A "Louse Rampant": A Satire on Newcastle upon Tyne Politics, by William Moraley, Once an Indentured Servant in the Colonies

A "Louse Rampant"

A Satire on Newcastle upon Tyne Politics, by William Moraley, Once an Indentured Servant in the Colonies

In 1710 Joseph Addison wrote an elegant if supercilious satire on the daily meetings of a few impoverished tradesmen, "Three or Four very odd Fellows" who, ridiculously enough, "were all of them Politicians." Addison's point was that such men, too poor to vote, had no business asserting their opinions on the actions of the government or the eventualities of foreign affairs. He urged them to leave such fruitless discussions and return to their shops, since their "thoughts are so taken up with Affairs . . . that they forget their Customers."¹ Forty-four years later a poor tradesman and former bound servant in the American colonies turned the tables and wrote a scabrous satire on the politicians, prelates, and other highborn leaders of Newcastle upon Tyne on behalf of a motley group of artisans, schoolmasters, keelmen, and others—men who asserted their right to criticize those in power. The author's name was William Moraley (sometimes Morley), a watchmaker by trade and a writer by avocation, and he was protesting the monopolistic hold on power of his so-called betters. By inverting the social order in his humorous depiction of the 1754 parliamentary election, Moraley ridiculed the snobberies of the elite, making their pretensions absurd. The recent discovery of a single copy of Moraley's pamphlet The Proceedings and Humours of a Late Election, in the City of Sandberg, which contains both printed text and contemporary annotations, provides an unusual look at the political views and the sources of group identity of urban workingmen and middling sorts during a period long thought to have been politically quiescent and hints at the influence of colonial experience on developments in England.

William Moraley (1699–1762) was born in London of parents with ties to Newcastle upon Tyne. An only child, he received a good education and was intended for the law when the bursting of the South Sea Bubble impaired the family's fortunes. In the 1720s the family removed to Newcastle and Moraley served as apprentice to his father, a London-trained watchmaker. Moraley's sometimes feckless nature, his estrangement from his father, and contemporary economic conditions led him into a series of difficulties. He never finished his apprenticeship, his father virtually disowned him in his will in 1725, and the economic downturn of the late 1720s left him impoverished, briefly jailed for debt, and, on release, immediately arrested for the theft of food.² Shortly after his acquittal he sold himself as an indentured servant. He was shipped to Philadelphia in late 1729, served for three years, and spent nearly two years wandering in and around the British colonies of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He returned to Newcastle in 1734 as poor as ever. He struggled to gain complete control over his mother's estate, which consisted of a house and garden in a fashionable part of town, first by hiring a lawyer and then by twice barging into the premises himself. He was subsequently arrested by the executors of her will for assault, and he soon saw his debts and legal fees wipe out his inheritance. Little is known of his later life, although we know he was working again as a watchmaker at the time of his death in 1762. According to a friend of the family, Moraley was known as a spendthrift, and the following pamphlet may be one example of his wastrel ways, since he certainly had to pay for printing costs and had virtually no hope of recouping those costs through large sales to buyers outside his social circle. He was remembered, too, as "an easy and good natured fellow, whose wants were few, and cares, less."³ He does seem to have had many friends...