Er arbuthnot was a keen cards player, which stood him in good stead throughout his life. He became doctor by ance to queen anne a and happened to be at epson races when her son fell ill. And it's through that connection that he met two men who were very important for john bull. They are robert harley, who wasa a leading er tory figure, and jonathan swift, the irish minister and satirist. Both swift and er arbuth not were writing for harley in favour of the tory courses. Be come in and ravele that for amoent.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origin of this personification of the English everyman and his development as both British and Britain in the following centuries. He first appeared along with Lewis Baboon (French) and Nicholas Frog (Dutch) in 1712 in a pamphlet that satirised the funding of the War of the Spanish Succession. The author was John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), a Scottish doctor and satirist who was part of the circle of Swift and Pope, and his John Bull was the English voter, overwhelmed by taxes that went not so much into the war itself but into the pockets of its financiers. For the next two centuries, Arbuthnot’s John Bull was a gift for cartoonists and satirists, especially when they wanted to ridicule British governments for taking advantage of the people’s patriotism.
The image above is by William Charles, a Scottish engraver who emigrated to the United States, and dates from 1814 during the Anglo-American War of 1812.
With
Judith Hawley
Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London
Miles Taylor
Professor of British History and Society at Humboldt, University of Berlin
And
Mark Knights
Professor of History at the University of Warwick
Producer: Simon Tillotson