As Bonnie Prince Charlie’s occupying force crossed the Scottish frontier and marched southwards in the autumn of 1745, the city of York was threatened by Jacobite invasion. Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York, was in charge of the preliminaries. Herring was urging the people of the North of England to protect the monarchy, the Church, and their freedoms from the menace by the “Pretender and his Catholic and Jacobite army, “which was sponsored by Spain and France.
In the autumn of 1745, the menace Herring painted so forcefully in his preaching and talks was imminent. Herring, as with many Anglican priests of the time, was accepting of Catholics, and his formal pronouncements emphasize the necessity for respect to authority rather than anti-Catholic feeling. His choice of more venomous rhetoric shows his intention to unite the people in the aftermath of the early Jacobite victories, which created widespread panic.
This speech had honest concerns of the Archbishop in it, and it was clear that he sincerely wanted to unite the community to withstand the Jacobite rebels and protect their land. He saw the Protestant Succession, as embodied in the House of Hanover, as crucial to the United Kingdom and emphasized the support of God and the King multiple time in his appeal to the people of York.
To analyze the structure of the speech, it was quite concise on the part of the threat and mainly consisted of the encouragement to protect the nation. If looked at the text, only the first 2-3 short paragraphs were explaining the threat the Jacobite may possess to the land and England. The other parts were mainly focused on the promotion to stand beside the country and protect the King. Moreover, a significant portion of the Archbishop’s speech was dedicated to a possible threat of Catholic countries – France and Spain, which may have been sponsoring the rebels. He comments: “France and Spain, our old and inveterate (and late experience calls upon me to add, our savage and blood-thirsty) enemies.” Such an instrument, in my opinion, was used to highlight the danger of Catholicism for the Protestant English people and fuel the desire to take part in defense of England.