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inging and literary societies under the early Stuarts, and a first boom
took place during the English Revolution, the breakthrough happened
only after the Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660.
Over the following decades London witnessed the emergence of
numerous new societies, from literary, musical, and drinking clubs to
religious, school alumni, and patronymic societies, which usually
met at inns, ale-houses, or coffee-houses. This upsurge was generated
by an influx of landowners who increasingly spent the season in
the capital and sought diversion. The affluent genteel and, in their
wake, the professional élites created a demand for sociable activities
which was met by the establishment of clubs and societies. Their rise
was further facilitated by changes in the outward appearance of
London. The widening and paving of streets, the demolition of old
town walls and gates, the erection of new civic buildings in a representative
style, the laying out of pleasure gardens, and the enlargement
and embellishment of public drinking houses created a physical
setting for the new forms of upper-class sociability, ‘a new “social
space”, a cultural quartier, ... which enabled the better-off classes to
move easily from one venue, and one entertainment, to another’ (p.
169). Ultimately, the cause of the societies was promoted by the
expansion of the press, which provided publicity, and the commercial
interest of publicans on whose premises societies met, booksellers
whose pamphlets, books, and newspapers they bought, and
other trades which cashed in on the new trend. The associational
world in Britain was the result of a highly commercialized and consumer-orientated
society.
In the early eighteenth century the same pattern recurred in towns
all over Britain as the movement spread from London to the
provinces and even to the colonies. The remainder of the century witnessed
a steady, and in the last decades exponential, growth in the
number as well as the range of societies. While older types disappeared,
new forms mushroomed, among them sports clubs, more
and more specialized learned associations and academies, philanthropic,
charitable and religious societies, book clubs, artisan box and
benefit societies, leisure-orientated associations such as clubs for
angling, horse racing, or bird-fancying and, in the wake of the
American and �rench Revolutions, debating and various political
societies. The ‘most structured and successful of all upper- and middle-class
associations’ (p. 273), however, were Masonic lodges, to
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A War of Words?