While working in the bowels of the John Carter Library at Brown, I came across a fascinating reflection by Lord John Hervey (1696-1743) on the state of politics in England. This brief selection is his remembrance of the depths to which any notion of the divine right of kings had fallen in the British world.  And it should at least give pause to historians of British America who might think that it played any meaningful role in the debates over monarchy and constitutionalism in the revolutionary era.

By 1727, “…the notion of hereditary right at home had been so long ridiculed and exploded, that there were few people whose loyalty was so strong, or whose understanding was so weak, as to retain and act upon it. The conscientious attachment to the natural right of this or that king, and the religious reverence to God’s anointed, was so far eradicated by the propagation of revolutionary principles, that mankind was become much more clear-sighted on that score than formerly, and so far comprehended and gave into the doctrine of a king being made for the people and not the people for the king, that in all their steps it was the interest of the nation or the interest of particular actors that was considered, and never the separate interest of one or the other king. And though one might be surprised (if any absurdity arising from the credulity and ignorance of mankind could surprise one) how the influence of power could ever have found means to establish the doctrine of Divine right of kings, yet no one can wonder that the opinion lost ground so fast when it became the interest even of the princes on the throne for three successive reigns to expel it. The clergy, who had been paid for preaching it up, were now paid for preaching it down; the Legislature had declared it of no force in the form of our government, and contrary to the fundamental laws and nature of our Constitution; and what was more prevailing than all the rest. it was no longer the interest of the majority of the kingdom either to propagate or act on this principle, and consequently those who were before wise enough from policy to teach it, were wise enough now from the same policy to explode it; and those who were weak enough to take it up only because they were told it, were easily brought to lay it down by the same influence.”

SOURCE: John, Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, from his Accession to the Death of Queen Catherine, vol. 1 (London, 1855), 6-7.