of their untrustworthiness; and most Tories were vociferous in their

support of the Church of England and their criticism of a Hanoverian bias

to British foreign policy, neither of which endeared them to suspicious
monarchs.
It was inevitable that the advent of political parties also saw a widening
of political activity in society. Nothing helped to politicize the nation like
the frequent and bitterly fought elections of the period: the three elections
in 1679 and 1680 were a dress rehearsal for the eleven general elections
held between 1689 and 1713 (that is, on average, one every two years). The
electorate was probably 4.6 percent of the population in 1715 - which was
the largest electorate before 1832 - but some seats were "popular" or open,
with a wide franchise, while others were closed boroughs in the pocket of
some magnate. Geoffrey Holmes concludes that the elections of this period
tended to exaggerate, but not misrepresent, the will of the people.28 If that
is so, then the country was Tory on most issues, and the only Whig
majorities were gained in 1708 and 1715 at the time of invasion scares. Of
course, the electorate, like the franchise, was only hazily defined; at some
stage, those who could vote merged with those who, despite being
unenfranchised, formed the wider audience for politics. Memories were
still fresh of the unprecedented political debate and activity of the 1640s
and 1650s which had formed attitudes and expectations that were not to be
denied. From 1695 until the Walpole years the press was free of government
control, and those disseminators of news, rumor, and propaganda,
the newspapers, periodicals, clubs, and coffee-houses, flourished. Both men
and women became fiercely partisan: when the upper-class Ann Clavering
was told by an acquaintance that her extreme Whig views would repel
suitors, she retorted, "O madam . . . you mistake that matter. I despise all
Tories, and were their estates never so large; and yet don't despair, for I am
sure the Whigs like me better for being true to my party."29
The capital was an important forum for popular politics. During the
Exclusion Crisis the London crowds were managed and manipulated by
sophisticated propaganda.30 The popular Whig platform asserted that
parliament was the best defense of English liberties, and indeed the best
defense of the king, against the threat of popery. This message was slanted
toward the Nonconformists by the insinuation that the intolerant Church
of England aided and abetted the growth of popery and arbitrary government.
Meanwhile the Tory crowd was told that the Nonconformists and
Whigs were to blame for dividing the Protestant cause and thus leaving the
nation vulnerable to the common enemy of popery. After 1688 the Whig
politicians of London shifted their ground, just as they did in parliamentary
politics, and the London Tories came to represent the cause of "liberty" in