The Roscoe circle was a loosely-defined group of reformers in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

at the end of the 18th century, around

William Roscoe William Roscoe (8 March 175330 June 1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem for children '' The Butterfly's Ball, and the ...

(1753–1831), a banker, politician and abolitionist. The group had cultural interests and drew mostly on

English Dissenters English Dissenters or English Separatists were Protestant Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 17th and 18th centuries. A dissenter (from the Latin ''dissentire'', "to disagree") is one who disagrees in opinion, belief and ...

Defining the group

Thomas Stewart Traill Thomas Stewart Traill (29 October 1781 – 30 July 1862) was a British physician, chemist, meteorologist, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. He was the grandfather of the physicist, meteorologist and geologist Robert Traill Omon ...

, in his memoir of Roscoe, called the circle a "small private literary society". The issue arises whether this group's interests also involved Roscoe's radical politics. Sutton argues that their interests were also political and medical; that this circle fits into a larger pattern of societies; and that in the Liverpool dissenting and Unitarian context, the Roscoe circle was rooted in the ministry of

Henry Winder Henry Winder (15 May 1693 – 9 August 1752) was an English nonconformist minister and chronologist. Life The son of Henry Winder (d. 1733), farmer, by a daughter of Adam Bird of Penruddock, he was born at Hutton John, parish of Greystoke, Cumb ...

earlier in the century. There were links to

Warrington Academy Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the established Church of England. It was located in Warrington (then p ...

, through its education of dissenting ministers, and of the

Lunar Society of Birmingham The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a British dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 ...

to Roscoe through

Thomas Bentley Thomas Bentley (23 February 1884 – 23 December 1966) was a British film director. He directed 68 films between 1912 and 1941. He directed three films in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, ''The Man in the Street'' (1926), '' ...

. In its early days, the group of younger men around Roscoe opposed the Liverpool corporation. They were associated with the Benn's Garden Chapel congregation, that later migrated to the

Renshaw Street Unitarian Chapel Renshaw Street Unitarian Chapel was a Unitarian place of worship in Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, England. It operated from 1811 until the 1890s and was particularly well frequented by ship-owning and mercantile families, who formed a close networ ...

. When John Gladstone moved to Liverpool in the 1780s, it was in this congregation that he encountered radicals. As supporters of the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

, the Roscoe circle were dubbed the "Liverpool Jacobins". They added opposition to war with revolutionary France to their other political touchstones: reform of religious tests,

abolition of slavery Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

, free trade and the end of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

monopoly. By the end of 1792, however, social pressure and street violence against reformers had changed the atmosphere greatly: as Roscoe explained in correspondence with the

Marquess of Lansdowne Marquess of Lansdowne is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain created in 1784, and held by the head of the Petty-Fitzmaurice family. The first Marquess served as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Origins This branch of the Fitzmaurice famil ...

, the example of the

Priestley Riots The Priestley Riots (also known as the Birmingham Riots of 1791) took place from 14 July to 17 July 1791 in Birmingham, England; the rioters' main targets were religious dissenters, most notably the politically and theologically controversial Jo ...

of the previous year loomed large, and the local press was now closed to them. The original "literary society" ceased meeting that year.

Membership

Lucy Aikin Lucy Aikin (6 November 1781 – 29 January 1864) was an English historical writer, biographer and correspondent. She also published under pseudonyms such as Mary Godolphin. Her literary-minded family included her aunt Anna Laetitia Barbauld, a w ...

* Robert Benson, Quaker banker, partner of William Rathbone IV * William Clarke (1754–1805), banker * James Currie * Ralph Eddowes (1851–1833), Liverpool Unitarian and emigrant to the USAIan Sutton, ''Unitarians and the Construction of History and Biography, 1740–1820'', The English Historical Review Vol. 125, No. 513 (April 2010), pp. 314–339, at p. 315 and note 4. Published by: Oxford University Press * Francis Holden, schoolmaster *

William Rathbone IV William Rathbone IV (10 June 1757 – 11 February 1809) was an English ship-owner and merchant involved in the organisation of American trade with Liverpool, England. He was a political radical, supporting the abolition of the slave trade and unive ...

Edward Rushton Edward Rushton (1756–1814) was a British poet, writer and bookseller from Liverpool, England. He worked as a sailor aboard a slave ship as a young man, and became an abolitionist as a result. After losing his own vision, he opened a school fo ...

, poet * John Rutter (1762–1838), physician *

William Shepherd William McMichael "Bill" Shepherd (born July 26, 1949), (Capt, USN, Ret.), is an American former Navy SEAL, aerospace, ocean, and mechanical engineer, and NASA astronaut, who served as Commander of Expedition 1, the first crew on the Internatio ...

* Rev. Joseph Smith (c.1755–1815) *

William Smyth William Smyth (or Smith) ( – 2 January 1514) was Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield from 1493 to 1496 and then Bishop of Lincoln until his death. He held political offices, the most important being Lord President of the Council of Wales and t ...

, historian *

, physician * John Yates, Unitarian minister

Notes

{{reflist Age of Enlightenment

Defining the group

Membership

See also

Notes