坂下 史

In this paper, the focus of analysis is the Moral Reform Movement, which lasted for several decades after the Glorious Revolution (1688-9). The city of Bristol is taken as a case study of the Movement outside of the capital. There were two institutions in Bristol which initiated the Moral Reform Movement in the post-Glorious Revolution era. One was the Corporation of the Poor, the other was the Society for the Reformation of Manners (SRM). The moral treatment of the poor through the establishment of workhouses was the most important task of the Corporation, which was founded in 1696. The origins of the SRM in Bristol can be traced back to 1700. The central task of SRM in Bristol was to provide information concerning vicious persons to local constables, in order to make prosecutions of such persons more efficient. There are slightly different ideologies underlying the Corporation of the Poor and SRM. The former made effors mainly for the city's own interests, while the latter worked for the whole English nation. Though SRM was not a branch some organization in London and was managed independently by Bristolians, it had been getting instructions and information from other reformation societies in London. As far as the Moral Reform Movement in Bristol is concerned, at least three different intentions can be identified. Firstly, there were those of the Williamites, who intended to strengthen the integration of the English nation through the Movement in order to protect it from the "vicious" Catholic state, of France. Secondly, there were the intentions of the city elite as a whole for whom the economic issue was probably most important. Lastly, there were the intentions of two political groups, the Tories and the Whigs. Through the Movement, those political groups attempted to increase the numbers of their respective supporters to use in a battle of power against each other. To sum up, these diverse intentions could emerge and 'coexisit' only in the special social context of the post-Glorious Revolution era. By the time of the Hanoverian Succession, the Movement in Bristol had almost entirely dissolved at the local level and stopped functioning as a national movement. However, what historians should remind themselves of concerning these events is the fact that through participating in the post-Glorious Revolution Moral Reform Movement, some urban elite were forced to think more about national issues in the contekt of international power politics, than they would have otherwise. This experience was no doubt built upon as later generations participated in various movements for national reform in the 1760s and 1780s, in which the question of morals was still one of the main topics on the agenda.