the person addressed was used alone as a greeting:

How do you do, Mr. Harrison? I’m right heartily glad to see you. How does your father, old fellow? [gentleman to gentleman]

How do you do? How does all at home?

Your servant, or variations such as Your humble servant and Your most obedient servant, were also polite greetings among the gentry and middling sorts. This greeting originated as a form of gracious condescension. It would have been redundant, and therefore impertinent, for a white person of low status, a servant, or a slave to address his superior in this fashion. A member of the gentry and a prosperous middle-class person, however, might each have used this expression to address the other:

Sir, I am your most obedient servant. I am heartily glad to see you. [First gentleman]: Sir, your humble servant. I’m very glad to see you. [Second gentleman]: Sir, I am yours. How does your family?

In a conversation between social equals or near equals, politeness required the second party to affirm that he/she was the servant of the first party.

All of the above greetings were commonly used by gentlemen. Ladies used How do you do? and inquiries about family, particularly female members of the other person’s family. Ladies appear to have been more likely to

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have used I am glad to see you, rather than right heartily glad or heartily glad. They also appear to have used the Your servant type of greeting with less frequency than did gentlemen. Of course, Good day was an acceptable greeting for both ladies and gentlemen.

The most common form of genteel farewell seems to have been of the your servant variety and appears to have been used by the middling sorts and above. Again, the second party returned the civility:

[1st party]: ... and so, your servant, Sir. [2nd party]: Sir, I am yours.

Or Your servant, Sir. Or Yours, Sir.

Your servant could be expanded to Your humble servant, Your obedient servant, or (if you wanted to be really subservient) Your most obedient and humble servant.

A signal for departure used mainly by gentlemen with their social equals was By your leave, sometimes varied to With your permission:

[1st Gentleman]: ... by your leave, Sir. [2nd Gentleman]: Your servant, Sir.

The gentry and higher social ranks also employed French phrases at times in conversation, and Adieu was used as a sort of breezy farewell among friends or family.

Acceptable to all genders and stations were variations on Good day: [1st party]: I wish you a good evening, Sir/Madam. or (less formal)

Good evening to you, Sir/Madam/Friend. or (informal) Good night to you, Robin.

[2nd party]: The like to you, Sir/Madam/ Friend. or (still again!) Your servant.

For those of you who find the phrase irritating, it may be a comfort to know that “Have a nice day” did not originate in the 1970s; it has its roots in the civil Good day to you of earlier centuries.

In keeping with the spirit of the Age of Reason, the movement in language in the eighteenth century was toward greater regulation of expression and greater precision in word usage and pronunciation. By the beginning of the century there had already grown up among those in fashionable society a disdain for the extravagant flourishes and conceits of seventeenth-century speech; emphasis came to be placed on refined, polite discourse based on “common sense.” Those caught in the surge toward refinement – among them Swift, Steele, Addison, Johnson, and Lord Chesterfield – tended to disparage what they called “cant” or “low speech” with an assurance in the

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rightness of their judgements which today strikes us as immodest. However, these arbiters of language realised, as did many of their time, that the English language was in a muddle that the disputes over grammar of the previous centuries had failed to solve: words still had widely variant meanings, spellings, and pronunciations, and the general instability of the language was a barrier to clear communication. In the mishandling of the language the educated and well to do seem to have been as guilty as any. Defoe complained in one of his works that “gentlemen of fortunes and families ... can hardly write their own names” and when they can write they “can’t spell their mother tongue.” A favourite point made by satirists of the day was that the one member of a great household most likely to read and write the King’s English was either the butler or the serving woman.

Johnson’s ponderous two-volume Dictionary, great achievement though it was, offered only a partial solution to the problems of normalising the language, and before the century ended there were many other attempts. The efforts at standardisation spilled over into literary texts. One mid- eighteenth-century editor announced that Shakespeare’s works were an “unweeded Garden grown to Seed,” and confidently set about the cultivation and pruning he thought necessary. Another over-earnest reformer named Bentley tackled Milton’s poetry, and got for his pains Pope’s ridicule for being a scribbler “whose unwearied pains / Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton’s strains.” If there was widespread agreement that the

English language needed polishing, there was little agreement about how it should be done, and the controversy continued throughout the century.

One characteristic of the many arguments for purification of English was a sort of intellectual elitism that rejected the living language of the mob (the word mob is itself an eighteenth-century coinage used by those who wished to emphasise their social exclusivity). The more commons words of AngloSaxon derivation were frowned upon as low, slangy, or imprecise, and in their place many Latinisms were substituted, largely because words derived from Latin were supported by the “authority” of classical writers, and also because they were suited for expressing the abstractions that dominated eighteenth-century thinking.

While neo-classicism did much to tone down the bizarre and freakish aspects of seventeenth-century speech, it did not, in spite of its insistence on rules and rigidity, stamp out the rich variety which makes English a vital instrument of communication. Although both Johnson and Swift objected to the use of such words as hubug, prig, doodle, bamboozle, fib, bully, fop,

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banter, stingy, fun, prude, they continued in use then as they are today, evidence of the fact that people, not grammar books or dictionaries, make and perpetuate language.

Linguistic issues and Developments in 18th Century English. Rise of the normative approach to language: huge increase in number of dictionaries and grammars. These texts were increasingly seen as guides to good / proper usage. Consequences of descriptive attitudes and the process of language codification: previously common features (e.g. double negatives, final prepositions) are stigmatized. Language use is increasingly important in terms of social status, identity and prestige. But this doesn’t mean there wasn’t still variation and change in language: the impact of prescriptive guides and grammars was not immediate. Variation remained, e.g. in terms of the different registers of language used in different styles / genres of text.

Developments.

Spelling ~ standardization: ‘long s’ < s > allograph of < s > until c. 1800: <first> = first, <crossed> = crossed; <-our> alternates with <-or> until mid 19th century: honor/honour; color/colour; <-ick> in unstressed syllables until early 19th century: musick = music; logick = logic.

Grammar ~ changes and innovations that arose in the Early Modern Period continue: completion of shift from third person singular <-th> (hath) to <-s> (has); completion of shift to you as 2nd person singular (subject & object) pronoun (cf. thee); completion of development of necessary

‘DO-support’ in interrogatives and negatives; verbs of cognition (know, think, believe) remain an exception for a while.

Grammar ~ changes and innovations that arose in the Early Modern Period continue: perfect aux. + verb constructions restricted to HAVE+Vb ~ it has fallen (cf. it is fallen); decrease in use of subjunctive (if I were you); increase in frequency, type and application of progressive constructions; progressives with future meaning: I’m running a marathon next week; passive progressives: the house is being built (condemned by some in the 19th c.).

Trends and Tendencies in the History of English (comparison of 18th and 19th cc.).

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